Moving Forward

My entire adult life I have been fortunate enough to have been making forward progress; I mean this both professionally and geographically.  Beginning with my first quasi-adult move to enter college from the Twin Cities to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to my first actual job on the opposite side of the same state in the town of Manitowoc on the shores of Lake Michigan, to Cali, Colombia where the exploits of this blog have been played out, I have found a way to also move toward the rising sun.  That trend will continue, it seems...

While this may not be late-breaking news, I have signed a contract to leave the amazing country of Colombia and further my experience as a teacher and of Latin America in another school in another country.  In July I will be moving to the city of Campinas, Brazil, for what will end up being a combination position of various life science-based courses and probably a Master's degree program.

While I still have about four months left to explore and enjoy a country that I will hold forever dear to me, allow me to share a little bit of information about my new home.  Campinas (say: cahm-PEE-nahs) is located in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, about a ninety minute drive from one of the world's largest cities, São Paulo itself.  While the aforementioned metropolis has about 11 million people - if the surrounding suburbs are included this number doubles - Campinas has a modest 1.5 million.

My future campus.

The school I will be teaching at is similar to the one I have been at, except that the origins of my new place of employment are and continue to be linked to foreign corporations, such as 3M, the company that founded the school.  São Paulo is a financial and corporate force in the world economy and therefore the proximity Campinas has to it is residual in many ways.  I look forward to living and working in a smaller large city with a large professional population with a fair amount of cultural offerings.

Campinas means "meadows" or "plains" in Portuguese, a new language I will have to learn.  That being said, there are many coffee, cotton, and sugarcane plantations around the city, also contributing to the economy.  (After living in Cali and Colombia, I am used to the burning 'cane fields and coffee has become a staple part of my diet. This will be a welcome part of the transition!)  

Because this is Brazil, Campinas has not one, but two professional soccer teams, and three stadiums.  I'm not sure what the plans are of yet for the World Cup in 2014, but a game or two in Campinas at the early stages may not be entirely out of the question!

The climate is pleasant year-round with a slight change in seasons, something comparable to a Midwestern spring/fall to summer.  To put it simply, even the wealthy homes do not have central heating.  Along with several picturesque parks and trails, there is also an extensive public transportation system, two malls, several theatres for the performing arts, and a plethora of reputable universities, ensuring that the nightlife is also on par with larger more metropolitan locales.

A lot of this information I was able to ascertain from my coincidental visit last spring for an educators' conference.  One thing I learned from Wikipedia is that "Campinas was the third city in the world to adopt the technology of the telephone in 1883, after Chicago and Rio de Janeiro."  Who knew?!?!

I look forward to this new change and to find out more things about Brazil and Campinas.

Brazil Nuts

By popular request, here are a few more photos from my brief "business trip" to Campinas, Brazil (with a short tour of São Paulo).

Avenida Paulista in downtown São Paulo.  (I took this on a cross-walk during
 a red light, just so you don't think I regularly risk death for tourist photos.)

The MASP or Museu de Arte de São Paulo...like New York's MoMA

A slightly out-of-place building on Ave. Paulista.

Welcome to Campinas, Brasil!

The Jockey Club, a famous historical site in Campinas.

The Metroplitan Cathedral

Parque Portugal (or Lagoa do Taquaral)

Where I spent most of my time: Escola Americana de Campinas (EAC).
They have tiny little monkeys in the trees on campus.

Brazil's national cocktail, the caipirinha, made with the
 local "fire water," cachaça; it tastes a bit like a really
tart margarita with sugar at the bottom.

A night out in Brazil wouldn't be complete without a Samba band!

Hopefully this will be just the beginning of great photographic relationship with this intriguing country.  Stay tuned for future expeditions...

Return of the Blank Stare

I've now been to Brazil twice.  The first time was during Semana Santa (Holy Week/Spring Break) three years ago; my friend Tina and I visited the Amazon region, spending four days in the Brazilian rainforest and one afternoon wandering around the isolated town of Tabatinga, across the river from Colombian's Leticia.  Last week I was in Campinas, Brazil, for an educational conference where I was on hand to help present the teacher evaluation system a committee of international educators helped develop over the coarse of last year, meeting several times in Quito, Ecuador.  But that's not what I want to talk about.  (The conference was phenomenal, however; I got to meet a lot of interesting and inspiring people as well as learn to look at the education profession from a fresh perspective.)

Bom dia, Campinas!  Morning traffic
from my hotel window in Campinas.

I want to address the fact that Brazilians speak Portuguese and not Spanish, like the majority of the rest of the continent.  Even when I arrived in Colombian with, what I always claim to be, no Spanish, I was able to count, exchange pleasantries and ask for both a bathroom and a beer.  I far as speaking and comprehending verbally, I might as well have gone to China.  Since Portuguese is similar in many ways to the other Romance languages - French, Spanish, Italian - it often comes across sounding like a fusion of all three, to the uninitiated ear.  Almost like the speaker is trying to speak Spanish with a bad French accent while moving a few marbles around inside their mouth.

One thing I didn't have to struggle with was the fact that in Brazil it is common to serve cake at breakfast.  And not pastry-type cakes, cake cake.  Like "happy birthday" its 7am cakes.  Thanks for waking up, you deserve frosting and sprinkles!  I have an automatic positive bias for a country that embraces dessert for breakfast.

On the plus side, my tourist visa is valid for ten years - longer than my passport's expiration date - so I plan on making use of this situation.  It will take some effort to learn to function in the Portuguese language but I'm excited at the prospect.  I just need to start forcing myself to say "obrigado" instead of "gracias," which, it turns out, is my knee-jerk foreign language response to a lot of things!  Hopefully the next time I return I'll have a few more words up my sleeve and not have to play charades with [beautiful] people of Brazil.

Strolling the steets of São Paulo, Brasil.  This street, Ave.
Paulista reminded me a lot of Michigan Ave in Chicago.