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.