tl;dr
- I will be spending the summer in Brazil, and am currently in São Paulo.
- I ate some yummy Brazilian food and went to an awesome art gallery called MASP.
Hi, everyone! As many of you know I am spending the summer doing material property characterization of plant resins and essential oils in Santarém, Pará, Brazil (near the Amazon) at UFOPA (Federal University of Western Pará). I hope to use this blog to keep my friends and family aware that I am still alive, have something to help me remember this experience in the future, and share with friends and family all of the things I am learning and doing. I am so excited for this summer and can’t wait to share my experiences with you all! xoxo
My journey began when I left Boston Logan on Thursday, June 6th for a direct flight to São Paulo. I landed at São Paulo/Guarulhos airport (GRU) at around 4:30am. I was with another MIT student, Jenny, who will be working in Campinas, São Paulo this summer. We waited at the airport for a bit until both of our hosts were awake, and while we were waiting, over the course of just one hour, four men came up to us asking for money (two of them separately coming over to sell a book and claiming to be professors). This, I later learned from Maria Rodrigues (an MIT Sloan student from São Paulo), is because of the recent recession in Brazil.
For the first two days of my stay in São Paulo I am hosted by Maria. Maria is an MIT Sloan student who is working on investments in education. She told me that her inspiration for this work came from her frustration, as a young child growing up in São Paulo, due to the inequality she saw between herself and the poor children all around São Paulo. When you drive around, you can see kids selling candy to commuters on the streets. The inequality here is evident from the moment I came. There are homeless people sleeping on the streets everywhere. Maria explained that these people are referred to as flanelinha. Flanelinha is “the nickname given to a generally unregulated individual, who usually uses coercion to obtain remuneration for services rendered in parking, cleaning or protecting a motor vehicle” (Wikipedia).
Image taken from: ‘Unemployed family balances bills with cake and bullet sold on the streets’
Anyway, when I got to Maria’s apartment, she made a traditional Brazilian breakfast with tapioca pancakes! She told me to put a cheese spread and a sugary syrup and roll it up – it was good 🙂
After breakfast, Maria had to go to work, so she walked me to the mall, where I got a SIM card. It was a nice mall and I saw this cool statue. I bought a scarf because it is actually kind of cold here and then went to meet my friends Rafa and Eric for lunch. Rafa and Eric both did the Weizmann ISSI program with me in the summer of 2016, and both of them are from São Paulo. We met up at the Google Brasil offices and went from there.
First, we went to Hebraica, a sort of Jewish community center/country club where Eric went to school. It was really beautiful – there was lots of greenery. Then we went to a restaurant at a mall food court. After that, Rafa and Eric had to go back to work, so I went to MASP (Museum of Art of São Paulo). They have an exhibition on the art of Tarsila do Amaral. Because of the exposition, the line was really long – I waited for an hour just to get a ticket, but it was worth it!
The top floor of the museum had tons of paintings, ordered from newest to oldest, on these kind of glass easels (see picture). The art was on the front side and the name of the artist and descriptions were on the back – they said this allowed people to look at the art in a more unbiased way. They had everything from modern artists (like Luis Braga, who took the picture above on the left) to Degas, van Gogh, and Picasso. The floor below was the Tarsila do Amaral exhibit. I found it interesting to see the evolution of do Amaral’s style over time. I spent about 3.5 hours at the museum and then went back to the apartment for a bit before heading to Beit Chabad Morumbi in São Paulo.
Rabbi Berel Weitman and his family were very welcoming. The shabbat dinner consisted of me, the rabbi’s family, and an older expat Frenchman. We talked about many things, including a new vegan restaurant in São Paulo called Plant Made. We also talked about Shavuot (which started the evening after). I was going to Uber home from shabbat, but the older Frenchman offered to drive me home. It was kind of a wild ride because he was quite old and probably shouldn’t have been allowed to drive, especially at night, but I made it home safely and proceeded to sleep for a sweet 9.5 hours 🙂
Adventures of Talia 