Four Months of Festivities with my Family

Four months in Brazil was enough time to participate in some of the most important family festivities. This post should give you a sense of how my family celebrate things. It is not the way people normally do things in Brazil. Not at all. But either way (Brazilian way or my family's way) it is a lot of fun...

In September, there was my cousin's baby shower.

This is my super pregnant cousin with her super pregnant friend


This is my grandma and another cousin having a blast with the delicious food



This is me, finally meeting the newest member of the family, in the shoulders of his father, this smiley cousin of mine


And this is a small part of the female contingent of the family


And this is me, having a very serious conversation with my cousins about the public health system in Brazil. The one with glasses is a doctor and told me that one of the biggest problems in Brazil is the fact that the state pays for the doctors but not for the medicine. So, according to him, some of his patients go to the hospital, are properly diagnosed, and one week later are back with worse symptoms. When asked if they took the medicine prescribed, they say no. They just don't have money to buy it. So, there is a health system that works, to a certain extent, but it shows little results and it has very high costs.



Then, in October, we had a wedding!

This is bride (my cousin) and groom with my mom, who came to São Paulo specially for the ceremony.



In the wedding, there was sense of humor,



delicious food, wonderful live music (not depicted here....),



the best desert on the face of earth, called "bem-casado", which is specially prepared for weddings and is not available on stores (for my complete despair),




family together and well dressed for a change,



the gorgeous men of the family smiling for the picture,



my sister showing off her photo taking skills,







and, of course, some serious conversation. The black guy is the owner of a school of English as a second language in Brazil, and was telling us his opinion about racism in Brazil. He started the conversation telling us horror stories of discrimination against him and his wife. As an American, he was puzzled with the fact that black people in Brazil do not identify themselves as blacks and do not organize themselves politically around race boundaries despite blatant discrimination. I asked him what he thought about racial quotas in Brazilian universities. He said: "It is just a painkiller for a headache caused by a tumor. So, it is good to alleviate the pain, but it will not eliminate the source of the problem."



In November, this lovely little girl was born.



In December, of course, we had Christmas. We started off celebrations with dinner on the 24th, and finished things off with a lunch on the 25th.

In the dinner, there was a Christmas tree,


lots of beer and champagne,






some serious conversations, like my Godmother explaining to her grandson that Santa Claus sent the presents (note that he is paying lots of attention)



and more serious conversations, like my cousin learning from her husband what is a mini-hang loose and wondering where he could have possibly learned something like that,



my grandma distributing presents to the entire family,










and the little girl soundly asleep despite all the noise.


On the 25th, there was a motorized Santa Claus, distributing more presents!



This is a young man terrified with Santa Claus, because when he was 6 months old nobody explained to him who Santa was, like my Godmother did with her grandson in the night before,




And here are the lucky ones, who got the explanation in time and were not afraid of Santa,












The only picture I could not take was Santa Claus doing the mini-hang loose ;)

(In case you are wondering: yes, it is true. I am not in the pictures because I am also afraid of Santa...)

And of course there were serious conversations and beer, as always. This is my cousin telling his views of the Bush administration and the economic crisis to a very critical female audience.




As you can see, serious conversations or beer or both with my family is lots of fun! So, we are all looking forward to future festivities!

Take Two Rides with Me

First ride: Flying from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo.

Boarding the Plane. Fasten your seat belts and take a good look at the oil tower at the bay (the state of Rio is one of the biggest oil producers in the country):

In the Plane. Aerial views of Rio, which has the nickname of Wonderful City for a reason: Views of the coast in the state of Rio de Janeiro, but outside the city. There are weekend houses and some wild beaches:


Some coastal cities:





And lots of expensive condominiums with gates and armed guards for wealthy people:




A nice surprise: an aerial view of Santos, the city where my grandma lives (you can even see the bridge that I crossed to enter into the island, depicted from below in a previous post):






And suddenly we are in São Paulo, the Rainy City, with an endless sea of buildings (18 million people for the Great Sao Paulo Area), and construction sites showing it is still growing:







Second Ride: a drive through Brasília

No cliché pictures of governmental buildings for you. These are the parts of the city that you cannot find in other websites (and this is how the city looks like when you are driving to work, instead of sightseeing).

The city was planned to have no traffic lights. So, part of the ride is like driving in a highway, except that you are inside the city.






The city was also planned not to have corners. So, there is a lot of tunnels and bridges, where two roads cross. Less often, you can find a rotatory (not sure if this is the name in English)







The city is not pedestrian-friendly and public transportation sucks. But if you look really hard sometimes you can find a pedestrian walking by:







And before you think otherwise, there are buildings in this city (these are the commercial buildings, in the commercial sector - residential buildings have a sector of their own):




There are also some curious images, like this giant panel saying Congratulations,


A painted van called Kombi, which is very popular in Brazil,


Soldiers being transported,


"In Jesus I Trust" sign,


Santa Claus cimbing an apartment building,



And lots of vandalized walls and signs,





That's it for now, folks!