Very Minas Gerais, very Brasil

http://picasaweb.google.com/neesha.chris/MinasGerais#
Ouro Preto
Portuguese architecture with a Brazilian flair, almost the best food in Brazil, our first hostel experience, and sick Brian. See the pictures.

Belo Horizonte
Two days turned to three and then a week. Thats how good Bay Agah is. Come first for the people. Then the food and music. They also have the good view, Oscar Niemeyer architecture... and the saideira.

Tuesday night- Mauricio, the epitome of Mineira hospitality took us straight from the rodoviaria to crazy tuesday with the CS group. Learned 1. how to fazer um joia! 2. that to insult the opposing football team call them married and you can counteract that with saying that they are not the men in the relationship! Saideira was at 2am.

Wednesday. Chale Mineira was where we began to learn about all that makes up the Mineira food. I shall spare you the gory details. Must try everything once right!
We shopped for the first time on our trip in Mercado Central! Cachaca, handicrafts, citronella candle. I had to stop myself or I'd buy all of this Brazilian crawford market.
Brian went to another football match at the Mineirao and learned how to swear and boo at the referees and opposing teams that are not even playing in that match!
I did a class with Capoeira Gerais, very sweet small group (in the class at least) who have a huge space beautifully done up. Missed meeting their Mestre/ Contre Mestre. Actually I'm really glad there's not so much capoeira in India because then Baba would be gone a lot! Their technique is slightly different but its the first non CDO regional class that I've been to.
Back to the CS group. Post a not so well received "free reception" they had a wonderful dinner (hosted by Andre, cooked by Juliana, thanks to them and all the others who brought beer and conversation! Saideira at 3am.

Thursday. The best Frango Molho Pardo (Chicken in brown sauce) at Maria das Trancas followed by a visit to Oscar Niemeyers controversial church- St Francisco de Assisi. We had brunch so late that we landed there 5 mins after it closed for the day. Fortunately we could still see inside. For tea, we had the strongest Chimarrao with Mauricio's neighbour- Estevao (15x more caffeine than coffee) while waiting for Mauricio's band members to arrive. Cooked a snack of chaat flavoured veggies with imli chutney. We didnt catch any forro that night (for me to dance to) but at A Casa they had fantastic samba-choro-jazz music. We probably were the only people there that didnt have an instrument with us or who couldnt go up and jam with them! Saideira at 2am.

Friday. We had to leave in the evening. So we headed out to try more Mineira cuisine. The Mineira hospitality in full force- Careca o Pescador (Baldy the fisherman) opened up the restaurant for lunch just for us. Cooked us delicious Traira and lambari (a huge fish filet and tiny fish- all river water) and gifted us the quintessially brazilian protection from heat- camisinha - beer "condom" AND a bottle of cachaca. Brian decided there and then that we could give up the Pantanal to stay here.
You can cancel/change bus tickets upto 6 hours before departure. We landed at the bus station 15 minutes before. Guess what! Jorge at the counter recognised me and remembered my name. Making use of a glitch in the system, we cancelled our tickets 5 minutes before, losing only 5% of the ticket!
Saideira that night was at 4am post a heavy Brazilian discussion of politics, or rather anarchy!

Saturday. Tiragostos- snacks accompanying drinks- (removing taste) from the time when people used to eat something to mask the taste of really bad cachaca. We celebrated with beer at one of Mauricio's cousin's bachelor parties. (Before he gets married he'll have had several!). Saideira 5 pm. We finally saw the beautiful horizon from Mangabeiras before our first early night in! Learned that all the botecos (neighbourhood bars) have names that you can play with- the office, in the ass - so theres always jokes flying around.

Sunday. Neesha went mad at yet another fair. Finally found a capoeira roda in Brazil for Brian to watch. I think he was happy Neesha wasnt in it! I know she was! It suddenly turned violent and the mestre had to call for respect before he restarted it. Still, I think it was a good call to stop it after a petite girl landed a kick that broke the gunga.
Mauricio and his wonderful (and entertaining) band played his compositions from Ventania no Cerrado. After that, I'm hoping to find a way to bring them to play in India.

Monday. After a morning of chores I finally went to the CDO class in BH. Only just met CM- Fuinha but saw and did bits of classes with Curupirim, Neginha and Caleb. I shall make it a point the next time to first head to CDO and then other schools, its just that much easier. Saw some more live music- MPB or Brasilian popular music- by independent artist Elisa Paraiso.

You must have figured out what Saideira is by now!

Rio....

Renata and Ronaldo. The three H's that started Rio for us! Landed up at a party at 12:00 hosted in a publishing house cum book store that moonlights as a bar. Blaring English music and although we'd slept on the bus we had to excuse ourselves early and go home to sleep.

Saturday we were introduced to the real feijoada. Definitely not for the faint hearted or wanna be vegetarians or even recent carnivore converts. Pick at the beans around the meat. The Laranjeiras ( neighbourhood was also having a feira, not the food festival but an arts one including the local belly dancing school. (Again, not for the faint hearted.)

Ronaldo is the most unBrazilian you can get and Renata a beautiful opposite :) They both walk super fast and are super busy in their media jobs but were wonderful hosts. I'm hoping we've convinced Renata to come to India- can't wait to take her shopping for all kinds of stuff. And Ronaldo doesnt need an excuse but we can always show him more people like Aparna who eat hot chillies.
(Pics from here onwards here http://picasaweb.google.com/neesha.chris/RioDeJaneiro# )
Met another one of Shammi's friends- Moana. She's been twice to India. Her family all works in the Museum, sociology anthropology area. She and her mum, Angela, very sweetly let Brian and I stay with them once Roy and his friend Supratim got here and moved to a hostel. I hope they enjoyed the Indian meal we cooked- even though I mistook soy for lentils and cut my finger and delayed dinner! I loved meeting Moana's brother Lucas and wife Keyna (and little Eloa at the beach).

Thiago, Moana's boyfriend made Brian's day by taking him to play football with the boys. They lost but I think they had a good time and it was good introduction to the swear words that accompany any football. Of course, the Maracana with Ronaldo and Renata on Wed was the icing on the cake.

I love Shammi and his friends. Definitely want to meet Juliana and Henrique again and learn lots from them- hopefully when I'm passing back through Rio around Christmas time. Amazing artists- graffiti, jewellery, tshirts. The best part is how warm and generous they are. They took us around the Centre Cultural de Banco do Brasil. Enjoyed that way more than SP. ("Poha" will forever have a new meaning for me. Indians please dont use this word with Brazilians.)

Did everything else touristy: Cristo Redentor, Pao de Acucar, Escola de Samba- Mangeira, Lapa- the party in the street, Prainha- the surfer beach 1.5 hours away, Santa Tereza in the little tram and how could I forget- Escadaria Seleron. Once again, thanks to Shammi we got special treatment. Seleron, the artist who's been working on this tiled staircase was happy to hear about Shammi and to receive tiles from India ( just simple terracotta ones left over from our bathroom). We got a personalised drawing of two pregnant capoeiristas!
(YOu think! He always draws pregnant women!)

No major insights into Brazilians or Brazil or Rio. Just a realisation that I dont get "sight seeing" at all. Lands up being a stressful attempt at taking the ultimate photograph that never happens. Much prefer the effects of that wave that was colder than you expected, stronger than you expected and saltier than you expected. I am also missing being a cog in the wheels of other peoples lives. Miss being accountable to my friends and family rather than a dispensable tourist here...

Sao Paulo

Bom dia! Acho que eu tenho de orgulhar meu talento na lingua! Ha ha. You can translate that either in babelfish.com or wordreference.com.

Anyway, been in Brazil almost a month and 15 of those with Brian so its time to write about all the highly touristy things (or not) we've been doing.

Sao Paulo was my first stop with Aparna. My first time officially couchsurfing too! Spent almost a week with Luanda and her mum (her sister Maira is studying for a year in TISS). This super energetic Amelie Poulain took us to to two really great Samba places- one doing popular songs that EVERYONE was singing to and the other a younger trendier neighbourhood chorinho- samba. I can just stop there for SP right!

BUT, Denise, their cook also did a whole Brazilian (but vegetarian- for Luanda) lunch! Took me to the thursday feira down their street too. I now have a decent enough repertoire of ingredients and cooking words and a couple of recipes. I hope it will be more helpful when we are in smaller places (where they dont also have alternative menus in English or people who speak it!)

The rest of our food tour in SP was conducted mostly in one afternoon by Luiza, another CSer. Another vegetarian, she was a darling, showing us all the snacky stuff- salgados (salty snacks), including the Arabian Esfiha and one we didnt reach- the famous Paulista Pizza!

Of course, one of the highlights was Cordao de Ouro, SP. CM Kibe took class both days and it was so great to be accepted as part of the family, the distant relatives they've never met but heard of... I think we did a decent job of keeping up in the class too. ( thats more than I can say since then, when classes have been few and far between). We're now more confident of making it to Capoeirando in Ilheus in Jan.

Checked out only one museum- Museu de Arte Moderne. I don't think we were really in museum mood so we took some silly pictures and left soon. Walter Smteak played with sound and instruments and Cover featured various artists and ideas of repetition, imitation, etc- very postmodern!

Went to the Paulo Freire Institute. Thank you Mary Ann for introducing me to him and to Amar and the EPS gang for letting me know there was the institue. Wish I could have spent more time, getting to really know the work that the institute does. As it stands, his son and all at the institute were really welcoming and hopefully I'll be able to do something with them in the future and catch up at the World Social Forum.

Also met Luisa- Shammi's friend. She's been to Van Vadi and lived in Chandigarh! She also happened to be moving that week into an apartment in the same building as Luanda! AND she had bumped into Dinesh aka Axe from Nina Stone's capoeira group (Just because he was Indian and she spoke English). Too small a world I say :D !

I liked Sao Paulo. No beaches but I liked our one week there. Introduced to Brazil graffiti- some spectacular and others down right ugly, specially when they deface heritage structures. Otherwise, Brazil is surprisingly more western and developed than I imagined. Toilet paper available everywhere but thrown in baskets because the drainage system cant handle it. Bottled water. All the hired help can read and write. Good bus system, particularly if you have the card that lets you travel in 3 hours for the price of one ticket. No honking. The only thing that I had to wrap my head around was hearing a different language and seeing policeman so heavily armed.

(pics for this will be up later. brian has them at home right now)

U.S of A (NY- PA - IL - WI - PA - NJ - NY in 25 days)

Obviously the update is old now but since everythings on brians comp and he leaves soon enough, I figure I have to send as much as I can... Pictures are up here http://picasaweb.google.com/neesha.chris/StopoverUSA

Its funny that my previous post (email) is the one where I said I couldnt blog and now this is just convenient for those people I'm not sure want their inboxes filled with my emails! Anyway enjoy.

Central Islip, NY- First stop.
Niti's house. Ex-flatmate from Pune. Taught me to cook (Many who thank you for that Niti- including me!), starch dupattas and this time, fold socks into a tight ball. Husband- Ashok. Son- Anish. Chatted. Reminisced. Bitched. Cooked. ATE. Laughed.

Nanticoke, PA
Jill's house. Ex store co-ordinator from the food coop where I spent all my free time in Urbana Champaign. Taught me to felt, work the register and I have yet to learn from her how to be "cool in chaos"! Husband- Cris. He rocks! Daughter- Tanny Beetle. Non stop driving and live entertainment. Thank you so much. I have to spend time with you guys (not in a car) on my way back to India. I forgot to give you the recipes as well.

Urbana- Champaign, IL
Champaignful, Chambana. Whatever you call it, it was home for three years. The good, the bad and the ugly!

Daniel. Ex professor. Writer of beautiful (even if type written) letters. Great biker and some day, professional musician and woodworker? Or are you secretly those already? Teacher of many many life lessons and master story teller. Oh and also, annoyingly adept at teasing me. How do you so apparently effortlessly welcome someone into your home? Daughter- Scooter. Away in Maine (Darn it!). Super hockey player. Son- Buck. Wise young man (and also super athlete!)

May. Ed psych doctoral student. Friend. How do I describe you? All I can say is I respect and love you a lot!

Michelle. Ex- advisor, mentor, friend, caretaker, chair. I'm so glad she is no longer the last, only because I got to spend so much time with her. Thank you for the party and the lunches and chats. Hi to Ariana and Daniel.

Linda. I have been hearing that 'word' quite a lot lately (pronounced leenda). It means "beautiful" em portugues ;-) ! It should mean extraordinary. Host. Maker of homemade customised gifts. Co-ordinator of all kinds of events and experiences. Thank you so much for all the preparations and much more. I so enjoyed sitting in on your class and spending time just talking in the garden. Thank you Denis for co- hosting and David for showing up for one evening! Missed Ben (and not only for his desserts!) Hi to the Philes and Darmodys (sp?) More pics of the reunion http://picasaweb.google.com/lindasims/Lab_Reunion_Sept08#

Megger. Soon to be PhD. The youngest professor I know! Wow if I had half your discipline.... Keep me in the loop about where you are.

Sujai. Around the world in 120 days (visiting friends and family and couch surfing)! Only you can manage that! Say hi to your mum. Safe travels. I'll see you either in India (in mango season?) or some where else. :-)

Lucia. University professor but (I think) should be comedienne! Wish you could have stayed longer than the weekend. How are you doing? Please can you squeeze in a trip to India soon. How can I forget - Ed. husband and a local celebrity- the weather man/ tornado guy! Hows Emma?

Chris. Kevin. Xiaobin. Di. Vinny. Marc. (and accompanying friends and family of all the preceeding) Thank you all so much for making it a great reunion. I loved how easy and fun it was.

Denis, Aisha, Tiago, Thais. The UIUC capoeira family. Unfortunately I missed the weekend event with Mestres Cabello e Tisza but had some great although very very VERY humbling classes! Wished I got to chat more with you- Aisha, still was fun catching up in the kitchen and the car.

Kung fu Dave and Mara. ex-neighbour extraordinaire and kung fu teacher. Mara also education alumnus (HRE though I think.) now working for the university. One of the best looking grandmas I know. Wish I had more time to hang out with them.

Laura, Joe and Quetzalli. My Xicana family in UIUC. Wow, how do you guys manage everything you do? Good luck finishing up the PhDs and the house too! Will tell you how I manage with Spanish in Argentina and Bolivia. Right now I'm in over my head with portuguese. For selfish reasonsl I'm glad you were still in UC. Thanks to you both also got to meet some of the others- Kevin, Tage, Judith, Gerardo, johanna.... Definitely missed Amar and Shivali but was glad to talk to her on the phone! Amar I will kill in India.

Mike. My link to all things co-op and local community there! Was so great seeing the sunset and meadowbrook park on our doomed drive!

Bobbi. ex BOAST keeper together (thats the after school place I'd volunteered at). Great breakfast! What was it called again- with buttermilk and black berries? Had fun catching up and was so good to see you with your new grandchild! Enjoy.

Wish I got to meet Kamau and Edgar, Kris, Ana and the new baby... but we can't always have everything right ;-) Maybe next time! (You three US ladies are also included among those I wished I got to see but I know that I'll see you.... soon....)

Madison, WI
Conan and Sarah. Eldest Noronha cousin and wife who's a great cook, decorator and soon business woman ;-) ! Thanks for showing me around Madison- Epic (such a cool place to work at!), State street and the Capitol and driving me early in the morning to catch my ride! And also for the food!

Nanticoke, PA

Princeton, NJ
Aparajita. Oops! Zutshi, PhD. Former roommate for TWO AND A HALF YEARS! Now researcher at Mathematica. Deepak- hilarious husband. Mrida- adorable 3.5 month old. Didn't get half enough time to hang out with you- see you on my way back! Hows the new car? Say hi to your dad for me. And folks at home too. Keep me updated. Pics here http://picasaweb.google.com/deepaksadhu/MridaNeesha?authkey=V5F1DmgUnYc#

New York City, NY
Nilesh Pereira. Please I would like to maintain my image so please dont go spreading rumours to your fiancee about me! Ha ha ha ha ha. Will miss your wedding ;-( Have a good time and don't let Inez do all the work and I'll do a celebratory dance for you both here :D. No pics of him - his fiance has him wearing a burqa :P

Central Islip.

Go back to the beginning of this mail! Thanks for my birthday surprise and see you soon!

The last time I lived in a place more than a year and left it, I never went back. Partly because of circumstances, partly because I am afraid no one is left in that 'in between' place people go to on their way to somewhere else. Was afraid UIUC would be the same but was so happy to see so many, some who came in especially! Thank you to ALL. I hope to see you - once again sooner than we each expect! And please PLEASE come visit.

Starting my trip

So its the end of my time in the US and I've finally decided that....

1. I can't do a blog cos I can't say what I want, to whom I want ,in exactly the way I want. So rather than censor what I say, I'm going to write a diary for myself and put up pictures for everyone else.

2. its time to write the first email. B'cos of 1. you're probably getting a slightly more tailored version though not necessarily totally original/ unique update. Much of this should have been written and sent out way before I left Mumbai but ...

3. I still can't decide whether or not technology is my thing. my computer died a month before I left. my camera died on the day I landed in the US. Now I just have my ipod. I had originally thought I'd be SO inspiredly artistic and I'd find a more earthy medium to preserve moments and memories in! ha ha. I miss both my camera and powerbook, though not having to carry or look after either is a plus. been using everyone else's camera and storing pics on my ipod. i wish i could figure out how to bottle all these remembered everydays from years ago.

4. I'm not a traveller per se. I need to figure out how to make this trip even more one of belonging. In the U.S. (just the stopover!) its been easy because I belong to the people I know here, even if not always the place or purpose (though capoeira has been an exception). Need to figure out more volunteer options or inexpensive learning spaces to get into local food, crafts, education, communities in general. And again, ways to remind myself of the details that I'll miss taking for granted...

5. I'll never be able to describe to those that don't get me what kind of trip this is (nor who I am). Nothing is enough nor accurate. I have rules and then I break them. No ecological footprint- then I fly. Only travel where you can earn- ha. ha. I'm going to be so broke when I get back. (For all of you who've been wondering but havent asked- yes, I'm blowing up every last bit I saved from my assistantship in the US. And maybe some wedding money too, Brian?) Learn as much as you can- dance nonstop. Relax, take it as it comes, don't over analyse- you get the picture right? :D

6. I'm gonna miss my "home(s)" in Mumbai. Those last few days there, I found several reasons not to go:

Brian obviously. And my family... though sometimes me going away makes my return easier for them, no?

Van vadi and all the challenges that make what I do there meaningful, and the people who inspire me regularly with their labour, commitment and humility. Enjoy the van utsav. Can't wait to be back.

Your wedding Ruch.... my girlfriends and guy friends.... the ones who keep me sane and who put up with my silences and sarcasm (and who can fight back!) and sentimentality. I always miss our regular days way more than our "occasions".

People who just wont be the same when I get back but who I hope will still be there.

A capoeira rhythm. Familiar faces and games, and amidst them 'just about' learning how to challenge myself.

7. Thanks is overdue and I'd better get it out now.

To my parents for a wedding gift more wonderful than an electric car or washing machine. And for so much more, long before, thats making this happen...

To all my guardian angels in Brazil and beyond. Extended networks of family and friends. People who've been there or know people there. All of you who make up the links to Brazil. Can only hope I fully pass forward your energy and effort!

To Aparna (and Roy) for making me pick a date, fill forms and for encouraging craziness.

To Brian, for "letting" me do this :D For making me so lucky :D :D

8. Pics will make it with the next update so you know who I did and did not meet etc.