I am a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, in Ilhéus, a city of about 220,000 in Northeast Brazil in the province of Bahia. The position lasts one academic year, from February until the end of November, so as to not fall off the planet, I will attempt to update this blog regularly.
I suppose I will start in the beginning.
I arrived in São Paulo last Sunday and we had 5 days of orientation with the ~30 ETA's that have teaching placements in Brazil this year. Although I generally get overwhelmed at orientations like this, I am actually very glad to have met all of the other Fulbrighters, the administrators and other teachers who organized and led the orientation. I made some close friends and am looking forward to visiting/seeing them in the future.
Impressions of São Paulo? Not my kind of place. Well, no city is really my kind of place and São Paulo is no exception. It is an enormous city- skyscrapers, people, constant movement, cars, litter, TRAFFIC. I didn't spend enough time there to make any valuable conclusions about the location, but I can safely conclude that if I never return, I will not regret it. This is not to say that there was nothing enjoyable about the city--we went to the Museu da Língua Portuguesa, where everything was (surprise!) written and spoken in Portuguese, and to the mercado municipal, the historical marketplace, where you could buy just about any kind of food-- fruit, meat, fish, spices-- all under one roof. There is also a surprising amount of green space within the city: once you enter the parks, you almost forget you are in the middle of a booming city... you can finally breathe again.
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| O Museu da Língua Portuguesa, São Paulo |
A highlight of the orientation week was an unexpected invitation to a "nutrition convention". Before coming to Brazil, I vowed that, as a general rule, I would accept invitations and not fear the unknown. So, when my fellow ETA and new friend, Trevor, invited me to this "convention" simply because I was in the right place at the right time, I accepted. Claudio, a knee doctor who Trevor met on the plane to São Paulo, picked us up in front of the hotel and drove us to an intimate Italian restaurant. The "convention" actually turned out to be an event for HerbaLife, a U.S.-based pyramid scheme company that sells various "vitamins" and weight loss /nutrition miracle pills to ignorant victims. Claudio had been selling HerbaLife for a few years and had numerous distributors working underneath him. We listened to a presentation (enteirely in Portuguese- good practice!) made by a successful HerbaLife salesman and ate a delicious (did I mention free?) Italian dinner. Claudio was a wonderfully kind man. Before leaving us back at the hotel, he told us that even though he didn't know us well, he "could see it in our eyes". See "what", exactly? Well, who knows? But I could see "it" in his eyes as well. He showed us an amazing act of hospitality and kindness that will not be forgotten.
On Friday, Amalia (the other ETA who will be working at UESC) and I flew to Ilhéus. I again met an extremely friendly Brazilian couple on the plane. They unhesitantly invited me to their home and smiled all the time. Gente boa. As we flew over Ilhéus and the surrounding rainforest, I could not have been more relieved. Green, lush forest for miles. Then I spotted the ocean....aaah the ocean. Just a two hour flight from São Paulo, Ilhéus is an entirely different place. I had seen pictures before I came here, but nothing compares to the true smell of the sea, the blinding brightness of the sun, and the fresh ocean air. I think I'm going to like it here.
Tatiany, the professor who coordinates our Fulbright posiiton, picked us up at the airport. She has been a fantastic host thus far- taking us around the cty and some surrounding beaches, and helping us to search for an apartment. She had us over yesterday for a traditional Brazilian barbecue with some other professors from UESC, their spouses, and children. Tatiany's husband prepared an enormous meal- he kept the meat coming and the eating and conversation lasted 5 hours!
The
beach
is
unbelievable.
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| Beach in Ilhéus directly outside of our hotel |
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| Enjoying one of the few cloudy summer days on the beach |
I cannot believe that I will be living here for the next 9 months.
