So, on Friday, I went to this open market they have here called Feira de Sao Jaoquim. It's big with a section for fruits, weavings, meat, Candomble stuff, and random stuff. It stinks there. People (men) like to pee on the outsides of the porta-potties.. Gross. They have this "fair" every day in the morning until afternoon. It's in the lower city. It has a pretty bad stigma since it's supposed to be cheap and the poorer folks go there. But it's interesting. On Saturday I went to the Parque Metropolitano de Pituacu, and it's really nice there, it's next to [View Full Entry]

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Neguinho do Samba was a founder of Samba-Reggae. He passed away on Saturday of a heart-attack at the age of 54. He was a part the Ilê Aiyê and Olodum. He arranged the Olodum piece for the song They Don't Care About Us, Michael Jackson, 1996. I met him once in the beginning of the program when I went to check out Banda Didá, which is a all women's percussion group that he founded with the money he earned through the aforementioned piece. He was telling us (a group of female students that wanted to volunteer to teach English or Spanish [View Full Entry]

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Boninal is somewhere 8 hours away by car, through the semiarid zone in Bahia. It's a small town with 15,000 residents. The town is mostly black (Bahian aspect). Most of the blacks work the manual jobs.. everyone gets along though. Actually, one of the grandparents of my host mom is a light-skinned black. Boninal is my host mother's hometown. She grew up there and came to Salvador to further her studies when she was 17 years old, and she got married and stayed in Salvador and her brothers returned after their studies and stayed in Boninal. I had a four-day weekend, [View Full Entry]

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To be honest, I missed the afternoon part of it because I was on a family outing until 4:30p. And I was so tired after that I took a nap for one hour. Most of my friends went to check it out around 2p. By the time I got up, everyone I knew went...and some people warned that it's not too good to go by myself, since men are such creepers here, and I don't want them bothering me, nor do I want my camera stolen. So I stayed by my window to take some shots. I was wistfully looking out [View Full Entry]

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I spent a weekend on an island, it was very nice. Morro de Sao Paulo was where all the foreigners used to go and have fun and relax... anyway, that place was packed with foreigners and brazilians not native to Salvador. Totally a tourist town with family owned restaurants and inns. One of the things that bothered me was the sand wasn't clean... I just expected places that tourists go to get their beaches cleaned better. There were some kids picking up trash, but...I especially didnt want to walk too far from the surf barefooted with all the junk on the [View Full Entry]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/world/americas/13brazil.html?_r=1 I was looking through the new and saw a pic I recognized, yup, that's Salvador, my temporary home. This community has been autonomous for the last 15 years, taking care of their problems without police involvement, etc. But yeah, Carlinhos Brown went and got the/his community to work together to get infrastructure and build a music school and promote exchanges between the kids of the middle class neighborhood just beside it and the kids of Candeal. There are a lot of slums around the city. Big communities of poor people. [View Full Entry]

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We went on a 7 hour bus ride into the interior of Bahia to Chapada Diamantina. It is a place where diamonds used to be mined. It's in a semi-arid climate, there are plateaus, waterfalls, caves, etc. I also went to a little community that was started by runaway slaves. They are a small community with 400 people and 40 houses. Very poor fishing community. It is 25 km to Lencois. Lencois is a small town, I believe it used to be a place to trade in diamonds and slaves, now it is mainly a tourist town since diamonds are illegal [View Full Entry]

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One of the days of class, we had to go to Pierre Verger's Foundation and check out the resources it has. Verger was a photographer that traveled around Africa and Brazil and found many African traditions maintained by the slaves in Bahia. He was really impressed and snapped many pictures and then compared them. He got a Ph.D through his research without going to school. One of our teachers, Willys, comes from a family of Candomble practitioners and he took us to see his house, Casa Branca (White House), and this place has been established since 1830s, although there is no [View Full Entry]

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A wonderful end to a wonderful weekend! It started with the Boat Tour, then a nice jazz JAM at the Modern Art Museum on Sat after watching The City of Gods (it's a good movie, but, not the type I like) with Julisa and Allegra. Today, I finally went to the beach with my family, and we ate acaraje and I ate too much shrimp to induce my allergic reaction to crustaceans. I broke out in hives as I was arriving to Sonia's Caruru Festa. Her mom was putting on a gathering to honor children (?), I'm not sure. It was [View Full Entry]

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The majority of the pictures will be taken during the boat tour of All Saints Bay going to Itaparica Island and Frades Island. We rented a boat to take 55 students around the bay with music and drinks. (Along the way, I saw a school of fish jumping out of the water, in and out and in and out, a few times. I didn't take any pics of that though.) There are nice beaches. We ate a good Bahian meal. Some local kids caught an iguana and it had a photo-op with me. Nice day out... I know, you want some [View Full Entry]

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