After our tour of old Rio, about 16 of us went to the gem workshop owned by H.Sterns in Ipanema. H.Sterns owns the rights to much of the precious gems mined in Brazil, sort of the De Beers of South America . We got to see the science and art behind selecting, weighing, authenticating, and certifying gems as well as the stages involved in converting them into fine jewellery such as cutting, polishing and setting. Of course the tour ended in the showroom where many of us admired the various displays. Amazingly we all walked away empty handed! Now that's discipline!
We then split up into smaller groups to explore Ipanema before heading back to the hotel. Natalie, Megan, Amanda B. , Sam, Kayleigh, Cheryl and I went off in search of the Girl From Ipanema cafe. After a lot of walking we finally found it only to discover that our photographs of it would be marked by the McDonald's sign right in front of it. Globalization is everywhere! Even though sometimes we wish it wasn't .
Met the rest of the group back at the gem factory and headed back to the hotel. The power which had been lost for four hours was still not back on. It struck me several times throughout the day that Brazil is truly an in-between middle income country. Aspiring to higher income status with modern high rises and gleaming glass structures but still clearly a developing country with visible signs of poverty, income inequality, and aging infrastructure. The students have been noticing the income disparities as well as we traveled through the city on our tour today. There will probably be a stark example of that when we visit a favela on Thursday. But that will be another story...
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
When Rio wants to be impressive
The National Theater building is quite literally trimmed with gold. Real gold. Note that the trim is only on the upper levels of the building...
Colonial churches
There are beautiful old colonial churches all over this city, some small and some large, some plain and some fancy.
Seeing the city
The Mayan pyramid-shaped main cathedral in the city: from the outside it's brutally modern.
Rio, so beautiful!
We have a little downtime now, and I found an internet cafe near the hotel. The internet is really quite unreliable here, and it´s been difficult to update the blog, or be online much at all. But in the meantime, off-screen, students have been busy exploring and experiencing this beautiful city.
We had to wait for much of the day yesterday before we could get into our hotel rooms. But we didn´t have scheduled class time, so students were free to walk around, sit on the beach, and explore. And that´s pretty much what people did. We are staying on one of Rio´s two large beaches, in the Copacobana neighborhood. This beach is a white sand cove, miles long, lined with palm trees, a large promenade, little cabana huts, and a main road. On one end of the beach is a large colonial fort and a mountain that leads over to the other main beach, Ipenema. On the other end of the beach is Sugarloaf mountain, the famous leaning cone-shaped mountain of Rio. It´s quite striking!
Our hotel is right across the street from the beach. Just strolling on the promenade is quite lovely, with people all around, walking, biking, running, or playing football or volleyball on the beach. The cabana huts sell green coconuts, and when you order one, they use a machete to hack off the top to open it up, and you stick in a straw and drink up. Lovely and delicious!
Last night, a number of people had dinner right out on or near the beach. The sun goes down earlier here, as we are so close to the equator that the days are almost perfectly 12 hours long. As we ate at a little open cafe, the sun went down. The mist in the air turned pink while the sky turned midnight blue. The lights on top of Sugarloaf and the other mountains began to twinkle and stand out against the sky. The lights ringing the curve of the beach began to pop, and just watching it was so lovely and relaxing. Some of us tried some of the amazing fresh juices at dinner. Watermelon and ginger. Mango and coriander. Papaya and mint. Delicious.
This morning, we began our class with a trip to the old colonial part of Rio. We learned about the founding of the city, and had the chance to walk through a series of neighborhoods that reflected distinct periods in Rio´s development as a city. We went to the city port, the main cathederal, the old working-class neighborhood where Carmen Miranda grew up, and we visted a number of small churches, some quite ornate. This city has such a mix of wealth and poverty. Rising up behind gleaming new modernist sky-scrapers, we could see haphazard slum neighborhoods (favelas). Favelas grew up as unregulated hand-built houses made by poor people who couldn´t afford land in the city. They built these favelas in the most inhospitable places, places that weren´t owned or settled by anyone else. So the favelas cling to the sides of mountains, tottering and leaning on what seem to be almost vertical cliff faces. They are colorful and irregular and huge. And they rise up out of the city, higher than the skyscrapers, because they are built right into the mountains. We will be visiting a favela on Thursday, which will be quite interesting.
We discussed the history of Catholicism in Brazil this morning, and had the chance to visit the main cathederal of the city. It is a truly unique place, a modernist concrete marvel built in the shape of a Mayan pyramid. It is dark and rounded like a cone, with a ladder-like facade. It´s large and impressive but also a little foreboding from the outside. Inside it is striking. There are four floor-to-ceiling stripes of stained glass, culminating in a giant cross-shaped skylight on the ceiling. Each window panel represents how Catholicism symbolically unites and leads Brazilian society. The skylight and the ladder-like walls represent heaven and how difficult it is to get there. Students immediately noticed the striking racial ideology in one of the windows. The window was supposed to represent how religion unites the 4 main racial groups of Brazil. But what it shows is a ´brown´ figure, a ´black´ figure, and an índigenous figure, each literally lifting up a white figure. The white man is not only being borne up by the others, but he´s larger than them and closer to heaven. It was quite interesting to spot that little bit of ideology!
We also had the chance to visit an incredibly wealthy Benedictine church, built by one of Rio´s founding families on a hill in the city overlooking the ocean. This church was highly decorated, with gold-leaf on the walls and ornate surfaces everywhere. When we entered, brown-robed monks were chanting in Latin, which echoed through the space. The church is also home to a monastary and one of Rio´s best private schools (just for boys). As we walked out, a number of elementary school-aged boys saw us and started waving playfully. These are kids of some of Rio´s most elite families, and again, our students noticed something quite interesting about how racial politics operate in Brazil differently. Here, the Brazilians link wealth to race quite clearly. This is a holdover from the particular way that the Portuguese colonized the country, when they sent over only men and not families. The Catholic church here pushed for marriage, so many quite elite and wealthy young men married indigenous women and even African slave women. Each successive generation was more racially mixed, which leads to a very interesting way that modern Brazilians see race. White is still on top here, with the same kinds of privileges as in the U.S., but white people here don´t look the same. These elite kids, who are certainly white by Brazilian standards, looked strikingly racially mixed to our eyes. We had discussed this racial formation in class before we left, but we certainly saw it in action today.
We have some free time now, and most of the students decided to visit the H. Stern gem factory. Brazil has such an incredible mineral wealth, and the H. Stern company has a museum and shop. They send town-cars or limos to pick up visitors, and bring them to the company. The tour is free, but just cooincidentally, it ends in the gem showroom. It will certainly be an interesting experience, and who knows, maybe there will be some nice jewelry coming home!
We had to wait for much of the day yesterday before we could get into our hotel rooms. But we didn´t have scheduled class time, so students were free to walk around, sit on the beach, and explore. And that´s pretty much what people did. We are staying on one of Rio´s two large beaches, in the Copacobana neighborhood. This beach is a white sand cove, miles long, lined with palm trees, a large promenade, little cabana huts, and a main road. On one end of the beach is a large colonial fort and a mountain that leads over to the other main beach, Ipenema. On the other end of the beach is Sugarloaf mountain, the famous leaning cone-shaped mountain of Rio. It´s quite striking!
Our hotel is right across the street from the beach. Just strolling on the promenade is quite lovely, with people all around, walking, biking, running, or playing football or volleyball on the beach. The cabana huts sell green coconuts, and when you order one, they use a machete to hack off the top to open it up, and you stick in a straw and drink up. Lovely and delicious!
Last night, a number of people had dinner right out on or near the beach. The sun goes down earlier here, as we are so close to the equator that the days are almost perfectly 12 hours long. As we ate at a little open cafe, the sun went down. The mist in the air turned pink while the sky turned midnight blue. The lights on top of Sugarloaf and the other mountains began to twinkle and stand out against the sky. The lights ringing the curve of the beach began to pop, and just watching it was so lovely and relaxing. Some of us tried some of the amazing fresh juices at dinner. Watermelon and ginger. Mango and coriander. Papaya and mint. Delicious.
This morning, we began our class with a trip to the old colonial part of Rio. We learned about the founding of the city, and had the chance to walk through a series of neighborhoods that reflected distinct periods in Rio´s development as a city. We went to the city port, the main cathederal, the old working-class neighborhood where Carmen Miranda grew up, and we visted a number of small churches, some quite ornate. This city has such a mix of wealth and poverty. Rising up behind gleaming new modernist sky-scrapers, we could see haphazard slum neighborhoods (favelas). Favelas grew up as unregulated hand-built houses made by poor people who couldn´t afford land in the city. They built these favelas in the most inhospitable places, places that weren´t owned or settled by anyone else. So the favelas cling to the sides of mountains, tottering and leaning on what seem to be almost vertical cliff faces. They are colorful and irregular and huge. And they rise up out of the city, higher than the skyscrapers, because they are built right into the mountains. We will be visiting a favela on Thursday, which will be quite interesting.
We discussed the history of Catholicism in Brazil this morning, and had the chance to visit the main cathederal of the city. It is a truly unique place, a modernist concrete marvel built in the shape of a Mayan pyramid. It is dark and rounded like a cone, with a ladder-like facade. It´s large and impressive but also a little foreboding from the outside. Inside it is striking. There are four floor-to-ceiling stripes of stained glass, culminating in a giant cross-shaped skylight on the ceiling. Each window panel represents how Catholicism symbolically unites and leads Brazilian society. The skylight and the ladder-like walls represent heaven and how difficult it is to get there. Students immediately noticed the striking racial ideology in one of the windows. The window was supposed to represent how religion unites the 4 main racial groups of Brazil. But what it shows is a ´brown´ figure, a ´black´ figure, and an índigenous figure, each literally lifting up a white figure. The white man is not only being borne up by the others, but he´s larger than them and closer to heaven. It was quite interesting to spot that little bit of ideology!
We also had the chance to visit an incredibly wealthy Benedictine church, built by one of Rio´s founding families on a hill in the city overlooking the ocean. This church was highly decorated, with gold-leaf on the walls and ornate surfaces everywhere. When we entered, brown-robed monks were chanting in Latin, which echoed through the space. The church is also home to a monastary and one of Rio´s best private schools (just for boys). As we walked out, a number of elementary school-aged boys saw us and started waving playfully. These are kids of some of Rio´s most elite families, and again, our students noticed something quite interesting about how racial politics operate in Brazil differently. Here, the Brazilians link wealth to race quite clearly. This is a holdover from the particular way that the Portuguese colonized the country, when they sent over only men and not families. The Catholic church here pushed for marriage, so many quite elite and wealthy young men married indigenous women and even African slave women. Each successive generation was more racially mixed, which leads to a very interesting way that modern Brazilians see race. White is still on top here, with the same kinds of privileges as in the U.S., but white people here don´t look the same. These elite kids, who are certainly white by Brazilian standards, looked strikingly racially mixed to our eyes. We had discussed this racial formation in class before we left, but we certainly saw it in action today.
We have some free time now, and most of the students decided to visit the H. Stern gem factory. Brazil has such an incredible mineral wealth, and the H. Stern company has a museum and shop. They send town-cars or limos to pick up visitors, and bring them to the company. The tour is free, but just cooincidentally, it ends in the gem showroom. It will certainly be an interesting experience, and who knows, maybe there will be some nice jewelry coming home!
View from our hotel
We walk out the front door of our hotel and get the amazing beach and the ocean...
We've been having Internet connection problems which have made it difficult to be online. But don't worry, everyone is fine. We are heading out for a big day of class, but we will be looking for a good Internet cafe when we have a chance, and we will update the blog with more news then.
We've been having Internet connection problems which have made it difficult to be online. But don't worry, everyone is fine. We are heading out for a big day of class, but we will be looking for a good Internet cafe when we have a chance, and we will update the blog with more news then.
First hours in Rio
We reached our hotel at 8 a.m. Monday . Our rooms weren't ready until noon so students decided to wash off the dust and grime of travel by...jumping in the ocean! Au natural. The rest of the day we settled in, got our bearings and are looking forward this morning to starting our first 'official' day.
Monday, April 29, 2013
We made it!
We arrived at about 6:00 AM this morning and made it through the airport easily. When we got to our hotel, our rooms weren't ready, so we've been wandering the beach, swimming, feeding ourselves in little street cafes, and generally relaxing before we jump into class work.
Did we mention our hotel is right across the street from Copacobana beach? Its quite the beach!
Did we mention our hotel is right across the street from Copacobana beach? Its quite the beach!
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Second group of students playing cards
When asked what game they were playing they informed me 'bluff'. 'Course this is after I told them the story in the previous blog.
Waiting for the ticket counter to open
Apparently the good old fashioned game of 'bluff' is now called 'BS'.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Our Itinerary - What we'll be doing for three weeks
So here's what we'll be doing for 3 weeks in Brazil:
April 28th - Elmira to NYC; flight to Rio in the p.m.
April 28th - Elmira to NYC; flight to Rio in the p.m.
April 29th - May 5th : Rio de Janeiro.
We will be taking several guided tours while we are in Rio including a tour of the old city, Corcovado (famous statue of Christ the Redeemer), Sugar Loaf (the peak that stands out like a loaf of bread in most photos of Rio), the Tijuca Forest, as well as a tour of a favela (slum). Students will experience up close the extreme socioeconomic disparities that have resulted in Brazil having one of the most unequal distributions of income of any Latin American country. Also included in these few days will be visits to some museums of interest that highlight Brazil's colonial past as well as her indigenous cultures. Students will have some time to explore Rio on their own, perhaps taking in a samba lesson or two...
May 5th - May 8th: Iguazu Falls.
We will be flying from Rio to Iguazo to visit one of the most spectacular sights in nature, on the border of Brazil and Argentina. We will spend time on both the Brazilian and Argentinean sides of the Falls, also visiting some indigenous communities consisting of the Mborore and Iriapu peoples ( the 1986 film The Mission gives a sense of the area).May 8th-May 12th: Amazon rain forest.
From Iguazo we will fly to Manaus, a city of 2 million people in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon, center of the rubber boom in the early 20th century. We will spend a couple of days in Manaus exploring the city, including the famous Opera House built during the heyday of the rubber boom. In addition, a local family will host us and teach us to cook a traditional meal using local ingredients and featuring local dishes. From Manaus we will travel by boat to a lodge in the Amazon rain forest and spend a few days exploring local habitats, both natural and environmental as well as social and cultural. Some things we expect to see: caimans, monkeys, sloths, houses on stilts and giant insects!May 13th-May18th: Salvador de Bahia.
Our last stop will be the Afro-Brazilian city of Salvador in the province of Bahia. After touring the city and experiencing the distinctive Bahian cuisine, we will observe a Candomble (religious) ceremony and participate in a percussion workshop. We will also have the opportunity to take a day trip to the beautiful colonial town of Cachoeira, in the heart of tobacco and sugar plantations. As in Rio, students will have some time to explore Salvador on their own, perhaps purchasing some last-minute gifts and souvenirs for all you relatives and friends back home : )May 18th-May 19th: Leave Rio and arrive back in NYC; return to Elmira by late afternoon on the 19th.
Two weeks (minus a day) before departure
It's one week before the start of class. Students and professors will be home this week getting ready for our travels.
Our journey begins next week as we spend the first week on campus learning about various aspects of Brazil. This will enable us to frame our experiences in the appropriate social, cultural, historical and economic contexts.
Our journey begins next week as we spend the first week on campus learning about various aspects of Brazil. This will enable us to frame our experiences in the appropriate social, cultural, historical and economic contexts.
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