Dirty Rotten Uva Trick!

I have already written about the joys of hearing a loudspeaker announce the grape man or the pineapple man. They actually drive a truck through the neighborhoods and deliver fresh produce in season to your doorstep at a discounted price! My heart just melts at the thought!

So while I was helping Willow with her homework this afternoon, I heard a loudspeaker announce the uvas (grapes) and I started running. I found some reais and ran out the door after the truck. It had just crested the hill and was heading down our street away from me. I heard “integral” which is whole, or natural, and uva again.

I ignored the rest until I caught up with the man in a white van selling something out of the back of his truck. At first I thought he was selling bottles of grape juice (very popular here), but then I realized he was selling natural cleaning fluids, in various scents, including grape. AArgh! Foiled again!

Be wary of the grape man; he may be selling cleaning fluids. That is my fortune for the day!

PhD weekend

It’s always a PhD weekend. Really, Sherman doesn’t get a weekend except when I make him come with us on an adventure! So this weekend, Willow and I found reasons to give him more time alone with the computer.

On Friday night, we went with Mariela’s mom and youngest daughter to go to see the Bolshoi Ballet School (of Brazil) perform at the largest theatre on the island. We had free tickets as part of the Cultural Marathon weekend. They brought a troupe of 14 from Joinville to perform a dance from every show of their 12 years of having a school in Brazil. This is THE Russian Bolshoi ballet group, famous worldwide. It was delight to see young men perform roundhouse kicks I have never seen at such speed. There were traditional ballet dances, complimented with modern samba pieces. The Brazilian crowd was polite with the first, and wild with the latter style. It was fantastic! My mind was entertained and challenged.

Before the show, they ran a short video of life at the Bolshoi school and interviewed students as young as nine-year-old from all over Brazil, all on scholarship, talking about how happy they were and how they love the passion of ballet. Willow looked at me and wondered how they dance and study subjects as well. When I told her that at these special schools, you do it all in once place, she said “I want to do that!”

http://www.escolabolshoi.com.br/

On Saturday, Willow had a playdate that included seeing a circus, also as part of the Cultural Marathon, and I went downtown to view the museum of a painter from the 1800s, Victor Meirelles. The museum/house was tucked away just off of the main square, and I enjoyed the art. He went abroad to train in Europe, but settled back in Brazil, and painted portraits, battles, and the landscape of Florianopolis.

Then I walked along the Bay side of the island, which I usually see at the pace of a speeding bus, and enjoyed the bike path and view of the water and mountains. I got a close up of the famous suspension bridge that is often a symbol of the city, but is no longer in use. Even the Rotary Club is active here, building pergolas along the water for a place for the well-to-do urbanites to sit across the street from the strip of 15-story apartment buildings and hotels.

It was a brooding day, with clouds gathering, so I ducked into one of the malls on the island, which is really a culture all to itself. Everything is cosmopolitan in there- with the highest fashion, the American and European fashions, and everything is dressed for fall with muted colors and sweaters. Never mind that it was 80 degrees F outside! Everyone is busy and dressed up and it is a thing to hang there and dine in the food court, a place to see and be seen.

Easter was in bloom everywhere. I realized that Brazilian children receive a chocolate egg with a small chocolate bonbon sealed inside of it. The whole thing is wrapped in lots of cellophane, and often decorated with one character or another. They come in a dozen shapes or sizes. It would be like picking an ice cream flavor to decide which is the best one for your child.

Today, Willow and I walked down the street twice to see children’s shows. The first was a darling production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, all delivered from a little cart that spun around and cranked up and down scenery all made of cardboard with marionettes and little paper puppets. Super cool. Super condensed!

The second was a production of The Ugly Duckling with plastic bags as the costumes for hand puppets. I was in awe with their inventiveness and seriousness with this production. We sat with Alessandra and family, and it just brought tears to my eyes when you feel bad for the ugly duckling. It got my vote!

But a cultural weekend wouldn’t be complete without clowns. Just Send In The Clowns. Don’t bother; there here (in Floripa)! I’m losing my touch. The clowns are getting to me. I kind of like it when they pretend to do the samba. I can’t let them win! I can’t say that I’m starting to like clowns…..!

Here are some photos from the web that I found of the things we saw…

Turtles at TAMAR and at the beach

It was a big day of turtles on the last weekend of summer here! I was excited to take the family to see TAMAR, an organization that works with local fishermen and rehabilitates, educates, and releases turtles back into the ocean. There are five species of marine turtles on the coast of Brazil, including: Green, Olive, Leatherback (Gigante), Pente (Tortoiseshell), and Cabeçuda. The center had three of the species in swimming pools for environmental education purposes. I’ll have to say, even though I knew this was the case, my heart still sank when I saw these large creatures in the lonely pools bumping their heads or flapping their fore flippers on the edge of the pool. Tagged turtles have been known to swim as far away as Australia or from South Africa!

I was surprised to see another pool that was filled with rocks, dirt, fish, and looked so much more like their natural environment. When I told the TAMAR staff person how good this was, he said it was part of an experiment and they hoped to replicate this for all of the pools. I asked when they started the experiment, and he said “three years ago.” Brazilian time is just a bit longer than I would imagine! The turtles don’t eat the fish in the pool with them because they are too slow to catch the fast fish!

The sun was very strong, so we were happy that the center built shacks full of educational materials, including skeletons and lots of information about the filhotes (the baby turtles). I learned that the turtles come ashore in northern Brazil (not here) to lay their eggs in the sand and leave. Later, the baby turtles emerge from their eggs and dig their way to the surface at night. They crawl back to the sea by the light of the moon and are easily distracted if there are other lights on at the beach, so there is a huge campaign to keep beaches dark, especially around turtle breeding grounds.

I guess the turtles that this center acquires are ones that have been hit by boat propellers or caught in fishermen’s nets. I have photographic proof from the excellent environmental education video we saw on how to give a turtle CPR until its flippers start flapping, and then your release it back into the ocean. This was meant for fishermen who accidentally catch the turtles in their nets with other fish. It was was useful info, but SOOOOO funny!

TAMAR has done an excellent job of transforming a country who used to love turtle soup and native tribes who used to put their babies in turtle shells as a crib, and women who used to adore tortoise-shell combs, to a community who celebrates turtles as a tourist attraction and an ancient creature.

Moving on to lighter subjects, I broke down to Willow’s pleas and bought her a Brazilian bikini. This one is actually very conservative, but still tiny at the top. You can see by the photo how it all went to her head!

I will not forget to mention a really, truly cool thing we got to experience. Sherman had to go back to his PhD, but Willow and I got to see a green turtle released back into the Atlantic Ocean. It was so cool. We formed a crowd on Barra da Lagoa beach to watch with cameras ready. The TAMAR folks were really kind, and spent about 15 minutes going around to each and every child to show them the juvenile turtle (they get to be as tall as Willow when they are adults) and let them pet his shell. The public education was so important, and one women had a loudspeaker to tell details about turtles and encourage recycling at the beach. She said that many of them eat garbage and die because of it. It was like a giant show-and-tell at the beach. And then we waited silently as the turtle pulled itself by its flippers to the water’s edge, and vaulted silently into the blue ocean and only then did it look like the most natural thing in the world. I saw it disappear past surfers, swimmers, and under the surf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyEjHFwWhqo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Shipwreck exhibit

I read about a shipwreck museum on Igleses beach with great interest. I just started reading, for the first time, the classic Treasure Island. It’s a page turner if you haven’t read it! Willow and I ventured to the northern beach to find the small museum located just off of the coast where they found a shipwreck from the late 1700s. They think that it was a Spanish ship, and it carried many earthen jars of olives. Children playing along the coast found the shipwreck in 1989 in six feet of water!

After a long walk and asking many people who did not think such a museum existed, we found the small museum and workshop just at the very end of a long beach. It is strange how the center of the beach is so full of hotels, restaurants, shops, and people. But at the end of the beach, it is in a different time, and boats bob in the water and life slows down. I inquired about the museum in the restaurant, and they said it was closed. I begged them to open it. After a phone call, the owner of the restaurant, who seems to also run the museum, gave us a private tour. Four or five others joined us.

After a short video of the find underwater, we got to see the bell, a small cannon and cannon balls, tiny leather soles of shoes, sun dials, a bottle cap with a Tudor Rose on it and other things. The thing that made me stop was the playing die that they found on the bottom of the ocean. Sailors from hundreds of years ago played a game on-board, and that tiny object lay on the bottom of the ocean for so long!

Then we were led into the back workshop, where they are still piecing together dozens of earthen jars. It was so cool to see the slow process! The owner was so proud of the findings, and we got to see how the recovery research was done. Many things are still a mystery, though! It was beautiful, tucked away at the end of a beach, a world away.

Before we left, we walked right along the ocean to see more ancient rock carvings done by the Indians long ago. These bowls carved into granite were thought to be where they made fishing implements. They are very striking. It was quite an adventure for us!

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What’s Next?

I don’t know why is took until mid-March for me to wonder to myself: what’s next for us? My mind has not allowed a shadow of doubt to enter that we may not return to Keene, NH. But it is clear to all of us that that the job Sherman finds this year will determine our next move. I am not the first nor the last family to move because of a job. We have just never done it before.

We chose to stay in Keene because we fell in love with it. We love the University town where the arts are alive, including community theatre. I didn’t even know how much I would appreciate having a Waldorf school in town until I had a baby! We love our home in the countryside neighborhood, quite dearly. Our church is so supportive and fun. We have friends that have known us for years, and still like us.

You ask, what more could a person want when the quality of life is so good? Heck, we didn’t even sit in traffic with our last jobs!

But if Sherman is really going to make a go of it, if some University will have him, he’s working to be a Sustainability Manager or Director. And the people in the few spots in the Keene area look mighty permanent. I’d really like to walk the talk and not have the sustainability person commute two hours. But maybe I’m asking too much!?

It’s a real dilemma. Because now that my mind has let this shaft of light in, I see things that could be improved. O, that could be different and this could be better. But you know, I do remember how great we have it in Keene. And it scares me to think, with knowledge of other couples who have moved and regretted things, lost things, where things have fallen apart. And Willow is so loved in our hometown! What would happen to her if everything changed? She might forgive us in her 20’s. Or not. Is Waldorf in her future? I’m already up at 5am thinking about it all.

On a lighter note, it is St. Patrick’s Day. You say: Brazil doesn’t celebrate the arrival of Christianity to Ireland. Where’s the green beer? Where are the leprechauns? Ah, but you don’t know that we see leprechauns every week. They are the city garbage collectors, who have the funniest outfits and throw garbage cans at each other in the stinking heat! I can’t get over the knee-high emerald green socks. Our neighborhood guys wear their sock very high and broad-brimmed hats, to top it all off!

Campeche Island Rock Art

What a memorable day! It was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit with strong sun when our small wooden boat landed on the white sand beach on Campeche Island, just a 40 minute ride from our island, the Island of Santa Catarina. But what a world away!

Our tour guide took 15 of us to show the circular indentations in the granite rock, quite near the ocean’s edge. They are not sure, but they think that Indians used these to make tools used for processing fishing. Can you imagine carving granite???

The first rock designs we saw were right along a rock cliff, and loved ones held on tight to each other’s elbows. The path was quite simple- no bannisters or anything structural like that! Even the first rock art was being impinged by vegetation, and was difficult to take a photo of it. Small stones were placed on the ground to show where the design was located.

The guide mentioned that tourists and acid rain have done damage to some of the art, thought to be at least 4000 years old. They can’t be sure of the age, since there isn’t any carbon 14 in granite. Once the island was declared a reserve, and the Bradshaw Foundation recognized its worth and documented it, the art has been better protected. Some of the art was found under boulders, out of the sun, and fun to scramble under to see.

The most famous rock art is the “double mask” on a standing rock right down by the rock cliff. But they were accessible enough for children to climb on top of them!

I wish I had more time to just sit and admire these ancient inscriptions. The moments I did have with the wind whipping around me were profound.

As the guide explained, the island was used for agriculture until the 1930s and then new introduced species came on the island, including palms from Argentina and iguatis (a raccoon-like animal) so that the island is very much changed. He said it looks like the “Lost” island on TV.

I took a picture of a rock ledge that looked like a turtle’s head to me sitting in the ocean. We also saw a standing granite rock that is 9 meters tall- amazing! The erosion around there was funny to look at- to see that some rocks sounded hollow when you knocked on them, and others solid. Everything is granite and basalt, and the basalt was an easier surface to draw the rock art.

There was a tree (?) with spines that was common. The spines were used by Sambaqui and Guarani Indians for needles, and the seed pods (minus spines) were used as drinking vessels. I took a photo of the buttressed roots of a tree and us playing in the ocean after a sweaty trail tour.

I loved seeing the amazing blue-green water as we departed the island for home. I stared out towards Africa, longing to see another whale or my first sea turtle, but no one but the waves showed their faces.

Here is a brief sample of Portuguese (talking about the right whales pass by here from July through November) and the blue, blue ocean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT5iki8wrBA&feature=g-upl&context=G2fccf9dAUAAAAAAAAAA

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To the island!

There must be something in the human psyche that longs for an island offshore, just in the distance. We live on an island, and yet, the best I thing I could think to do would be to visit a small island off of the island!

We got up at 5:30 to catch an early bus to the south of the island, but managed to miss the bus because we didn’t flag it down in time. Sigh! So we ran and hitch-hiked to the next bus. After all of that, we were craving salt. I notice that salt is very important in this heat, and we went wild and purchased chips. I saw other girls eating them, and realized that this American junk food was really appealing here. After one birthday party, Willow now knows what Doritos are. We’ll never be the same- yum!

We met up with friends Lucia, Andre, and João to take a boat to Campeche Island, which is known for the ancient rock art made by Indians. It is a reserve, and once there, we found we had to hike with guides, so we played on the beach while we waited for our tour. Lucia was the great negotiator to make sure that we could get in on a tour.

One of the funniest things I have seen here so far is the Angola chicken. They are black with speckles and are common here. One found us on the beach and decided to settle down next to our blankets. It laid out its scrawny neck and stretched out its legs and made a nest in the sand and closed its eyes. I couldn’t help laughing at this “dead chicken!”

We frolicked in the cold water and Sherman took a beach photo shoot of me next to a fishing boat before our group of 15 left to see the rocks. By then, it was midday in the bright, bright sun on one of the last weekends of summer.

To be continued……

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A gazebo, two birthdays, and a moon

In other words, I’m a week behind in my posts because of a gazebo, two birthdays, and a moon! Last Friday, I began officially teaching in a bilingual program at a K-8 school in the north of the island. It is exhausting, exhilarating, and exasperating at all once!

I am teaching two groups of students, ages 3-6 and 7-10, in English. It is brand new, and since I am the American, I am developing the curriculum, leading the morning sessions of classes (4 hours) and coordinating assessment. This may seem odd to those of you who know I have a masters in biology, but here I am, the only expert they have. So, I bake a curriculum cake twice a week and see if we like the taste of it! I sing, we move, we play, we write, we repeat. Thank goodness for Willow’s Waldorf ideas and resources! I know most of their questions in Portuguese, and the Brazilian creator of the program is there to help with classroom management so far.

I chose to make the English classroom reflect seasons in a New England garden, so we are in winter now and the whole school is studying water. After three meetings, I think that I’ve come up with some inventive ways to talk about the weather and seasons using felt boards I have created that are appealing and interesting to the 3-10 year-old crowd. We have made Valentines and snowflakes. It is funny to develop the curriculum (up and including the ride on the bus to school) and then have the other teacher watch what I do and repeat it for the afternoon.

Did I mention that the classroom is being built especially for this program, but is not finished as of yet? We are now meeting in a gazebo on the playground. I have come to like “roughing it” but the other teacher does not like the distraction of the playground. They are in the middle of building mud walls out of recycled Coke bottles on the gazebo, so it makes life interesting. And because of the heat, we haven’t ventured beyond a little end of day “duckie, duckie, gooz” in the sun. You know, I think I pulled several muscles in this process while wearing flip flops.

My two favorite experiences so far in class have been watching the youngest children get so excited about holding the felt snow, rain, and clouds pieces. They love touching felt and talking about the weather. The second thing was watching a 6-year-old show me the “tape boat” when we made valentines. He was fascinated with the Scotch tape my mom had sent, which comes in a plastic dispenser. It looked like a boat to him, and I had to teach him how to rip off a piece of tape. So adorable!

I hope to grow beyond torturing my family for the days leading up to each teaching day with planning woes, sleepless nights, and having to “talk it out” with someone, usually my curriculum planner, Willow. I dream of planning the story, the puppet show, the craft, the content, the songs, and the games in two hours and being done with it. But I doubt this will happen!

Two of Willow’s friends had birthdays this week: one poolside, and the other in the thick heat while dancing on the back porch. Nine-year-olds are everywhere! Hearing Justin Beiber blasted and celebrated alongside Portuguese country music was charming, the first five times!

Last night was special! We were hot, we were broken, it was Friday. The 99% full moon was rising just after sunset, so I led the family to wait and watch the moonrise along the Lagoa at the docks. My camera doesn’t capture the break of light over the mountain or the big yellowness of it at all. Then, after Sherman had a rough day trying to be everything, he took us to a Mexican restaurant- our first time! We tasted nachos and tacos for the first time. For some reason, Brazilians don’t eat salsa or tortilla chips or tacos. Delicious! We ordered for one and ate like kings! I laugh at how little makes us feel so grand.

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Bushwhacking in Barra da Lagoa!

Some of the things we saw in our failed attempt to get to either a lighthouse or some rock art are not in photographs.

After we crossed a suspension bridge, we watched the elder men play dominoes. You can hear the clacking of dominoes at the end of a work day or on the weekend under a shady tree in every town park. We watched birds play under the bridge and fish and swim underwater.

We soon realized that we were not on the right path, and we were sweating a great deal on an especially humid summer day. But we kept thinking that we would just find our way uphill to the lighthouse. The path went through a cow forest (you know, forest with a cow), and eventually got so tight around us that it just ended. We were clearly on someone property, but in the middle of the second-growth understory. Of course we could hear the crash of the waves in front of us, but it was a bit sticky on how to get out of there!

In the meantime, we all got a great view of a giant blue morpho butterfly, and several other bright orange and yellow butterflies, a swarm of ants who were relocating across our path and up several trees, and once we found our way back to the beach, a welcome swim in the ocean. It was the first time I truly swam since we’ve been here, because the waves were so gentle and clear that you could get beyond them and swim. So peaceful.

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The hills are alive at Lagoinha do Leste

This was our second venture to this fabulous southerly beach that is known for its natural beauty. This time, we hiked along the coastline first through the 1000 acre Municipal Park in the Atlantic Coastal Rainforest, and then along open rocky cliffs that reminded me of pictures of the Irish coast. We started from the “Killer Beach where fishermen used to process whales. Since I thought we would be clamoring over wet rocks, I wore my flip flops. That was a mistake! We hiked for three hours through forest and up and down cliffs. But my Havaianas made it through the trip!

We started at Armação, right at the church from the 1700s where the priest would come down to the beach to bless the whaling ships and sailors before they went to sea.

We saw many gigantic spiders along the forest hanging from all sides. We saw many beautiful butterflies (not easily photographed!) in reds and yellows, and were courted by a blue and green hummingbird. The wildflowers were brilliant on this cloudy day along the cliffs. We met only three groups along the way, including a surfer from Australia. Sherman did NOT like being that close to cliffs, and needed to hold on to something fast, except he found that some of the plants had sharp points on them! At one point, we came to a divide in the path, both equally worn, and I had to laugh at Robert Frost.

Sigh. I lost my lens cap on this trip. I need to replace this fast, or I’ll be in big trouble!

Once we reached the beach, we watched the waves crash down below, and I saw a cave along the coast where water rushed in. We descended down to people who were lounging on the sand, and we gladly doused ourselves in the ocean. My feet felt so happy to receive the waves!!

After we enjoyed our time there, we just wanted to go home, and I couldn’t imagine returning the same way we came. We knew that small boats would land to return people to populated beaches on the other side of the island, so we paid a small fee to be on-board. Just then, it started to rain…and pour… and drench us all! The captain of our wooden open boat had a grey beard and a raincoat and a hat, and was built to last. It was a little bit of Herman Melville!

We were happy to be taken home, but we were shivering in our bathing suits and life jackets in the rough ocean waves. Too bad, as we passed many beautiful rock cliffs that I couldn’t see through the raindrops streaming over my eyelashes! We all got grumpy and I think I won the miserable contest.

It was a wet ending to a truly amazing trek! Here are three very short videos from the hike:
http://youtu.be/S36CGiIe41Y
http://youtu.be/30OCol3fZ_M
http://youtu.be/twv0uwijU28

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