20 nov. 2009 Picolé! became one of my favorite words since the first time I heard it. I first saw it on a box like this one: being held by one of the beach vendors who also sell kangas and jewlery made of brazilian wood, seeds, plants etc. And I was intrigued by just the sound of it: picolé /pee-ko-leh/. anyway I soon found out that it was a Popsicle like this one.
Exhibit B: the street cafés or carrinhos de cafe
I also was a little confused by them at first because there was just a cart with all these red jugs in it and it didn't say coffee (or at least from the angle I was looking at it). And also because I guess I've just never been used to this idea of selling hot coffee in the summer, in the evening! But I guess, people need it? The cool this is that they don't only sell coffee..ohh nooooo! Every cart besides having some colored thermoses, has it's own personality, different colors, art work. Some are simple
[photo credit Dimitri Ganzelevitch because i was always paranoid about taking pictures out in the street when I wasn't surrounded by like 10 people]
and some go all out with music, umbrellas, couches! Apparently there is an annual competition/show of these carts to see who has the most accomodating atmosphere and my host mom said that there was one with a couch and a big TV with loud speakers and all this stuff. And like Clara the coordinator or the Big Mama of the group would always say "This could only happen in Bahia, people!" and I believe it. apparently these little carts started appearing in the 70s and now they're just a part of the busy urban setting. Too bad I don't drink coffee.
22 nov 2009
It's lookin clowdy today, not much of park weather but we're going anyway. After breakfast at the hostel.
This is the Parque Ibirapuera, one of the biggest and famous in the country I think.
They have a lake and here's Lena wanting a picture with that big fake christmas tree in the background
If you look carefully there I am with an umbrella. I felt like i was in the secret garden
This is also pretty iconic of sampa this building with this big red tongue sticking out.
I thought the grass looked really cool. it's flatt and wide it reminded me of ribbons
Hairy trees.
Then we saw this special Le Petit Prince/ the little prince show in part of this park. Yeah they have several museums in this park, bike rental, fields, play grounds, a little forest, a science dome, multicultural center etc etc.
There is a lot of French in Brazilian history and for a while Brasilians were quite the Francophone because they looked to them for intellectual and art matters, and I guess there are just a few remnants of that. But Brasil and the America's in general are all cannibalistic pastichers. Okay unless you were in my culture class, you might not understand what I mean. But i mean metaphorically what Amercicans (of all America yes the 2 continents) did was eat up all this stuff native, imperialist etc, and digested and came up with something different-ish.
There was also some architectural thingy but they charged money so we just walked in the free part. And walked onto the free museum of modern art.
There were a lot of cook things there. very interesting, I can't really describe what things were like but I could definitely see a pattern to this modern art. It was kind of like ironic, or exaggerated, etc.
Sombreros anyone? They also had some tortilla thing.
Man I was so hungry! We were really far away too, we walked for like 40 minutes from the hostel down hill to the park, i'm so surprised we found it, but then we were willing to take a bus back up to Avenida Paulista, our (0,0). Really that's how I mapped out Sampa, it was my X axis.
And I had heard good stuff about this vegetarian Indian restaurant and I really wanted to go, but guess what? It was closed! :( so I just cried a little--inside, and we looked for another place.
We found this little lanchonete-type place super cheap and provided the essentials and we were good.
We ate out on the street, and I got some frango (chicken) and brocolis, palmito, cenoura salad. You need to guess what that is it's pretty easy. Paulmito is the part that's probably unfamiliar to you.
Lena got a side of rice and fries though. We both got fresh orange juice and a side of beans. I don't think I was able to finish everything really it was filling and only like US$5.oo. Good Deal
then I really wanted to go to the Os Gêmeos exhibition. Again the twins, here are some videos of them explaining. And it's good so you get to hear the Sampa accent , see if you notice any differences.
they are world renown and have their street art all over the place in the big cities like Berlin, Manhattan, SF, Sampa, Rio, Los Angeles, I don't know where else but they go all over.
But we like ran over there we realized we were running late because I thought they closed at 5PM and it was like 4:45 and we weren't there yet. We got there and there was a huge line outside this building, and we asked the couple in front of us if it was for the Gemeos exposition and they're like I think so, I assume so I haven't asked, and then we just started talking (in Portuguese) I have to say it feels really good when people are like "NO way you've just been studying it for 4 months" or whatever. But then i just kind of think it sucks that they don't have as good of language programs in other countries. Like my cousin in Mexico at a PRIVATE school said that in her English class they spend a whole YEAR on the verb "TO BE" and it's just ridiculous. I feel like either the teachers aren't well-trained or their just being lazy. But I'm really glad I've had the opportunity to have really good language programs available, and also really good professors but I mean I also try really hard and practice when I can and really DESIRE to learn languages. Oh and I speak Spanish so all of that helps.
Anyway they were asking us about Bahia and what we're studying there, about the university in California etc. They were really nice people. Again I've had a really good experience with Paulistas (it's what you call people who live in Sao Paulo, like "Baiana/o" for people from Bahia like a "New Yorker" "Californian" "Texan" etc.) But really I have had ZERO sexual harassment in all these days which is quite a record because back in Bahia...man it's like if you go down the street for 20 minutes without hearing something that's a record. And we have been walking EVERYWHERE here in Sampa and alone as women.
Finally we were in! They let in whoever is in line and then they close it.
This is inside the building but they didn't let us take pictures. So here are some places that they have pictures. It was really cool, because usually they have the limits (or the resources) of the street but here they were able to have installations and use film and music, and tangible experiences. the only thing missing was taste.
IT was amazing. There was this one place where depending on how you clap or how many times you clap the color of lights changed, then there were these two boxes stacked up and you could go and stick your head into the hole at the bottom of the top head and you were surrounded by mirrors and a purple light at the top with some awesome music like bossa nova playing and it really felt like another world. Then there was a dark shack with old furniture falling apart, a leaky faucet, smoke coming in, and some green light waves it was weird. But in front of the couch, an old TV set that was playing images of several homeless people. One woman trying to put a red bottle cap on her nose. Another one was a hidden camera capturing the police unnecessarily harassing a homeless person. All he was doing was waving his shirt around on a somewhat deserted road and no one else was around so he wasn't really bothering anyone but the police still got all worked up and took advantage that this person was probably mentally ill, and I don't know it seems like people think homeless people don't have rights.
But there was an instrument there that they invented it was really really cool. Then this ostrich looking animal with two different videos of eyes looking off in different directions at different paces so looking straight at it felt weird.
There were just lots of cool things there, and on all the walls spilling with their artwork that really made me feel like I was in a different world. It was like Alice in Wonderland meets Dr. Seuss with a political slant and with more adult content.
This has by far been my favorite part of São Paulo! We stayed there till they kicked us out :)
Then we decided to go to Spain for a little bit.
We saw this pastry/ dessert shop as we were coming out and it just hit the spot. Well we hit the spot but ...
And I was just amazed as I walked in, because things looked gorgeously delicious but they weren't that expensive. I asked this guy working there if I could take pictures and he said "you should ask the owner and he pointed over to the butcher section across the place and there he was wrapping up some meat for someone. I fell in love--with the store. It was local and there was the owner working, I went over and asked him if I could take pictures in his store just for my own pleasure and he gave me permission. I was so happy. So you should thank him for it because now you are able to see the wonders of these freshly made cakes and candies etc.
I got one of these:and it was like 1.50! But it was good, quality stuff right there. I had been craving chocolate so it was fantastic timing.
Chocolates and little homemade peeps, and traditional desserts
I wonder if this Marzipan stuff on the right is anything like the Mexican Mazapan
But really this place was just.. top drawer.
Then we sat at the top of this side walk on a step to eat our goods.
I also got this strawberry, at the bottom it had a little shorty cut pastry.
Another funky architecture shot.
Graffiti.
While we were Avenida Paulista again, we saw this window lined with feathered apparel. And we realized it was a display of the different kind of artwork from different indigenous peoples of the Amazon! Oh my gosh I swear this is a miracle day how things work out like this, i've pretty much forgot all about the Indian restaurant. And all this stuff was not even planned.
And I've actually learned a bit about Amazonian peoples in my "Indigenous struggles in the Americas" class and I learned about the Kayapó, Candoshi, Yagua, Yaminagua, Tupí , Tupinamba, Guaraní etc.
It was amazing too! did not dissapoint obviously. it is just amazingly beautiful but also
the fact that they used all of the animal, like this bird hanging off of this head band.
They have boxes for feathers
necklaces
Afterwards we went into the shopping mall because I really wanted to buy some books. Mainly on Brazilian folklore but also children's book. I learned something today!
while I was at the book storeI was trying to ask for like books on "Legends", and I was asking about legendas, and legendas, and the woman looked it up on the computer but looked a little confused and said "I'm not really sure where you can find that" And then I'm like or something on folklore like mythology (folklórico, de mitos) and then she's like "oohhhh, lendas!" and then I remembered oh yeah lendas. So Lendas is legends, and Legendas is subtitles!!!!
remember that. if you ever happen to ask for subtitles or legends I guess.
Then we walked home, we waited for the rain to calm down a little as we went back to the couches in that indegenous thing (I don't know what that was called, an exhibition? But I call everything an exhibition oh well. we'll just go with that)
But we rested there a bit used their bathroom.
Then we went down and I was hungry again but I didn't feel like paying a lot for anything and so I got a little salgado at a deli. Like a little empanadita with meat in it.
And then we went back to the hostel.
NOTE: there are all these pizza places open at night, pizza seems to be a big Paulista thing too, and mostly young people are sitting at these places with tables flowing out into the street, drinking beer and haning out with friends.
Then I went to enjoy my little muffin-type thing...in bed. One of the guys here at the hostel asked me if I wanted to watch a movie with him in his room but I politely declined. you never know. he seems like a nice guy but...either way it's like midnight! so i just want to go to sleep so I can fully enjoy our last day here in Sampa, the plane leaves at 7:35.
Gostoso né?
oh Sampa...
We have pretty much explored almost every street by foot I swear! There's nothing like seeing everything street level, slowly. And everything today (minus the food), the park, the museums, the os gêmeos the indigenous art thing was freeeee freee beeannn free 99!
freee
07 Nov 2009
So we took a 2 hour bus to Praia do Flamengo on one of those really cool bright yellow buses.
We sun bathed/burned but of course we need to be snacking on the common beach foods, acarajé, abará, and açaí. And água com gás that two of my friends are obsessed with. By the way a tip for when buying bottled water, make sure you read whether the bottle says "com gás" or "sem gás" because the former means it's carbonated and the latter is just regular water.
It was really cool when I went to get açaí the guy working there and I got into a pretty long conversation because of a song on the radio. I got there and I'm like (in portuguese) "oh isn't this,...oh what's his name...Alejando Sanz!" And he's like yeah, and I expressed my surprise that they listened to him here, and it turned out that he actually got into Alejandro Sanz while he was living in Spain. He was working in Spain at a Mexican restaurant and then I told him I'm Mexican and he said he loved being with those Mexicans because they were really funny and crazy. I'm like "yeah that's us" jk. But he learned Spanish with them, like my friend Jonas who went to Florida to learn English but ended up learning more Spanish than anything because every one thought he must be a Spanish-speaker.
But yeah he was super friendly he even gave me extra banana for my açaí because that's how I like it :).
But it's always interesting to hear about so many different experiences that people I meet have had, and you couldn't have guessed it by just talking to them.
14. Oct 2009 "Crossing the street in Brazilian cities is risking your life" -Rodrigo, (my friend's partner, he's Brazilian) I think that's true but it's kind of true for any city right? I always get very anxious every time I'm about to cross the street here because there's usually so much traffic and not too many traffic lights so you just cross when you can because usually people don't just stop half way in the road and if they do it's not guaranteed that the cars going the other way will stop too.
I almost got my feet run over the today--it wasn't even a busy street but I was about to cross and then this car makes a quick poorly calculated turn onto the street and zooms by but I couldn't even back up because there was a car parallel-parked right behind me. The car's wheels ran over a bit of the tip of my havaianas!! And I just sucked in my gut, it was pretty scary. Terrible driver.
But apart from traffic, the streets in Salvador have many smells. One moment it's the smog from the cars, then it's the tree essences, then it's dog poop or people poop on the street (I've had bad luck with that too, people are starting to think that I like to step in fecal matter :( ) Then it's an amazing scent of tropical fruit from the many little fruit stands that line the sidewalks. Ripe pineapples, and mamão, bananas, guavas, pinhas, maracujá, delicious. and then to the smell of cologne bathed men, then B.O. probably mine. Oh many smells, you never know what to expect in a 10 minute walk.
These are comments that my girl friends noticed from the night we stepped foot out of the orienation hotel and into the streets. Our first experience: So we were 3 women looking for a place to have dinner and we were walking by a near-by park and there were lots of people out chilling, selling street food like popcorn etc. And when we passed by guys almost all of them would make some sort of comment and my friend Allegria said “well, then I’m glad that at least I don’t understand what they’re saying” and right after she said that a guy we passed goes: “beeeautiful”. It was just amazingly good timing. So anyway this was fairly representative of our experience on the streets of Salvador as women from that day forward. It happens every day especially if you’re alone; it happens far less if you’re with a guy and especially if they think the guy is Brazilian.
But yeah it is very uncomfortable, to quote one of my friends who is constantly hit on almost everywhere, that she “feels like a deer in the woods ready to be hunted" or with comments like “gostosa” [delicious] "literally like a slab of meat at a delicatessen." Although I/we don’t condone this, my friends and I agreed that at least they’re just comments like “Beautiful” and not more vulgar commens about our bodies or anything like that, which we have experienced before in the States. Allegria, from San Francisco said one time when she was walking to a job interview and felt she looked really cute, a guy passing her says “nice tits” and that is… yeah so we’re thankful that usually it’s something less vulgar.
But of course this kind of thing does seem to be limited to experiences with strangers and usually on the street [some have experienced a lot of machismo in their capoeira classroom but it’s a different sort of thing]. Because I am not treated like this by all guys/men on the street. Especially if they’re working. I’ve noticed that wearing the uniform really means something; sometimes the minute some guys are off work--like our tour guide at Morro-- it’s a totally different story. But yeah I am not harassed by my sisters’ friends or other friends we make here at some concerts etc. Of course even less by the males in our host families. I also think that anonymity and social class have something to do with it usually.
How do I cope with it?
I guess I had had some experience with that before, in the U.S. in Mexico, but I don’t feel comfortable, and I don't condone it as a patriarchal behavior so men feel dominant over women reminding us that our place is nothing more than as sex machine as we were created for men’s pleasure and passing on of genes. But anyway, I guess you just kind of learn to ignore the common "oi linda" "oi amor!" "linda, viu?" to the point that in some situations I just find it somewhat amusing even. Like one time I was walking by some gated building and there was a guard behind the gate who saw me between a crack for like one second and he goes “wiew”, like he was on a rollercoaseter or something.
My friends and I satirize it all the time. “oooh, do my half-shaven, pasty, mosquito-bitten legs turn you on?” Because it really doesn’t matter as my housekeeper, Fernanda has said, whether you’re all dressed up/ showing cleavage and in a mini skirt or “todadesarrumada ” and all covered up and sloppy.
But this one time that it got to be more than just “oi linda”. I was at a bustop with 4 other friends and this man who was homeless, came up to us and started talking to us, asking where we were going and such, and my friend responded “praia do flamengo” and he was okay at first but then he started saying stuff like “oh I bet you’d look good on the beach with those long legs” and from there we demonstrated disapproval and tried to ignored him. Then he went away and came back "where are you from?" And I answered “Sou Brasileira” thinking he might leave us alone now if he’s only doing this because he thinks we’re all tourists who don’t know how to deal with this stuff, but nope that didn’t help--and I guess we didn't really know how to deal with this stuff. Cause he grabs my arm and kisses it ..out of patriotism? I don’t know but that’s when we moved away because touching or any physical contact is waaaay beyond crossing the boundaries. So we moved away and then it seemed like he was gone so we came back, (the bus still hadn’t come) and we sat down on the benches and then in like 3 minutes he comes over and sits next to me and wants to keep talking and I’m like “I have to go”. But he gets up and follows me and he’s like “no wait let me give you another kiss” me: “nao!”
So I recommend that if something is going beyond (because you can spend your whole day just saying something back to every person that sexually harasses you and it seems like a waste of energy because it'll happen the next day again and again and again) and is persistent that you just leave the area, or it will escalate. You can also say “me deixa em paz” = “leave me alone” and then go. Sometimes, like in this case it doesn't seem like reason will really help because this guy seemed to have a mild mental disorder and I don't know I just know that being homeless his behavior is reflecting his life experience and what he’s probably been seeing on the streets all the time. And I was thinking also that since I don't experience this sexual harassment with my family or my sister's friends well they are all from a middle-upper middle class so may be that's a factor. However it's not so say that it doesn't exist in that social class because....
This other time, God, also at a bus stop --by myself this time, I was waiting for the Pracada Se bus and it was taking for EVER! I had already waited like 30/40 minutes and in the last 10 minutes there was a guy who was in a suit, suitcase, tie, and reading the newspaper apparently just got off work or something, and I noticed he kept staring at me and smiling creepily just watching me. And I moved a little and he followed, I moved back and so did he. It was getting weird so I just decided to get on the next bus even though it was the executivo (executive), more expensive one because I wanted to go already. And he gets on the bus with me! But I kind of made the seat next to me unavailable so he sat more towards the front And I wasn’t sure where to get off because this bus might have different points than the other normal bus. So I asked this other guy who was farther in the back with me. He was super nice he was explaining everything to me, very respectful and he told me he’d let me know when to get off. So then he says “it’s coming up” so I go back up to the front and the bus driver told me oh wait it’s a couple more blocks, but to my bad luck there was terrible traffic and I was standing almost right in front of the suitcase guy and I start hearing some noises. I thought it was my imagination at first, and then I told myself may be he’s just smacking his lips at what’s in the newspaper, but afterward "no it can’t be that repetitive". But I felt disgusting because I had my backside to him and now I realize he’s making kissing noises at me trying to do it only loud enough for ME to hear and oh man those minutes were eternal to me and I guess he did want some kind of reaction because he was getting louder and louder to make sure I heard, so I decided not to look because obviously that’s what he wanted if my reaction at the time--of not doing anything-- was not what he wanted. But I just got filled with such raiva that I just wanted to turn around and smack his dirty lips I just wanted to slap him. Like what the hell are you doing?! And then finally it was my stop, and he gets off too. I was determined to lose him in the crowd luckily avenidasete is always crowded. But I was still feeling really frustrated. And it was worse to me than when the homeless guy kissed my arm because it is definitely a different power dynamic. This guy had not only had the education to know that he is doing something wrong but I almost feel like he was doing it for that purpose. Because he “knows” he is in the position of power and probably wanted to intimidate me or something, and obviously it’s very unequal because I can’t do that back to him and make him feel the same way, he can’t feel sexually harassed by me and if I did what he did to be back, he’d probably like it. Oh disgusting though. I t was the WAY he was looking at me. a super sexual way of looking at me and it really did make me feel like being violent towards him. I don’t know if I dealt with that well, I still feel like I should have told him something in front of those people on the bus like “velhoperverso, vocênãotemvergoinhadesertãomaleducado!” But again I’m not sure if he probably even would have wanted that, or any reaction. I think, well I wish I didn’t react the way I did internally because that only hurts me. I wish it hadn’t bothered me to that point, but it did all the more because he was a “White” man.
So, like I said it usually had to do with class but not always, and it was very interesting how different my reactions were to this. But after I told my friends they were totally more disgusted regardless of all the kisses blown at them before, but it did make a difference that it was a White man from an higher class. It just is a different power dynamic in this instance and it changes the way we perceive it.
being held by one of the beach vendors who also sell kangas and jewlery made of brazilian wood, seeds, plants etc. And I was intrigued by just the sound of it: picolé /pee-ko-leh/.
