The Journey

I am being faced with an interesting dilema.  I have been in Brazil for over a month, and I am still enjoying it like crazy.  Truely embrassing the culture.  Portuguese lessons everyday, started a capoeira class.  Food Friends and Cerveja!  I love it.  But I´m supposed to be traveling all over south America.  There are lots of places to enjoy and I know I will love other cities as-well.  But if I´m continuously traveling, and moving place to place, am I really embrasing anything.  Will I truely get a glimpse of what the culture of that place is if I don´t participate myself?  I need your help people, give me some direction.

I have been in Brasil for almost a month now, and what an experience it has been.  My trip began on Christmas day when I left San Francisco headed for Rio.  I hit the ground running after I arrived.  Although it took a little time to find Kjeld, we finally crossed paths and began the adventure.  My first day in Brasil I got the best of its offerings.  The beach, a beautiful sunset, and samba at Salgueiro.  The party in Rio never seemed to stop, especially with the Pan American Summit for Couch Surfing.

The beaches are always packed with beautiful women, and men in speedo´s if thats what your into, the sucos are always tasty and the weather is hot hot hot!  But there is a dark side as well which I got to experience first hand.  One night a few days after New Years, a few CS friends and I were enjoying dinner at Pizza Hut, (quite a different kind of pizza experience from what I was used to in the states.) when all of sudden we heard an explosion outside the restraunt across the street.  We didn´t know what it was at the time but I read later in the papers that a group of guys had purchased an arsenal of weapons from the flavela and were trying to get away from the cops who had found out what they were up to.  In an attempt to distract their chasers, the guys threw a hand grenade out the window at a taxi.  The group was finally pulled over where they began shooting hitting one innocent bystander in the leg and another in the ass.  Craziness.  Especially because 2 minutes after the event, life for the Cariocas was back to normal.  So mine was too.

On the 11th of January I arrived in Belo Horizonte.  The city is the capital of the state of Minas Gerais.  There is nothing particularly special about this city other than some early architecture by Neimyer.  Bars are easy to come by (BH is known to have the highest amount of bars per capita in Brasil) and the people are incredibly friendly. There is a 7:1 ratio of women to men (at least this is what has continually been repeated to me) which has an appeal of its own.  I´ve found two teachers to teach me Portuguese starting next Monday.  It might be impossible to leave this town.

There is a lot of places left to visit on my trip but I´m trying to enjoy the moments and not rush experiece in order to simply have more locations visited.  Last night I began learning Forró.  A beautiful dance, complicated by my two left feet, but none the less lots of fun.  I think I will begin some classes as well because it is a dance well worth learning. 

The flight began a little scary.  As were taxing out, the cabin generator lost power and we were forced to return to the terminal.  The problem however was quickly fixed and the half full flight to Rio began the evening of the the 25th.  The day I learned later of the Nigerian Nationalist in Detroit.  Safely arriving I wondered the airport for a few hours failing many attempts to get money or find my friend.  However, both soon changed and we headed out for a long day, and even longer night of Samba.  All is well.

N.) Just stick with it - let it all go and you will be surprised where it can take you. sometimes when we want something so bad, we tend to choose the wrong thing. sometimes that special thing looks very different on the outside than we would imagine it to be. just be patient - and most of all, trust your gut instincts.

I.) …and yet, its very hard sometimes to let go of the things you want most. Even when you think you have, I find that in-fact I have not and even more, my hand is cramped from holding on so tightly.

N.) the things we want most in life - we must let go of first. i really believe that until you allow yourself that freedom, we can burden the dream instead of making it flourish. letting go is far more difficult than chasing after the dream.  just wake up each day and pray that the universe guides you - even if the path does not appear as you want it to, sometimes it can be even better in the long run.

N.) i said some serious prayers that asked for guidance - asked for strength to believe in whatever path was given to me. it wasn’t until i fully let go of the dream that it arrived. it is hard to explain - but sometimes you have to really have faith in the darkest hour.