Blogs from São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, South America - page 29

Well, I have arrived... Everything so far has been great (appart from the weather). Anderson´s family and friends have been feeding me great food and showing me how to make Minas cheese bread (tastes really good). Elizangela and me have been spending time getting on way too many buses and missing stops and generally behaving like nutters! Love it... Anyway, just wanted to put a really boring first entry to see if it works and stuff. I hope everybody in the Uk is ok...... read more

Today has been fantastic. While I was on MSN Messenger I got in contact with my friend who lives in Bahia and she said that she would be picking me up from the airport. This is wonderful. As you all know this will be my first time in Bahia and there is no better way to get to know a city than to have someone who lives there to show you the way. After having received all this good news, I then decided that I would make my way to Berrini Ave. (one of the main financial centers in SP) and go visit my old work buddies. So, first I stopped by the English language institute where I used to work and then by the consulting firm. It was great. Everyone was very surprised to see ... read more

Faith has returned to me the task of updating the blog. I was amazed by the amount of detail in Faith´s descriptions and I have to tell you that unfortunately I won´t continue on the same note. The outcome of the visa application with the American Consulate in São Paulo. My worries turned out to be highly unjustified. After a three hour wait they called my number (136 and that´s because I arrived one hour before the appointed time). The interview took 30 seconds. The interviewer had no idea what what I was there for even though he had all the documents beforehand. He asked a total of two questions, the first was whether I was renewing my student visa and the second was how long I had studied in the US, which is a complicated ... read more

They have a huge statue here of a bandeirante - a what, you ask? A portuguese mercenary from colonial days who hacked through the rainforest and murdered or sold into slavery tribe after tribe of indigenous peoples. Largely responsible for the depopulation of vast tracts of land and thus for securing much of Brazil’s current domain for the Portuguese. Jesuit missionaries tried to protect the locals in their forts and missionary towns, so the bandeirantes murdered them all too, and the govt kicked the rest of the jesuits out for interfering with the officially sanctioned rape and pillage of a continent. The snack bar across the street is also named in honor of the bandeirante. Its interesting what people value here. ... read more

São Paolo: Social Observations Part I: The Museum. (NB this entry is long) Bruno’s anxiety over his VISA interview had been growing steadily over the month of August but reached its peak in São Paolo. He spent a lot of time staring off into the distance and even said at times that he wasn’t hungry (!!!!). Yes, a true rarity for the Brumaster. So what could we do to distract him? We went to a museum about São Paolo and Brazil in the nineteenth century. It’s housed in a building that was supposed to replicate the palace at Versailles, but they ran out of funds and instead ended up with an abbreviated version. The model that they had constructed, which took the two years initially allotted for the construction of the actual building, is on display ... read more