Allow me to introduce the currency, the Brazilian Real. (pronounced hey-AL)
Um real R$ 1,00
Dois reais R$ 2,00 (pronounced hey-EYES)
Conversion--$1.00 US = R$ 2.26
This is how they package water a lot of the time, in a cup with a foil lid. Other times its bottled, but the bottles are really small. They also have really small cups and utensils a lot of the time.
The local Coors and Miller.
There's Brahma, Skol, and Original for local cheap beers. Cerveja is the word for beer, and chopp means draft. I think I like Skol best, but honestly, a strong case can be made that they all taste the same.
View from the hotel room we stayed in for the first 2 nights. There are a lot of high rise apartment buildings in Sao Paulo.
My school ID! ESPM is the name of the school whose classroom we use. They specialize in marketing and arts. They have really high tech studios for radio and photography, and they even have a mock-up grocery store to study packaging and merchandising!
Ahhh, here is the root of the recent protests.
This is the Sao Paulo metro, which consists of 12 lines, and costs R$ 3,00 (about $1.33 US) to ride. The metro system is much newer, nicer, and larger than Boston's, which costs $2.00 US to ride. So at first to me it seemed like a pretty good value. Why are people complaining over a R$ 0,20 fare hike (an increase of less than a dime)?
But then consider how much lower the wages are for the average Sao Paulan as compared to the average Bostonian. The minimum wage here is R$ 620/month (about $3,500/year). Of course, things are generally cheaper here, so you could say the purchasing power is more like that of around $7,500 US. That is still very low however, so the large amounts of poor in Brazil have a difficult time getting to work. There is a lot of support in Sao Paulo for the Movimento Passe Livre (Free Pass Movement), which is fighting to make transportation a public good that all could utilize. We had a Brazilian student come in to discuss it, so I'll leave it at that for now, and come back to this in a later entry.
Coffee. They also often drink it black and highly sweetened in a small espresso cup.
We were in a bookstore with Portuguese books, and saw some familiar titles.
Catedral da Se
Our culture teacher and oftentimes translator, Gustav, took us here for our first city tour. Gustav, first off, is hillarious. He is a small, awkward looking, chain smoking Brazilian with a British accent. He is a self described "free lance" teacher, who we all describe as a radical revolutionist. We like him though, he is a good translator and he shares with us what he knows. We just take his political views with a grain of salt.
Anyway, we went to Se, which is the historic center of Sao Paulo, where there is a nice square a beautiful cathedral. There were also a decent amount of homeless people here, but they don't really bother people or beg aggressively here.
One really interesting thing that we saw was a group of people in a small circle. There was one man in the center, shouting in Portuguese to the audience gathered 'round, listening quietly. Gustav explained that it was a special area in the square, where people were able to have a turn to speak their mind for all who care to listen. This man was speaking about religion and God, Gustav explained. I thought the idea seemed very democratic and American in a way.
This is what all the pay phones look like here! It's weird right?
This is the square, from the steps of the cathedral. Gus said this area was all re-done about ten years ago in an effort to clean up a junkier part of the city. It is still fairly empty, with broken windows and vacant apartments in places, because of the reputation it has, but people are starting to come back.
The peace bell! We rang it so everyone knew we were tourists, in case they weren't already sure.
Sao Paulo City Hall
Guarded and blocked off, some protests had happened here in the last few weeks.
A close look at the windows confirmed some broken glass, likely from thrown rocks during the protest.
This is a performing arts center with legendary acoustics
Seriously? I still can't decide if this is a joke or not. They have these huge ass seats in between the metro tracks. Assento Preferencial para pessoas obesas. Preferential seating for fat people. Hillarious. You would never see this in the States. Is it a kind gesture to the overweight, or a tongue-in-cheek way to make fun of them?
There's a lot of cool graffiti here.
This was a crooked little street that was entirely covered in graffiti. We loved it and took a lot of pics but didn't walk down the whole way because we were on our way to dinner.
Hmmm. Deep.
Rachel, Chris, Lia, and Joe. Great faces there guys.
A midday Brahma between classes. Sunny, Chris, Emily, Mollie, Hayley, and Joe
Ah there's Gus! He brought in sparklers for us to celebrate the 4th of July.
Coolest thing about the hostel. This living room is attached to to the kitchen, and located in the middle of the hostel, but the ceiling is open to the sky. It's so cool! Good spot to hang out, and you always know what the temp will be outside! And you can see stars at night, which surprised me considering how we're in the city. What about when it rains? Its only rained like twice since we've been here. The seat cushions get taken in, but everything else is okay. The ground is like small rocks, so the water doesn't pool up anywhere.
Playing some cards in the outdoor room. Clockwise: Rachel, Harrison, Hayley, Joe, Arturo, Jorge, Emily, Jordan, Lia, and Chris
Mollie at the sushi place near ESPM. They have a lot of sushi and pizza around here. The largest Japanese population outside of Japan is found in Sao Paulo, and there is a huge Italian influence as well. So this makes sense. I'm a fan of it.
ESPM. (not to be confused with ESPN haha)
The Sao Paulo Lodge Business Hostel. They have around 8 or so rooms for travelers, of which we're using like 5. Its pretty good here, the people that run it are super nice, and speak some English. They keep it very clean and provide us with a small breakfast each morning.
They name the rooms, so this one is called "Robocop". It's the 8 guy room with 4 double bunks, that is roughly the size of my bedroom in NH. So...its pretty crammed and has a distinctly "male" odor at times. But they make our beds and clean the room each day, so things are kept pretty orderly, and they give us fresh towels each week.
The first week a small group of us went for a short walk over to the Ibirapuera park. Its the second largest, and most popular park in Sao Paulo. It's huge! Like 11 times bigger than the Boston Common. And there are SO many people riding bikes, rollerblading, skateboarding, longboarding, ripsticking, tricycling, whatever else with wheels you can think of --ing. Young people, families, people working out, just literally everyone comes to this park because its got fields, playgrounds, paths, concrete pads for skateboarding, basketball courts etc. There's a river that cuts through it, and some nice bridges. There's fountains modeled after the ones at the Bellagio in Vegas there, (though having seen both I can say these are smaller!) Also, the structures in the park were designed by Oscar Niemeyer, a architect that is practically a hero/idol among the Sao Paulan community because he designed so many of the city's buildings.
The view from the bridge that crosses over to Ibirapuera.
Other side. You should see those motorcyclists weave through traffic here--they're nuts!
Agua de coco. Coconut water is a popular street food drink here, they had it on every corner in the park. We each got a large cup for R$ 4,00
Billy, TA Christian, and Arturo on a cool park bench made from a whole tree
Black swans, which I don't think I've ever really seen before
The way that you pay at bars and nightclubs makes so much sense. It's different from place to place, but at the clubs they usually they give you an electronic card that you give the bartender every time you get a drink. Then on your way out, there's a window that you pay at. You give them the card, they read the balance and charge you. Simple as that. Or some bars will give you a scorecard (above) that you give the bartender and they mark off drinks as you order them, then you again pay on the way out. The place I went to last night gives you a bracelet that has a number on it, then when you get a drink you show them your bracelet and they keep track of it in their system and charge you at the end. (Notice I got a caipirinha here, that's the national drink of Brazil! It's made with fruit and cachaza, which is like a rum/tequilla type of alcohol made from fermented sugar cane, its the most popular liquor in Brazil).
Open-air market on the first Saturday. They had some interesting things, mostly antiques and crafts.
The street that we walked down to get to the market had literally a million music shops on it. Like 90% of the businesses on this street sold musical instruments. One of our guides, Angela, was saying that you see streets like that pretty often here, that are just entirely dedicated to one thing like that. Must make for a lot of competition!
The electrical wiring on the streets seems questionable. I could be wrong, but I think an electrician would look at this and cringe.
Walking through the tunnel from the metro, we saw this dragon being painted. When we saw it again on the way back it had grown a lot longer!
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