July 26–no excuse
Ok, I have no justification for the fact that’s been so long since I updated my blog. Let’s go backwards, like that episode of Seinfeld when they went to India.
I’m currently in Goiânia, in the middle of Brazil, on my final (thank goodness!) research side-trip. I got here last Wednesday after an 18-hour bus ride (no room left in the budget for plane tix). It’s a rather small city, for a state capital,although it’s not too far from Brasília. The state of Goiás is kind of like the Kansas of Brazil. It’s not hugely sophisticated and there’s not a lot to do, but the people are very nice, everything is cheap, and it’s quite safe. Last night I went for a long walk after dark through some neighborhoods of town I don’t know at all, but it all felt perfectly safe (I wouldn’t do that in Rio–or even in some parts of Cambridge).
Marcy, alas, is not here with me. She’s back in Rio with her sister Amy & her cousin Erin, who are visiting this week. They arrived this past Friday and went on a little trip to a beachtown this week, while I’m here.
So I arrived in Goiânia on Wednesday, the 19th, and had left a scant three days after returning to our Rio from our last trip, when Marcy & I went to the Amazon. This trip was purely vacation–no research, which felt really nice and also quite odd, in a way–not having something hanging over my head on a trip. We spent 5 days on a lodge on a lake about 100 miles southeast of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. We fished and swam and walked in the jungle and met a lot of bugs, and some nice people, and saw a lot of pretty birds, some caimans (like alligators, except they have no tongue), and a bunch of dolphins (a couple of the pink ones, which were really amazing). Marcy took a whole bunch of great pictures, which you can see here:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AcuWrlk4atWFX
So before we went to the Amazon, I had been back in Rio for just a week, during which time Marcy’s friends Josh & Sarah visited us. I got back to Rio on June 29th from Salvador, where I had been doing more interviews, although interrupted by a whole bunch of world cup games. I had left for Salvador on June 16th, along with Marcy & her parents. We were all in Salvador together for a weekend, and then I braved the Brazilian roads and we the four of us rented a car that I drove up to Praia do Forte, a beach town an hour north of Salvador. Marcy & her parents went back to Rio on June 21st, and her parents went back to Los Angeles a few days later. Marcy took some great pictures in Salvador & Praia do Forte, many of them in the aftermath of Brazil’s world cup victories (which came to an end a few day before we left for the Amazon–they lost in the quarter-final to France):
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Before Marcy’s parents arrived, Marcy & I had been in Rio for just a week since returning from our trip to the South of Brazil, where we were in the state of Santa Catarina & Paraná, which are very nice, and where I got a lot of research done. We saw some really pretty sites, too, especially on the Ilha da Santa Catarina, on the land side of which is Florianópolis, the state capital, and on the sea side of which we stayed in a nice B&B for Marcy’s birthday weekend, when Marcy unfortunately got very sick after a sumptuous birthday dinner at a this cute little French restaurant we found. In Paraná, we took a weekend day from our time in Curitiba to take a scenic train ride on an old rail line that goes over the mountains to the sea. We didn’t make it all the way to the sea, but we made it as far as the picturesque village of Morretes. Again, Marcy, who you’ll have realized by now is a very gifted photographer, took some great pictures. Here are three links that show pictures from the South of Brazil, as well as from our first trip, up to Maranhão (I think I covered that in a previous blog?), and from Rio.
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http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AcuWrlk4atWET
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AcuWrlk4atWET
So that should bring us up to date, then. I’ll be in Goiânia one more day trying in vain, probably, to get an interview with somebody from the Partido Liberal and somebody from the Partido Progressista. Then tomorrow afternoon I’ll get on the 18-hour bus back to Rio and have one day to hang out with Amy & Erin before they go back to the US. Then in just three more weeks, Marcy & I will be heading home oursevles, leaving on Aug 16, arriving Aug 17 in LA, picking up a U-Haul Aug 18, and on Aug 19 & 20 moving a bunch of furniture that Marcy’s parents have very generously given us up to Berkeley, where we will take up residence helping out our new landlady, Sheila Wander, in the hills above Oakland, and will be ensconced for a period of a least one year. It will be the first time that I’ve spent an entire academic year in the same place without having to go abroad and do field research since 2002-2003, and I can’t tell you how happy I will be to have a rest from the peregrinations of the past few years!
I promise I’ll do better at keeping up this blog, even if there’s little interesting to report. Take care, all.
- Dan
