Que romanticos eles são!

Today is the last day of Carnival, but by most Brazilians´s considerations it is basically over. Unfortunately I didn't make it up to one of the traditional Carnival meccas such as Rio, Salvador or Recife. Instead I remained here and was able to make it out to the coast, to the beach town Bertioga. In Aruja, Carnival is just a late night streetfair with a lot of drink, some samba and cheap plastic costumes. Bertioga on the other hand is a popular destination for Paulistas during Carnival, and was pretty packed. A large 18-wheeler with an extended flatbed rolled up and down the beach blaring samba and club music with sexy girls dancing on the back.

The beach itself is nice, but I imagine it is a couple notches prettier when there aren't thousands of people squeezed onto it as far as the eye could see. On the South end of Bertioga's southern most beach, the shore abruptly ends and there is a canal about half a km wide cutting in. Across the canal is an abrupt jungle mountain with cliffs cutting into the water at its base and several vultures circling around the top. Pretty cool veiw to have while swimming.

For those of you who are familiar with South King County, the beach is a lot like Coulon Park on Lake Washington, in terms of the crowd...15 years ago.

On my way to Bertioga, I had to first catch a bus to Mogi, a town about 40km Northeast of Aruja, then change buses at the station to get to Bertioga. Fine. However, what I didn't count on was the suprise blessing of getting on a bus for Bertioga with a driver who had apparently just been hired and was making his maiden voyage!

Something was off when, while still in Mogi, just a a couple hundred meters from the station, he turned the bus down a narrow alley, heading the wrong way, and had to back up a couple blocks in the middle of the city. Then, in some sleepy neighborhood by a cemetary, obviously not the route we needed, he pulled the bus over to ask a street broomer where to go. The street broomer gave bad or wrong directions because we eventually had to back all the way up back to the street broomer, ask him again, so that the broomer shrugged and pointed in the opposite direction...this went on for a long while and all the passengers were screaming at the driver. Although his eyes were hidden behind some wrap-around shades, there was clearly a lot of sweat all over his face and he was miserable. We were all watching one of the most humiliating days of this guy's life. How'd he get hired anyway?

All my Brazilian students have been telling me that after Carnival is when they get serious and work hard, that the time from New Years to now is basically slack time...Why don't we get on board with something like that, America? How about we, as a country, decide to just, you know, take 'er easy from July 1 to the end of August. It'd be un-American, sure, but can't we all agree that there are some things other places do better than us, and one of those things is not work hard all the time?

Brazil doesn't do Valentine's day, but instead they do "Day of Lovers" on June 12th. So VD passed without a sound. With Romance in general, Brazilians seem pretty different. They love openly, make clear or exagerated displays of love and affection, things aren't often smooth and low-key, but dramatic fier-ay. Just going for a walk through the plaza here in Aruja one can see lovers kissing and crying. Anyday, just about anytime. And Brazilians have different distinctions: someone you flirt with is called a girlfriend or boyfriend, but so is someone you actually have something more with. A long term boyfriend or girlfriend in a committed relationship is a husband or wife, despite the fact there has been no marriage. A coworker of mine, who in the past has told me of his 4 different girlfriends, just recently mentioned he's been married for 12 years, then showed me a picture of his 3 children. Infidelity is part of their game as well.

Here, Love (flirting, desire, momentary passion and actual enduring care) is constantly the topic of discussion, there is a preoccupation with it and it has a large presence in a lot of people's lives. The fact that it is so out in the open and discussed so much is what I find striking...people care about love in other places as well, but here you've no right to privacy when it comes to romance, for better or worse.

That's all for now.