Going south

I´m writing from Foz do Iguacu, a city on the border between Argentina, Brasil and Paraguay and the site of a famous set of waterfalls. I´m on my way to Buenos Aires and thought I´d stop on through. It´s an uninspiring place and a bit of a tourist trap. The falls were cool, and I even took a motor boat ride down on the river right up to the falls. But I will be happy to move on to the next stop.

Sao Paolo was actually fantastic. The first couple of days, I was here alone but I connected with two Paulistas I found through Servas, an organization that connects hosts and travelers from around the world who are interested in cross-cultural exchange. It has a peace-building mission so the people who I´ve met through it have tended to be very interesting, socially-minded, and cool. Sao Paolo had the feel of no city I´ve ever been to. Some combination of the vast concrete landscape of LA with the concentration and height of new york city. Yet, it feels like neither. It just feels endless. While i was there, the city was on holiday to celebrate its birthday, an event that cities throughout brasil all celebrate.

Highlights of my time were: going to the planetarium at midnight to see the sky over Sao Paolo in a special birthday show, seeing Os Mutantes (a famous psychedelic rock band from the 70s) perform in the park, sampling the city´s famous japanese and italian cuisine (still not better than san francisco, i think), visiting the new Museum of the Portuguese Language, and going out to some very cool clubs. I also had my first brasilian kiss, so I can go home happy.

On a larger level, my time in Sao Paolo has left me with an even stronger feeling of affection for Brasil. The people I have met here have been some of the warmest, coolest, and nicest people I have encountered. It could be some kind of coincidence but I think what I have felt is part of a larger cultural phenomenon. There is an openness and simplicity in interpersonal interactions that feels incredibly refreshing.

I know this deserves a more thoughtful and detailed exposition but this will have to do for now. I am heading to Buenos Aires definitely excited to see a different city but also sad to be leaving Brasil, even for only a few days.

At home in Rio

Today was my last day of Portuguese class and my last evening with my host family. I am feeling a bit nostalgic already. The last two weeks have been excellent, in large part because I’ve been fortunate enough to have stumbled upon a fuller existence here: an interesting and cool group of friends from my language school and an incredibly sweet host family that has made me feel very comfortable and at home (and made me homemade brasilian dinners every night). I guess I’m mourning the loss.

Here are some pics from the last couple of weeks:

Here’s a few rio friends at this really cool samba club. It’s basically a converted three-story antique shop that’s now a venue for live samba music and dancing. Elegant, chic, and fun. From left to right: Sarah, a Miami native who just recently finished grad school; Marc, from Britain, an amazing sense of humor, and with whom it’s been great to go out and try to tackle the brasilian female mystery; and Raoul, a native Mexican who’s finishing up law school (at Harvard, incidentally).

This one of my host family in sua casa. Two grandmothers, the host mother and her daughter who’s my age, very pretty and engaged to get married. The grandmother to the left gives me giant hugs multiple times a day. Awesome.

One more from Corcovado and the Christ the Redeemer Statue.

I also went to visit a favela this past week, which is a brasilian slum that is similar to most any other slum in a developing country except for the fact that favelas are located in the hills of the city, and as a result, hold the best views of the city. They were developed unofficially throughout the 1950s (as a result of a migration by northeasterners who were looking for work) and only recently became officially recognized parts of the city (finally receiving basic city services like trash collection and transportation). I'll try to write more about this because it was fascinating and one of the most interesting parts of my trip.

race, and being asian, in Rio

It’s been awhile since I last wrote. The itinerary for my trip has come into focus recently. I will be in Rio for another week. Next Wednesday I travel to Sao Paolo, the capital of Brasil and the 3rd largest city in the world, with 25 million people. I will stay there for a week before heading down to Buenos Aires. Sao Paolo is the commercial and economic center of Brasil and is where the major national and multi-national corporations are located. Within Brasil, Paulistas (as those from SP are called) are known for working hard and playing hard. Cariocas (as those in Rio are called) view Paulistas as workaholics that don’t have any fun. Paulistas view Cariocas as lazy and hedonistic.

There’s no denying that the landlocked SP lacks the natural beauty of Rio, but I am looking forward to seeing the city, not just because of its size, but also its diversity. SP has large Japanese and Eastern European populations. To my surprise, I have found Rio to be a somewhat insular and provincial city, with little ethnic diversity to speak of beyond the somewhat ubiquitous blend of African/European/Indigenous that one associates with the classically Brasilian look. As an Asian, the lack of other Asian faces and the quizzical looks and minor harassment I have encountered as a result of my Asian appearance have left me feeling distinctly out of place here, in ways that I have rarely felt in the urban centers of the US or Europe. For instance, while on the beach in Ipanema with a couple of friends from school, two kids came up to me and started making kung fu maneuvers for about a full minute. And a woman at a bar came up to me and after staring at me for a couple of seconds, raised her fingers to the outer edges of her eyes, and pulled outward to create the effect of slanted-eyes. There have been a few other similar instances and it’s all combined to give me the sense that Brasilians in Rio gain most of their understanding about Asians from television and movies, not from real life. And in the three weeks I’ve been here, I could count the number of Asians I have seen in Rio on two hands.

Brasil prides itself on being a country where race does not matter. But the truth I have found is clearly much more complicated than that. A black student at my language school was refused entry into a club until they realized she was an American. I heard the statistic that only 2% of blacks in Brasil go on to college and that more than 50% live in poverty. Such statistics, startling for any country, destroys any notion that race does constitute a large part of one’s destiny here.

I do sense that there exists less race consciousness here than in the U.S., a difference that seems to allow people across the racial spectrum to engage with one another in way that is less burdened and less cautious than back home. There is a smaller distinction between black and white as most people here are some shade of brown. An African family from Bahia in northern Brasil lives with my host family here in Copacabana and it doesn’t feel like a big deal.

After it abolished slavery in 1889 (becoming the last country in the world to do so), Brasil, unlike the U.S., did not institute a legal system of segregation. People of all colors were free to mingle, use the same restrooms, and ride the same buses. Though the legacy of segregation in the U.S. is large and varied, it seems clear to me that the system contributed to the primacy of race in the American psyche. The lack of a de jure system of segregation in Brasil could be one reason, among many, that a stronger racial consciousness failed to develop here even though racial inequity persisted.

I wonder whether Brasil’s belief in its own racial harmony is a good thing. On the one hand, racism is real here and consciousness of this racism by blacks and whites is a necessary step towards eradicating it. Yet, there is something different here that is hard to grasp but feels nice and lighter. In my own experience, race consciousness comes from something real and from an awareness of the ways, small and large, that being part of a racial minority, or at a more essential level, being different, affects one’s sense of self. At the same time, I have found that hyper race consciousness (that is, using my race to explain all the ways that my life is not the way I’d like it to be) debilitates me and further alienates me from others. I see this as the special challenge of growing up as a minority: balancing remaining sensitive to the ways in which race can affect oneself while remaining open and trusting enough to recognize that not all people see you as a color. Dignity and self-worth are precious commodities in this process, easily lost.

Being here has in many ways thrust back into my face the fact of my ethnicity and my race. I am only partly an American here. More so, I am Asian, at times Japanese and other times Chinese. It makes undeniable sense that others would see me first as some kind of Asian, but logic can be unwanted,especially when the brasilian conception of asian-ness doesn't get much deeper than what they see in american movies and on television. It speaks to the diversity and sophistication of the communities I have been a part of (at Harvard, in San Francisco) and the degree to which I have become accustomed to such diversity, that my experiences here have come as such a shock to the system. Yet, their reminder is also useful to me, I think. That perhaps my desire to be seen as an American deserves further exploration. That perhaps there is part of my ethnic inheritance that I have yet to understand and therefore, yet to accept and embrace. I don’t know the answers at this point, but the openness I feel to considering and exploring the questions seems like an opportunity.

Getting my nerd on

A decent bit has transpired since my last post, though it doesn't make for a particularly exciting read, so i'll try not to bore you with too many details. But soon after my last post, I moved out of Daniel's house to go live in a hostel in Copacabana. I wanted to connect with the backpacker "scene" in Rio and find some other travelers with whom I could partake in touristic things. Upon a few hours of checking in to the hoste, i found myself walking to the beach with twelve other backpackers from the hostel to attend a free concert of dj tiesto, evidently a famous house DJ from the netherlands. With the sun setting over a lush green hill on the edge of a beach with thousands of well-tanned people, It was a beautiful scene and one that could be found in few other cities in the world. Here is a photo from the evening.


I started a portuguese course at a local language school on Monday, a decision I made late Sunday evening. So each morning this week, I've been getting up at 7 am to take a bus to downtown Rio where the school is located. There were about fifteen other people starting the course that day, many of whom had just arrived in Rio and were staying with host families through the school. It is a completey different way of traveling to a country, more structured, less glamorous, but with greater opportunities to connect with the country in an authentic way. I find myself somewhere in between the two.

I have enjoyed the class a lot, mainly because I enjoy the structure and process of learning a language and also the sense of power and accomplishment that being able to communicate in more than one and two-word phrases can bring. Inspired by my progress, I asked the school to set me up with a host family as well so I could practice my portuguese more intensely. The family lives in the Copacabana neighborhood less than two blocks from the beach. Each evening this week, I've sat down with them to eat a homecooked brasilian meal (usually rice, beans, some meat, and potatoes) and try to practice my new found portuguese knowledge. Today, I was able to chat with my host mother about the cultural differences between brasil and america. I think I understood most of what she was saying.

The class ends this week though I will probably enroll for one more week. I also have made a few contacts with the director of a foundation here in Brasil and with the coordinator of the social responsibility program for Vale, a huge Brasilian mining and energy company that has an extensive and sophisticated program for helping the communities in which it operates. I am going to meet with them this week.

Daniel and the gang

I've gotten a few questions about Daniel and my living situation in Brasil so here's the background on how I got set up with my host:

Daniel and his two siblings, Isabella and Junior, are 23, 20, and 28 years-old, respectively. They live alone as their father recently passed and their mother lives in the states. (The vast majority of twenty-somethings in Brasil live with their families due to the expense of housing and the meager pay of most jobs). I met Daniel through a family friend in Oklahoma because Daniel spent five years there attending a series of schools--a small baptist college, a community college, and eventually the University of Oklahoma. Because of this, he speaks English fluently and even has a slight Oklahoma drawwwl. He told me that he really enjoyed Oklahoma (hard for me to believe) and hopes to return to OU to finish his degree. He specifically mentioned how great the "facilities" were at OU--the gym, the library, the classrooms--and how they are much much better than even the best universities in Brasil. This I believe and it made me appreciate the quality of the infrastructure that exists in the states.

In fact, it highlights for one of the things I've found on this trip and my travels to India, China, and other parts of the world: how what counts for "development" so often means the quality of infrastructure: the roads, public transport, buildings, sidewalks, street signs, etc . . . and how it is the kind of mundane and politically unsexy public imrovements that end up holding so much importance in our perceptions of a place and the lives of its residents.

Back to the living situation: Daniel and his siblings don't really work, though Daniel is currently searching for work. Junior DJ's hip-hop a couple nights a week at a local club. Isabella has evidently dropped out from one of the best public universities in Rio (private universities are generally of lower quality here) which Daniel told me today with disappointment and frustration. And Daniel dropped out of OU in August and has not worked or gone to school since. It's hard to generalize too much based on my limited experience but it seems the young people here that i've met do not display or exhibit strong professional ambition. The question of what to do with one's life that has so preoccupied my own twenties and that of my fellow overachieving friends does not seem to provoke the same inspiration (or anxiety) here. When asked why this is so, my mind turns to the facile explanations at my disposal: a culture that celebrates joie de vivre, the lack of incentives to strive when one can live at home until thirty, or an economy and society that provides few exciting professional options for those without parental connections or wealth. Under such circumstances, the questions of what one will become may seem to young people here too abstract, distant, or worse, pointless. But I don't know.

Daniel, for his part, hopes to return to OU to finish his degree and has told me about his desire to achieve professional success in his life. He shared this with me as if conscious that his desires are not common among his friends and his family. I've accompanied him on two job interviews already this week, for managerial positions in a restaurant and a hotel. To give you a sense of the pay scale, the restaurant manager position (which he really wants) would pay 1600 reais a month (or $700), a salary he described as "really good."

I'll finish this post witha few quick nitty gritty details about my day. It's still rainy here so I saw Blood Diamond (worth seeing), bought a cell phone (you can all call me now :), and tonight I go clubbing.

a day in rio

I'm back in Rio at Daniel's house, a welcome respite from the pounding trance/hiphop music and beer stench that was inescapable in Buzios. Before I move on from the buzios adventure, let me post a couple pictures of the rowdy crew. One picture is of the group on new year's eve, or Reveillon as it is called here, one of the two biggest party-going occasions of the year. The other is a picture of the condo we stayed at in Buzios the morning Daniel and I left to return to Rio. I especially enjoy the guy in the top corner of the picture passed out on some nasty old couch cushions.

Anyway, enough of that. Today, I spent the day taking in some of the simple and, to me, most satisfying pleasures of travleing--experiencing the small ways in which daily life is different here than in my home country. First, we went to the supermarket to buy groceries, which was striking in its similarity to an American grocery store, with many American food items (like Frosted Flakes and frozen pizza) and modern check out lanes with the requisite stands of fashion and tabloid magazines. Yet, when we were done paying, rather than having to drag our eight bags of groceries back to the house on a city bus, we simply gave the supermarket clerk our address and asked that the bags be delivered to our house, a service the supermarket provides for free. This convenience, beautiful in its utility, also only makes economic sense in a city where a substantial portion of the people do not own cars and where the cost of labor is cheap, two qualities that no American city i know of can claim. Still, I left the market enjoying the unexpected gift that I had just received.

With our hands grocery-free, we grabbed lunch at a boteca, or juice stand. These botecas are generally hole-in-the-walls where people eat at counter-tops, akin to a small American diner, and one can find them all over the city. They generally serve small pastries and simple brazilian dishes, and people tend to shuffle in and out quickly. I don't know if i was deluded by my hunger or the novelty of it all, but this was one of the most satisfying meals i have ever had. In addition to devouring a star-shaped pastry filled with ground beef and a tangy mixture of herbs and spices (a taste i was too busy enjoying to bother trying to identify), I also ordered their plate of the day--a bed of lentils and rice covered with a spicy tomato-based ground beef sauce and topped with thin fried strips of sweet onions. It was an unusual combination for sure, but served fresh and steaming hot, it was simply fantastic. I washed down the meal with a cup of orange juice, fresh-squeezed as juice is always served here.

I spent the rest of the day walking around Ipanema. I took a tour of H. Stern, a famous Brasilian producer of precious gemstones and jewelry, and pretended like I could buy the 3,000 dollar sapphire-faced watch that I was trying on. I also browsed around a lovely bookstore that carried brasilian and english titles as well as a large cd collection. Somehow, being around all those books and music, I felt a powerful sense of comfort and familiarity. In the evening, I cooked a simple Chinese meal of stir-fry and broccoli for my hosts. The stir-fry was a hit. The broccoli wasn't.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring. The rain that has lingered these past few days is forecasted to clear, in which case it may be a beach day.

(FYI, I have changed the option settings so that anyone can comment. Before, it was set so that you had to be a registered user. Please leave me a comment, if you feel so moved.)

from buzios

happy new year. i spent the evening on the beach with thousands of other revelers. it was an enjoyable and exciting way to bring in the new year, with champagne spraying and fireworks lighting the sky. the brasilians know how to party. . .

though a bit too much for me. the last few days have been at times a frat party on steroids, aka, my personal hell. i´m staying in a three bedroom cramped condo with nine college kids who have an unusually high tolerance for nastiness--spilled beer, puddles of mysterious liquid in the bathrooms, trash on the floor, and dirty dishes and leftovers collecting flies in the kitchen. they also love their music--mostly house and a polished club version of hip-hop--blaring from the stereo all day so that there is no escape either inside or outside the house.

my observations about the kids themselves are varied and complicated. on one level, their lack of concern for how their behavior is affecting others seems to me a combinaton of youthful posturing and a privilege that comes from being in the upper classes here. there is no doubt about it: buzios is a place where the wealthy come to get away from rio, away from the "paraibas," the term used by the people here to describe those from the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum. and i have encountered a fair amount of brash ethnic stereotyping both from a few of the kids i´m staying with and from random strangers here. I won´t go into much detail about it here but it reminded me that the ethnic identity that others affix to us are rarely as fluid or nuanced as the identities we ourselves claim. Of course, it would be hard to get much simpler than being called japanese after stating very clearly that i am from america or being asked whether i´d like my nickname to be soba or china. oh, but they were drunk!

yet, the kids here are also warm, fun-loving, and genuinely friendly. though it took awhile for us to break the ice, i have felt a sweetness in the kids i´m staying with, a paucity of personal defenses or fronting. they have opened to me and afforded me a surprising amount of their affections for someone who they didn´t know and who barely speaks their language.

So it is. I now have a few more days in buzios before heading back to rio. I do not yet know where I will be going or what I will be doing but this experience has made me want to see a different, you might say more serious, side of this country.