Chief of Police of Malibu

This should link to other pictures: http://danevt.blogs.friendster.com/photos/brazil/

So here we are in Leblon.  We’ve got our apartment squared away, our high-speed internet connected yesterday, and here’s a picture (more on my friendster site):
I guess the picture’s going to  be at the bottom of this post.  Like I said, you should be able to link to my photo album through the site.  We’ve been to the beach here in this part of Rio only once, although we may go again today.  I really do have to get down to some research, though!  A lot of what I have to do now, though, is on-line, so it’s most convenient to work here from apartment.  I’m also trying to plan my travels around the country–it looks like a lot of long bus-rides.  But hey–living in the lap of luxury here, I can put up with some arduousness.  Marcy & I are also trying to plan our visit to the Amazon–the one pleasure trip that I really want to get in down here.  There are no roads, so we have to fly, which is expensive (if ever you’re coming to Brazil and want to see the country, you’ve got to get a Brazil Airpass from one of the local carriers, but you can only buy it in the US once you’ve got your internation ticket to come to Brazil–it’s a steal compared to domestic air travel!).  Oddly, it looks like it’s cheaper to buy the necessary tickets from Travelocity for the Brazilian carrier, Tam, than it is to buy the same tix directly from Tam.  Anyways, enough travel administratia. 

The other thing that it’s convenient to do from here is to call people in the US!  We got this great service, Skype (you can download it for free) that lets you use your high-speed internet to call any phone in the world and the cost is defined by the destination country (2.1 cents/min to the US, for example).  We can also call other people who have Skype on their computer for free.  Or anyone in the US can call us at the number we’re basically renting: (617) 379-0378.  It’s just like calling a US number, except it goes to my computer here (there’s voicemail, too).  So that’s exciting stuff.  Not much else new here, really.  We’ve been trying to master the art of shopping and discovered that most things are the same price whether you buy one or a whole pack (like beer, or eggs), which is odd, although I guess more sensible in some ways that having to buy a dozen of something in order to get a decent price.  Also oddly wine is quite expensive.  We got a $7 bottle on sale last night (all the others in the store were more expensive) from Chile, and it turned out to be of quite poor quality.  You’d think with Argentina next door and Chile not for away (and both in Mercosur), you could get decent wine at a decent price.  But perhaps not–Brazil is much more a beer country, or liquor-ish (cachaça).  This is another interesting similarity to Russia.  In fact, I should keep a list of these meaningless similarities.  If you could see our kitchen (I omitted the photo I took of it), you’d see that it, too, is reminiscent of Russia.

So what else is news.  Well, the fall of the Finance Minister the other day is the Brazilian news.  He’s another in a long line of associates of Lula, the first president from the leftist Workers’ Party, to go down in a scandal.  It seems to have affected the exchange rate slightly (from R$2.15/$1 it’s gone to R$2.20/$1), which could benefit Marcy & I if it continues!  The dollar really plummeted against the real (one real, two reais) in the three years since I was first here (it used to be three to one), which means our American dollars don’t go as far.

Well, I guess that’s all the blog-reporting I have for today–except that our phone we tried to unblock couldn’t be unblocked (did I explain before, how for whatever reason to do with globalization or competitiveness or something, most cell phones sold in the US have an extra program added that renders them unusable in other countries, unless you pay for an unblocking service?  Yet another example of corporate anti-capitalism: success by reducing competition and consumer choice). We still have one more cell phone we can try, so Marcy can have her own cell phone–we’ll see if that one can be unblocked. 

Well, that’s the news from Rio–look forward to hearing from you all.  You can call on Skype or the phone (617) 379-0378 or send us snail-mail, too.  The address is in the last post–although the street is Av. Ataulfo de Paiva (not Baiva).  Take care!

Well, I forgot which day we’re on because I didn’t update over the weekend, but things are going very well.  We ended up with this incredible apartment, the likes of which we are never likely to inhabit again, at just shy of $700/mo, depending on the exchange rate (about what I’d budgeted, hoping that I was perhaps highballing it–can that be used as a verb that way, Nina?).  It’s in Leblon, one of the swankier parts of Rio, a bit out of the way from the center of town, but still pretty accessible on public transportation (the buses here are dangerously efficient–dangerous to any poor water-delivery guy who might be trundling his trike across the road against the light!).  It’s two blocks from an extraordinarily beautiful beach, which we can see from our window (12th story).  It’s got a washing machine, and a fold-out couch (visitors!), and our landlady, Maria Klauser (you wouldn’t think her of German descent by looking at her, but she did take care to put every one of the 50 banknotes I gave her for the deposit & first month’s rent all in the same orientation after I’d counted them out) is used to renting to grad students and will take care of hooking us up to the internet & cable.  As a result, our Skype connection (617-379-0378) should be up later this week and you can talk to us on-line for free, or at that telephone number for the cost of a call to Cambridge, MA.

Anyways, so we’re very happy.  This neighborhood is kind of like the Santa Monica (Rockport? I can’t think of a great East Coast equivalent) of Rio, as opposed to Copacabana, which is more like Venice Beach (not nearly as yucky as Hampton Beach–perhaps more like Point Pleasant, or actually beneath Point Pleasant, when I think of it).  This afternoon we’re going to try and get our cell-phones going, which should be fun.  We’ll have to pay like $40 to have Marcy’s old Cingular phone unblocked (when they sell them in the US, they program them so they won’t work elsewhere–huzzah for American openness & globalization), but I’ll be able to use Marcy’s _very_ old cell phone from Russia w/o paying for the removal of insipid protectionist programming.  Then we’ll go to the supermarket, and perhaps take in a bit of the beach this afternoon when the sun is not so bright (Marcy is nearly fascistically vigilant about her sunscreen, so I think she can handle it–I’m the opposite, trusting to my stakhanovite melanin, and may suffer for it).  Tomorrow I’ll hopefully go into IUPERJ at last and begin getting down to work, which means getting someone to try and help me get electoral data from the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (it may be in their library) and planning my interview questions for carioquense politicians).

Well, I hope you’re all well.  We’re really happy to be settled, at last, and soon will be able to communicate over high-speed internet from our apto, hopefully.  In the meantime, our address is:

Av. Ataulfo de Baiva 50, apto 1206

Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22440-030

Brasil

Tchau!

Well, it’s about 5pm, and after a valiant effort to overcome a 5-hour time change and 24 hours of little sleep in transit (getting up around 7:30am), Marcy and I sort of lolled around for a few hours trying to figure out how to make the stove work (we didn’t have any matches), then cooking breakfast and showering, etc, and finally hit the streets mid-morning, newspaper & phone card in hand (we can’t call out from the phone in our room).  We saw several places today, but are sort in a pickle.  The nice places near the beach are pretty expensive, and the inexpensive places are pretty crappy (not much middle ground).  The cheapest decent place we found is over $600/mo for a semi-studio.  We may go for it, as it’s pretty nice, but we’ll see.  We don’t really need to be near the beach, because the institute where I’ll be is a little closer to the center, but so far, we haven’t found any places in that part of town that will take you for less than a year.  So we may end up spending more than we thought, but that often happens, I guess (we sort of tried to account for that in budgeting, anyways).  One interesting aspect of most of these places is that they have no telephone installed–I guess most landlords are worried that vacationers from abroad would run up a big phone bill and then skip out on it.

Anyways, so we’re really tired now, after traipsing around all day in semi-dressy clothes to look like we’re a decent couple (long pants in Brazil = hot!).  Not much more to report–we’ve yet to figure out how to avoid buggy bread.  Yecch.  We’ll get it together, though.  Take care, all!

- Dan

Little to report.  Long flights.  Alcohol costs $5 on international flights now (I don’t think I’ve sought alcohol on an international flight for years), so we forewent it.  Brazil is hot as ever and Brazilian customs & immigration people are still 100 times nicer than US (and 1000 times nicer than Russian!).  We’re staying in a hostel in Copacabana until we find an apartment, although we made little progress on that today after we arrive around 2pm after 24 hrs of transit, we took a nap and are now roused, showered, and looking for food.  Hopefully more to report tomorrow.  One funny thing–we met a Harvard Gov Dept colleague of mine randomly in the LAX security line.  He was returning to Cambridge from research in Japan and connecting through.  Another blow to the laws of probability is that days before, he had e-mailed Marcy (he used to live in the apt above her in Somerville) to say he was coming back to Boston and wanted to get people together for a beer.  It was the first either of us had heard from him in over a year.  Hope you’re all well.

- Dan

Quick little post–we’re leaving soon.  Flights LAX -> JFK -> GRU -> GIG.  Little else to report.  Next time from Brazil!

Ok, so what have I been up to recently?  I finished my last round of grading in late January (Thursday, Jan 26, to be exact).  The next day, Marcy, my fiancée (did you all know that I was affianced back in September of last year?) and I packed up all of our stuff into a truck belonging to my co-habitant of the Davis Cetner, Kelly O’Neill & her husband Paul and drove it up to my parents’ house in Vermont (stopping to drop off Kelly & Paul, to whom we’re eternally grateful, in Killington).  We stored out stuff in the attic of my parents’ garage and then slept off some flu and various other stressors for a couple of days, then on February 1st mounted our trusty Beretta and headed out of town.

The first day we drove as far as Philly, where we stayed with Marcy’s friend, Aisha, who treated us, among other things, to a wonderful new vice: a British Soap called Footballers’ Wives whose salacious scandals and prurient pratfalls blaze like a bonfire to which no American TV offering can hold a candle.  The second day, after a very nice visit with Marcy’s first cousin once-removed, Al, and his wife, and a brief tour of the Elysian Eden that is Swarthmore (all of which was properly labeled, of course), we set out for our nation’s capital (or at least Montgomery County), where my friends Dave & Augusta put us up in their beautiful house and we had dinner with Ben Harder.

Day three was our first real strike away from the coast.  After a good breakfast at Cracker Barrel (where we picked up a book on tape–try the Cracker Barrel book swap program if you’re ever driving around this country!), we had a very scenic drive down I-68, jogged up to Pittsburg, then drove all the way across Ohio to Richmond, IN, where we partook of Days’ Inn’s hospitality and dined at Ruby Tuesday before heading, on Day four, to Illinois.  There we stayed for two days with my best friend from high school, Brent, who having finished his PhD last year (a feat I’ve yet to accomplish) is teaching at the Illinois school of Public Policy.  Along with his two housemates, Abo and Max and Abo (both canine), we had a very nice time, watched Pittsburgh win the Superbowl (Pats not quite up to it this year–and now they’re losing Vinatieri!), baked some cookies, and then drove south on Day six to Memphis.  We saw Graceland (my 2nd time, Marcy’s first), ate some great ribs, and patronized yet another Days’ Inn.  Day seven took us across the beautiful swampland and hills of Arkansas and then the increasingly flat state of Oklahoma as far as Elk City (Econolodge–Days’ Inn was entirely booked, for no discernible reason).  I had my one chicken-fried steak of the trip there, which was tasty (I ate the whole thing–not all the gravy, though).  On Day eight we drove through Amarillo Texas (breakfasted there at Cracker Barrel), then on to New Mexico.  We took a right turn at Albuquerque and drove up into the Jemez Mountains to go to some hot springs that we had to climb up the mountain for, then returned to Albuquerque that night to stay with a friend, Justin, whom we’d met the summer before at Jonathan & Nicole’s wedding.  We had some great Mexican food that evening, and the next day drove to Arizona, stopping to see some really amazing sights in the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park (which conveniently straddles I-40 for many miles in northeastern Arizona).  We made it as far as the Grand Canyon Holiday Inn that night, and then on Day nine we got up and did the drive along the Canyon’s southern rim (which was a fantastic three hours that more than whet my appetite to return for some actual hiking there) in a paltry three and a half hours, then drove across the rest of Arizona and the Mojave Desert to get to Marcy’s folks’ house in Los Angeles that night.

It was a fun trip, and it felt even rather leisurely, the pace at which we did it.  I think the whole trip could probably be done in 5 days with some arduousness (and a lot of books on tape!).  It was nice to be done, though, and then spend a month or so here in LA resting a bit, working on some statistics, and getting ready for our big trip to Brazil.

So we’re leaving tomorrow, March 22nd, for said country.  We’ll be there until August 16th, with an apartment in Rio (hopefully found in a few days), during which time I’ve got five other states within Brazil in which to take interviews for my dissertation research.  We also should get to the Amazon, too, and are looking forward to hosting a parade of guests!  This blog should serve to let you know of my activities in this time, and also as a record for myself.  When we return, we’ll be moving to Berkeley, CA, for Marcy to start her PhD program in Political Science, and for me to fall to the writing of my dissertation.  Thus concludes the first entry of my new blog.