Sao Paulo, Birthday, Brasilia

So, I'm finally writing this! For the sheer reason that we're going to Rio (going to Rio!) in late December, and I'll definitely want to write about that. That, and there's also been a lot of other stuff going on. I stopped keeping a written log of everything a bit before we went to Sao Paulo, so my pictures are going to guide my memory. Luckily, I took pictures of pretty much everything, so this shouldn't be much of a problem.

Sao Paulo, I don't think, is one of those places that everybody has on their travel list. People want to go to places like London, Paris, Rome, New York City, Rio de Janiero, Shanghai, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Sydney, etc, etc. I think that Sao Paulo belongs on that list of 'cities that don't get nearly as much hype as they deserve', like Xi'an, Istanbul, Boston, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Athens, Seoul, Oslo, Vancouver, etc. It's a beautiful city.

If you haven't planned on going, well, you should probably fix that.

We flew into Sao Paulo late at night (or was it early in the morning?). I should mention here that Sao Paulo was Bella's departure city, and that was the reason we were there.

We stayed with Mae's sister, Manula (but we just called her Manu). To put this in perspective, her apartment was about three blocks from the Sao Paulo equivalent of 5th Avenue.

Meet Manu! 

First, since it was a holiday, we went to a museum...or, we planned to go to one, but got there too late and decided not to wait for over an hour to get in. But we still looked around the gardens and the monuments, which were really cool.

And that's the museum. The whole, grand thing.

In a lot of ways, since Sao Paulo reminded me of Washington DC. For those of you who have been, remember all of the little monuments? I'm not talking about the Lincoln Memorial, but the little monuments you see scattered around that area of DC. Sao Paulo has those.

And those museums? They go hard. 

There were also some bigger ones; grander, more majestic, the kind that people tend to gather around because the planning was exquisite and wonderful, and the details and minutiae are carved with a stunning amount of patience and care, and the overall presence of such a magnificent structure is something rather alluring and attractive to the passerby.

Manu showed us around the city (accidentally including the ghetto, which was extremely terrifying - GPSes around the world really need to learn to block those routes). With Mae, I went to the downtown area, which was, well, downtown. Manu told me not to go, if that's any indication of how it was. Basically, it was what most large, urban city downtowns are like. Crowded, impossible to get on the metro during rush hour, etc. General city stuff.

However, we did take a taxi to a cathedral and saw a couple of the other structures.

And this guy. "Senhor que quereo que eu faco?" means
"Sir, what do you want me to make?" If memory serves, he was
one of the founders of the city.

The cathedral was beautiful. Ironically, we got there about fifteen minutes before mass started, so we were stuck until it was over. ("You went to Church!?" my brother asked.)

The next day (or later that night...I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact details) we went to see Mamma Mia!. Yes, the smash-hit musical based off of ABBA songs. Thankfully, I've seen the movie so many times that I basically have the script memorized (it's kind of pathetic), so I knew exactly what was going on. Of course there are differences between adaptions, but we musical theatre nerds are always prepared for that sort of thing.

I mean, really, what else did you expect?

But anyway, we went to this really nice theatre and had great seats. I was really interested to see how they would pull off all of the different roles, since it's an American musical that takes place in Greece, so it's obviously more American than Greek.

I observed the same kind of thing - there was a distinct Brazilian air to the adaption, which I thought was really neat. It was like...the Brazilian version of Greece as opposed to the American version of Greece, I suppose. The woman who played Donna, Kiara Sasso, was excellent. Truly, the entire cast was excellent, but she stole the show. She really did.

At the end, they did an encore and sang some of the songs in English. Manu, Mae and I were all singing along and Bella was like, really? We're gonna do that?

Saturday was the date of Bella's departure. She woke up and looked at Mae. Mae looked back at her.

Another pneumothorax. For those of you who don't know what that is, a pneumothorax is essentially a collapsed lung resulting from the formation of an air bubble. So, when you go in a plane, that air bubble expands...and I shouldn't have to explain it any further

Luckily, the hospital at which Manu works was only two blocks away from the apartment, and they did the same thing they did before. We ended up returning to Fortaleza that night and Bella went through the proper surgery this time. However, this meant that she would be leaving in October, and not with everybody else from Brazil.

Needless to say, she was not happy.

Happily, she is finally in Germany, having a great time with her host family.

Alright, time for a cheerful subject, my Birthday!

I actually had three birthday celebrations on the same day, which was wonderful (this was possibly because I am, among other things, wonderfully efficient). In school, my friends brought me a giant cupcake (and let me rephrase that - a GIANT cupcake - seriously, I was like, "Thank-you so much! But um, how do I eat this?") and sang. In the middle of the school.

It was break time. This was allowed, and it wasn't unlike what happens in the cafeteria at my old school. No, strike that. It was more boisterous, but that's because there wasn't nearly as much white noise. This stuff is relative.

But still, it was really fun, and when I wasn't puzzling over how to eat my cupcake, I was laughing. Probably bent-over, on-your-side laughter, but still laughter.

Then, when our Geometry class came, we all sang Happy Birthday to her, as her birthday had been the preceding day.

I suppose everybody was in the mood!

That night, my family and I went to the same restaurant that we went to my first night here. Ladyjane was there as well, and so was Laura and Elif. One of the AFS counselors/volunteers, Julia, came as well. AFS Fortaleza is very much a participant in what we do. By that, I mean we organize things through them, they invite us to do stuff, etc. Even though we live all over the city.

I had a chocolate cake, in case you were wondering. It was delicious.

Clearly, I was happy.

That night, I Skyped with my family. One of the perks of being a twin is that, even when you're away from your family, you can Skype with them and see the cake. (Because that's what birthdays are all about, right?) My brother told me that our FLEX (read: homeroom) threw him a party (and me too, although I obviously wasn't there).

In some ways, it was very bittersweet, as this was my first birthday without them (and my brother!). But it was also nice to see that they're getting on just as well without me. My father spilled cake all over my mother's keyboard, if that's any indication...

That said, as it had only been a bit more than a month, I didn't start to miss everybody (sorry guys). I was still drinking in the high of being in a bunch of new surroundings. Of course, not everything was great...school was boring because I didn't understand anything, I was still adjusting to the family life, etc, etc. But, they say that anything difficult is worth doing. I'll let you make your own implications from that.

I also saw my dogs. Is it a bad thing that I miss them more than my actual family? Does that make me a horrible person?

Regardless, let's talk about Brasilia.

Bella left for Germany a few days before we went to Brasilia. Mae and I flew in a day before Rapha, who had the Brazilian equivalent of midterm exams. I didn't take the exams. Lucky me!

Difficult to see, but the two white  towers at the end, and then
the two buildings on either side of them, from a political triangle
not unlike the one we have in DC...except they're much closer.

Brasilia is the capital of Brazil. It's a planned city, so in theory you would never need to leave your small area. The blocks contain restaurants, cafes, clothing shops, supermarkets, etc, etc - everything necessary to sustain modern life.

Guess what this is!

After breakfast, we went to an outdoor market and took a ride to a lookout point, where I got some great pictures.
 Then we headed back, went to lunch, explored the marketplace, etc. Brasilia is very, very dry (and hot), so almost everybody drinks a glass of water before leaving the house.

Every inch a modern city

And speaking of water, did you know that you're supposed to get at least 8 glasses a day? Brazil is so much hotter than the US, so I just drink it mindlessly. I probably go through 20 cups a day, easily.

But regardless, a few days later Rapha and I met Manu at her the JK Memorial. For those of you who don't know much about Brazilian history, JK, or Juscelino Kubitschek (that's a Czech surname, not Portuguese) was the president of Brazil during 1956-1961, and was the guy who decided to construct a new capital, guess, Brasilia.

After the memorial, we walked to the Office of Foreign Affairs - where all of the foreign heads of state meet to discuss politics and whatnot. It was a very classy building - a mix of contemporary and historical.

Office of Foreign Affairs! Which we toured. That one.

After taking some photos and reading about the building itself, we exiting to find ourselves at the back of a growing protest.

This protest.

 And then I said, "I like protests," and Manu eyed me weirdly, as if to say, "What did you just say?" It was one of those you-know-what-I-meant moments.

I suspect that people in capital cities everywhere protest around government sites. Washington D.C. does it too.

We then got picked up and went our separate ways. Later that day, we went to visit the iconic cathedral of Brasilia. It seriously is iconic - whenever I saw a souvenir shop, there were always a few repeating motifs: this cathedral, the bridges, and the Congress building.

This one was absolutely magnificent inside,
and there were statues of the gospelmakers outside.

There was a mass going on, so I thought it would be rude to take pictures, but there were carved angels hanging from the ceiling, and the entire cathedral had this very modern and classical feel to it.

In fact, that's how I'd describe Brasilia. It's very modern, but it's also very Brazilian and very historical at the same time.

Since this was my third time flying into Fortaleza, it felt pretty regular. The first time I was with Alex and Laura and very nervous, the second time I was with Mae and Bella, and this time I was with Mae and Rapha. The route from the airport to the apartment was more familiar.

In fact, a lot of things feel familiar now. Like I never did all of those things back in the US. It's not routine anymore.

I can't believe it's been four and a half months already.