Going Downriver...

Tonight is our last night and Manaus, and tomorrow morning we leave by boat to (eventually) make our way to Santarém. It'll take just over a week to get there because we'll be making various stops along the way, one of which is a three day "rural homestay" in which we'll all stay with different families living in small communities along the river. One of the main attractions in Manaus, which we'll be able to see tomorrow morning, is called the "meeting of the waters". What happens is the brown-colored Solimões (the local name for the Amazon River) meets with the black-colored Rio Negro. Because the two have drastically different minerals, they meet but don't combine for a while, dividing the river into two distinct colors. Though they eventually do mix completely, the phenomenon is repeated again in Santarém when the Tapajós River meets the Amazon. So, we'll be lucky enough to see both.

The past few days have been packed with lectures and other things, but I've been able to visit an art gallery just a few blocks away from our hotel featuring the work of a local artist and explore the downtown area and market a little bit. And at the Permaculture Institute I was also able to eat heart of palm (freshly cut) and was able to try (for the second time) the Miracle Fruit. It pretty much makes anything you eat after it taste sweet...even limes, which we were eating it with. Don't know why I forgot to mention those. I also visited a local store that sells books and handicrafts made by nearby indigenous populations. Interestingly enough, they had the Portuguese version of one of our required readings this semester -- "Rainforest Cities," written by Prof. Brian Godfrey of Vassar! I took his class on Brazil last spring and learned an incredible amount about this exciting country, and I'm now getting the chance to experience so much of that learning.

Today we had a little bit more of a relaxing day. We drove to a nearby town, Presidente Figueiredo, about two hours north of Manaus. There we visited a private hotel/preserve area that had some beautiful waterfalls. We spent the whole morning there so after some exploration I set up next to the water and took a nice nap under the trees. We had a lecture later about "community-based ecotourism," then came back to Manaus for the night. So, time to gather together all of the goodies I've accumulated and get ready for a few days of living on the Amazon River!

Food! And Manaus!

One of the best things so far about being in the Amazon has been the amazing diversity of local foods available. During our orientation week I tried I don't know how many different juices, many of which came from fruits only available regionally. One yummy fruit which we've had in ice cream and juice form is cupuaçu; we've also had it as a jelly inside of chocolate. Mmm. We've also had watermelon, pineapple, avocado, and other juices here that are available in the U.S.--but they're usually fresh and much better here.

Then there's açai, which I've had several times with my homestay family. The way it's consumed here is not at all like in the U.S. Instead of drinking it as a sweet juice it's eaten, as a thick, cold soupy dish. It has a bitter, almost grassy taste and is often eaten with farinha, another amazing local food. The coconut water that I've had a few times has also been different than what I've had in the U.S. I usually can't stand the taste of coconuts, in any form, but the coconut water here (which people drink from cold coconuts purchased from any number of street vendors) tastes mostly like water but also a little bit like watermelon. I also really like the mangoes here (but not usually at home), and they and the bananas are much smaller but more full of flavor than in the U.S.

A local dish that I tried just the other day was tacacá. It's essentially a soup made from the broth of a small yellow fruit (tucupi) with a leafy green (called jambu, it leaves your mouth feeling tingly) and shrimp (which I abstained from). Other interesting things about local food: fast food (i.e. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Subway) is super expensive and considered a luxury; people eat everything they order at restaurants with forks and knives (including sandwiches, burgers, and pizza); people here love to put ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise on just about anything; peanut butter is (unfortunately) not very popular and actually pretty expensive; breakfast is usually light (bread and butter or cheese, or crackers and maybe fruit) and lunch is the largest, most important meal of the day.

But in addition to experimenting with food, we've (since yesterday) been in Manaus. Located 800 miles upriver from Belém, Manaus was first heavily settled at the end of the 1800s during the rubber boom in Brazil. It was the money from this trade that paid for an opera house to be built in France and assembled here. It was restored in the 1970s and is now the Teatro Amazonas--we went there tonight for a free music festival. Manaus fell on hard times after the first decade of the 1990s, and after WWII the Brazilian government set it up as a free trade zone within the country. Pretty much what that meant was that industries could set up shop here, assembly things manufactured in other states, and not have to pay many taxes. So the population grew starting in the 1970s and it now has about 2 million people (in a state, Amazonas--the largest in Brazil--with about 4-5 million people).

So today we visited the Permaculture Institute of Amazonia, a local NGO working to develop agricultural alternatives to slash and burn, industrial monoculture, and other agriculture techniques. It was an awesome visit, and I even got to buy some honey produced by the bees that they keep there (which, unlike European or African bees, don't sting)!

We're spending the next few days in and around Manaus, and on Friday we set sail down the Amazon for the Trombetas River!

Capoeira(s)

A couple of interesting things that we did in the last week involved different forms of "capoeria". The word comes from Tupi-Guarani words which mean "a forest that used to be". The first form of capoeira that we learned about was perhaps the more well-known form. This is the capoeira that combines music, dance, and martial arts into a uniquely Brazilian art form. We had a short "class" outside of the Forte do Castelo in downtown Belém. The fort was the first building constructed in Belém, at the beginning of the 17th century, and was used to protect against incursions from England and the Netherlands (and later an indigenous uprising of Tupinambá Indians). So, we were in a heavily trafficked area and all of the primary school field trip groups stopped to watch 19 gringos look ridiculous.

As our teacher for the day told us, capoeira is a Brazilian art form with an African mother. Capoeira first formed when enslaved Africans in Brazil would practice martial arts but disguise their actions as dance. As we were told, the name of the art form came as a result of runaways who hid in the low-lying secondary forests, or capoeiras.

The second form of capoeira that we learned about was the more literal kind. We spent the last three days in São Francisco, a municipality about two hours east of Belém. There are portions of relatively undisturbed primary forest there as well as pastures, farms, and a large number of secondary forests. One of the things we learned about was the difference between those primary forests that remain and the secondary forests (or "capoeiras") that have regrown after being slashed and burned. Here's a picture of a regrowing capoeira plot next to a piece of land that was burned only about a week ago.

We also visited several farms in the area that have stopped using slash and burn and instead used heavy machinery to chop and mulch the land. They also plant a greater variety of plants and inter-plant to keep the land healthier. So we got to eat yummy tangerines at one farm and sample freshly made farinha at another.

Now that I have your attention...

It's getting hotter here. It's getting colder at home. Right now I consider that something positive. Anyways, I decided to create this site in order to let friends and family know what I’m up to in northern Brazil this semester. It also saves me the trouble of sending individual emails with pictures!

So, obviously, I’m studying abroad this semester. I arrived in Belém do Pará the morning of September 2nd and met the group at the airport later that night. The city is located in northern Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon River, and has a little over 2 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area. It also has an informative Wikipedia page. I’m here studying through and SIT program here, which pretty much means that they organize the classes, excursions, and homestays for myself and the other 18 students here (all from the U.S.). We spent the first week in Brazil at a farm outside of Belém. We sat through (almost) extremely exciting orientation lectures, played a lot of futebol, and even got to venture (kind of) into the rain forest. Part of that

walk-through included "helping" to harvest açaí (which was later made into a juice for us).

We also had an introduction our classes for the semester: Portuguese, a Thematic Seminar (classroom-based), an Environmental Field Studies Seminar (field-based, obviously), and the Independent Study Project, in which we choose individual topics and research them for four weeks, either in and around Belém or somewhere else in northern Brazil. Our first "field" experience was a trip to the mangroves near Belém and a meeting with a fishing family who operate out of a small island at the beginning of the Atlantic.

And on Wednesday the 8th we finally came to Belém and met with our host families! I'm living with a mother and daughter (and a poodle) just outside of the city. After dropping off my luggage here that night we drove to Icoarací, a town north of Belém where we sat on the banks of the river and drank the water of cold coconuts. Delicious. They've also taken me to the Botanical Garden here and the Museo Paraense Emilio Goeldi, a combination of a zoo and museum of the flora and fauna of the Amazon region.

So, since Wednesday we've mostly been studying Portuguese and spending time with our host families here. Obviously I'm a little late starting this but the more things we do the more I'll have to post!