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!
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