End of Rio, Ouro Preto, Salvador

It´s Sunday night in Salvador, and it´s a good time to sit down and write a good old fashioned blog post. We´ve been to a number of places since I last wrote, so I´ll play catch-up a little bit.

When last I wrote, it was rainy and cold in Rio and we hadn´t had a chance to do fun Rio things, so on our last day we decided to go to Ipanema and Copacabana just so I could look at the beach. And around the time that we got there, all of a sudden the sun came out and it was even a little bit warm for a minute, so we walked along the beach and I even walked out in the water a little bit. It was really nice. We then decided to roll the dice and try to head over to Corcovado and the Cristo Redentor sculpture, and it was actually visible for the first time in my entire stay there. The sun was setting right as we got to the foot of the mountain and as soon as we got off the city bus a guy with a van, correctly pegging us light-haired and fair-skinned folk as tourists, offered to get us up to the Cristo before the park closed at 6:00. We paid him and he drove like a madman up these crazy narrow switchbacks, getting us to the summit before it closed as promised. Even though it was dark and a little bit cloudy, it was still breathtaking to be up above the city all lit up. It absolutely blew me away. I was so glad that the heavens opened briefly to let me have a perfect Rio moment.

We then took a bus north to the state of Minas Gerais, which means "General Mines." Sidenote: Brazil is full of states that have wacky names, like Mato Grosso ("Thick Jungle"), Bahia ("Bay"), Rio de Janeiro ("River of January"), and Espírito Santo ("Holy Ghost"). Anyways, Minas was the first place in Brazil where they discovered gold and there was a major gold rush there in the 16th and 17th centuries. The towns were so rich that they built dozens and dozens of immaculate churches, but when the gold rush ended these same towns were so remote that many of the inhabitants decided to settle elsewhere, so the towns have been largely unchanged for several centuries. We visited the largest of these gold rush towns, Ouro Preto ("Black Gold") and spent the day dragging ourselves up and down the improbably steep cobblestone streets, visiting one gorgeous baroque-style, gold-covered church after another.

We were only in Minas for two days before we moved on to Salvador, the oldest city in Brazil. It´s lined with beautiful beaches, gorgeous but sadly neglected architecture spanning several centuries, and a vibrant infusion of African culture. We arrived at our hostel in a funky little neighborhood called Barra and then took a bus straight to Pelourinho, the historical center of the city. Turns out we picked the perfect time to come to Salvador - for the past two weeks they´ve been holding the Festival of St. John and the place was crazy. The festival is a type of Festa Junina ("June Party") that they hold all over Brazil and I´ve been to a lot of them so far, since this is now the fourth June I´ve spent in Brazil. Normally they have some fun flag decorations and people put some bright patches on their clothes, and people dance a quadrilha, which is kind of like a square dance.

But Salvador has a reputation for knowing how to really party, and their St. John Festival is like a Festa Junina on a whole ton of steroids. The Pelourinho district is a lot of big interconnected public squares, and each one of the squares was crammed full of people and absolutely rocking. We watched the concert on the left, with this band playing Forró music (think country music with lots of accordian and triangle) and everyone on the square dancing. But my favorite thing that we saw that night was a quadrilha contest. This was not the cheesy square dance thing that I knew at all. Each group had a few dozen dancers that presented a 20-minute multisectional dance with a narrative drawn from Brazilian folklore. Being a Brazilian folklore newbie I couldn´t really follow the story, but I still could appreciate the outrageously flashy costumes, the extremely high energy dancing, and the blaringly loud live forró bands.

Maggie and I manage to squeeze our way up to the very edge of the stage - so close that the dancers skirts occasionally flipped around and hit us in the face. It was like a National Geographic story come to life and I could hardly believe I was actually there. The whole experience felt so authentic because there were practically no tourists around - this festival is put on by Baianos, for Baianos. But my words can hardly do the quadrilha justice, so I took this video:

The best part of this dance happened right after I finished taking this video. I was holding this half-eaten caramel apple-like thing I bought from a street vendor when suddenly one of the girl´s skirts whipped around and smacked the caramel apple out of my hand and out into the middle of the dance floor. I was so worried that someone was going to step on it/fall and fracture their skull, but one of the security people ran over, waited until that part of the dance floor briefly cleared out, and retrieved the errant apple.

We´ve already seen so many faces of Brazil on this trip and we still haven´t even been to the Amazon or Iguaçú Falls down south. The only unfortunate thing is that it´s been raining and quite cold everywhere I´ve been since I left Campinas and I haven´t felt super great. I´ve had a sore throat for about a week, but the little bit of sun we´ve seen so far in Salvador has helped a lot. Tomorrow it looks we´re in for a little bit of sun, so we´re planning on hitting the beach for the first time. But even if it rains it won´t be that bad - we´ll just go see Wall•E instead :)

Quick Hi from Rio

I only have a minute, but I just wanted to check in from Rio. I got here on Sunday night and it has been raining and super cloudy the whole time I´ve been here, so we haven´t been able to do all the Rio things you´re supposed to do - go to the giant Cristo Rendentor statue up on top of Corcovado, take the gondola up to the top of Pão de Açúcar, or go to the beach in Copacabana or Ipanema. It´s supposed to keep raining until we leave on Thursday morning, so I guess we´ll just have to miss out.

Still, it´s cool just being in Rio, and it´s been so great to meet up with Maggie. It´s so fun to have a travel companion after a whole week of roaming around by myself. We´ve done a bunch of things that were really fun, liking getting soaked in the Jardim Botânico and a fun day trip up in the hills to Petrópolis, were the palace of the emperor Dom Pedro II is. Maggie and I took a tour of the palace and then we took a horse-driven carriage ride around the city and it was a blast.

My last couple days in Campinas were really incredible. I´m planning to elaborate on certain experiences later on, but right now we´re on the move all the time there´s not a whole lot of time to write.

I´m about to collapse from exhaustion, so boa noite.

Saudações do Brasil

Greetings from Campinas, Brazil, the city of surprisingly few internet cafés (or 'LANhouse', as most of them are called here). The lack of internet access coupled with the frenetic pace of my travels so far have prevented me from writing anything here, but since I just stepped all weird in a hole in the sidewalk and twisted my ankle, I figured now might be a good time to sit down and relax a little.

The last week before I came down here I started to get really anxious about this trip - was Brazil really the magical and wonderful place I remembered from six years ago, or had I romanticized Brazil and I would come back and everything would feel different and disappointing because I´m not a missionary this time? The answer so far is mostly the former, with a little bit of the latter mixed in for good measure.

I took a trip to Piracicaba yesterday and it definitely fell into the romanticized/disappointing category. I still am in love with the downtown area, but when I went back to the neighborhood on the outskirts of the city where I lived for six months I could only think of one word: depressing. I remembered the neighborhood being really green and safe and beautiful, but maybe I had on a big fat pair of rose-colored glasses on when I was a missionary because yesterday it looked so ugly, all the grass was dead, all the sugarcane fields I used to love were cut down, all the houses looked totally ramshackle, and I couldn´t get into contact with anyone that I knew there because their phone numbers were all different and they had all moved away. To top it all off, I stepped in some dog crap in the middle of the road.

On the bright side, Campinas itself is just as awesome as I remembered it. I feel completely at home here, and I am surprised at how well I remember everything about the city. I brought a big old map of the city with me to help me remember my way around, but I´ve hardly even used it because I remember pretty much every square inch of the city. With every single street that I walk on brings this whooshing feeling in my brain and I can suddenly remember everything that ever happened to me on that street.

The church has grown so much in Campinas since I left. There used to be three stakes here in the city itself; now there are four plus a little city right next door (Hortolândia) that used to be a part of a Campinas stake now has an entire stake to itself. Every single chapel I´ve gone back to visit has has been completely rebuilt and has doubled in size. It's been amazing to see.

But even more amazing has been seeing all the church members that I knew and loved all those years ago. I came down here without getting into contact with anyone because I couldn't find phone numbers and addresses after so many years, plus I feared that many people would have changed phone numbers or moved (I was right on both counts, but fortunately most have only moved a street or two away from their old houses). I was worried that maybe the whole week would go by and I wouldn't see any of my old friends at all.

Fortunately, that hasn't been the case at all. I'm staying at the housing they have at the Campinas Temple for church members who come from thousands of miles away (I think Michigan qualifies) and the first morning I was there I asked the receptionist if a man named Olavo still worked at the temple as a gardener. She said he did and that he was actually right outside. Olavo and his wife Mirian were a family that we baptized near the beginning of my mission and in the last month of my mission, just after the Campinas Temple was dedicated, I got to attend their sealing. He invited me over to his house for dinner that night. Moments later I strolled out of the parking lot and saw that the security guard was Claudio Campos, a good friend of mine from the Planalto Ward. And it has gone on and on like that - I've seen dozens and dozens of the people I love from all of the areas I lived during the the entire two-year span of my mission.

There was one man named Oberdan that we baptized that I was a little worried about because his wife had just died and he lived in a really dangerous favela so I didn't know if I would ever hear about him again, but the aforementioned Claudio Campos told me that Oberdan had married his (Claudio's) sister, they now have five kids, and they have been sealed in the temple. I was so thrilled to hear that. Overall I've felt a little bit like Alma when he ran into the sons of Mosiah after a couple of years:

...therefore Alma did rejoice exceedingly to see his brethren; and what added
more to his joy, they were still his brethren in the Lord; yea, and they had
waxed strong in the knowledge of the truth; for they were men of a sound
understanding and they had searched the scriptures diligently, that they
might know the word of God. (Alma 17:2)

Well, my hour is almost up and my ankle is feeling a lot better, so I think I will be taking off now. When next I write it will probably be from Rio. I'm going to Rio - how cool is that?

Brazilian Geography Lesson

This is Brazil:


It is big. It's the 5th biggest country in the world, and it is larger than the 48 contiguous United States. And from June 15th to July 13th, I will be trying to see as much of it as I can.

The whole thing started when my friend Maggie got a big fat award from the school of music to go down to Rio de Janeiro for over a month to study choros, a uniquely Brazilian genre of flute music. She had served her mission in Manaus, Brazil and she had basically put together her whole award proposal as a means to finance a trip back to Brazil. When I first heard that she had gotten the award and all the money for the trip, I first congratulated her and then asked her if she was going to do any traveling while she was down there. She said she really wanted to, but she wasn't so keen on the idea of traveling alone. "I'll go!" immediately shot out of my mouth. You see, I too served a mission in Brazil (Missão Brazil Campinas) and in the six years since I've returned I've been actively looking for excuse to go back down. The timing was just right and I felt like this might be my last chance ever to go back there.

Maggie has been down there for over a month already and I am going to meet her in Rio after one week by myself back in Campinas. After a few more days in Rio we are taking off on a massive tour of the whole country. We purchased a travel package called the Brazil Air Pass, which allows the passenger to fly to any four destinations in Brazil in any order. Maggie and I had a half dozen or so planning meetings over several weeks to try to plan out exactly where we would go. We both had our list of places that we didn't want to miss, but that list got way out of hand for our three week time frame, so we had to say goodbye to Recife, Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre, etc. But we eventually worked out a realistic travel plan and, with the help of Craig the travel agent, worked out the following itinerary:

(Special thanks to MS Paint. I hope they never get rid of it, even if it is laughably primitive.)

Legend: Red lines = bus trips; Green lines = plane trips

1. São Paulo - I fly into São Paulo on Sunday night, and I immediately catch a bus to Campinas.

2. Campinas - I am spending an entire week here to revisit my old stomping ground here. I spent about half of my mission in the city of Campinas - six months in the north district, six months in the south district. But my all the the other areas where I served are really close as well, a 45-minute bus ride tops. I'm planning on staying at the Campinas Temple, which has lodging for temple patrons for 8 reais a night (about $4.90).

3. Rio de Janeiro - Next I take a 5-hour bus ride to Rio to meet up with Maggie. We'll spend about three days there before we catch a bus going to...

4. Ouro Preto/Belo Horizonte - Ouro Preto is a 17th-century mining town that is full of immaculate Baroque architecture and is a UNESCO world heritage site. It's just outside of the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte.

5. Salvador - In Belo Horizonte we'll catch a flight to Salvador, a vibrant, highly African-influenced city with tons of history, music, capoeira circles, and great beaches.

6. Manaus - Then we fly to Manaus, a city of a million and a half people smack dab in the middle of the Amazon rain forest. Maggie served her mission here, so we'll stay with some of her friends and we're planning on taking a tour that goes out on the Amazon river.

7. Rio Branco - This city is definitely not a tourist destination and it is extremely remote (near the Bolivian border), but it was Maggie's favorite mission area and pretty much the whole reason she wanted to tour around Brazil, so I'm game. Besides, how many people have you met in your entire life that can say they have been to Rio Branco?

8. Foz de Iguaçú - We'll fly out of Rio Branco through Brasília on our way down south to Iguaçú Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world - it's like Niagara Falls on steroids. The falls are right on the border of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay and we're going to take a boat ride that takes you right up to the falls.

9. Curitiba - We'll take an overnight bus to Curitiba, capital the state of Paraná. They just dedicated a new LDS temple there on June 1, so that will be great to see. At this point, Maggie will fly back to Rio to pick up her stuff and fly home, and I will catch a bus to...

10. São Paulo - My trip comes full circle and I fly back home to Michigan on July 13.

This trip makes about as much sense as a foreigner coming to the U.S. and wanting to visit New York, then San Francisco, then the Grand Canyon, then Miami. Totally impractical. But that's why it's going to be so fun. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I just couldn't pass it up. As the end of my mission was approaching I simply did not want to leave Brazil, so I extended my mission for another six weeks. I probably would have extended again but my Visa would have expired, so they had to ship me home. As the wheels of the airplane lifted off the runway I felt like I had lost something, and I promised myself that I would go back some day. It took me six years, but I'm going back in style.

My Girls

These are my girls, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore.

Okay, I know that they are fictional characters from a television show, but they are so well-written and well-acted that they feel like real people to me. Every time I pop in a DVD or flip past them on TV it feels like they've come over to my place to hang out for an hour. And they are excellent company - smart, quick-witted, unpredictable, and always so funny. They're also quite easy on the eyes.

I first discovered my girls during my second summer with the Ohio Light Opera. As soon as all of our shows had opened and we no longer had any rehearsals to attend, my mornings were suddenly very open. One morning I was looking at the channel with all the TV listings and I noticed that Gilmore Girls was currently on. My sister Emily had been telling me for years that I needed to watch it, but I had resisted because it just seemed too girly, too soapy, and too WB-y, if you know what I mean. I should have been more open-minded - I previously had to overcome all of these same objections in order to discover Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which immediately became my favorite show of all time. So that fateful morning in Ohio I decided to give Gilmore Girls a shot. I kinda liked it. The next day I went back for seconds. I liked it even more. By the third day I was completely hooked, and I watched it every morning for the rest of the summer (and eventually my friend/housemate Tyler was watching religiously with me as well), and when I got back home again I bought the DVDs of the first five seasons.

I love everything about this show. It is so funny and goofy, wistful and melancholy, far-fetched and realistic, often all at the same time. The family relationships on the show are as real and moving as any in the history of television, and it is humanistic in the way that even hard and potentially unlikeable characters like Emily Gilmore or Mrs. Kim can be loving and vulnerable sometimes.

I love the fictional Stars Hollow, Connecticut - it's a magical little town where everyone sticks their nose in everyone else's business and they're always having goofy traditions and public ceremonies, like the following:



Last summer I visited Connecticut for the first time as I drove from Boston to New York, and I pulled off at some random exit and drove around some tiny little towns hoping to find a Stars Hollow-like town, but there was no trace of Miss Patty's Dance Studio, Luke's Diner, Gypsy's Auto Repair, or Kim's Antiques. I did see this cool old barn though.

Although I love the show fanatically, I had never gotten around to watching the final season. The creator of the show left along with many of the longtime writers and a lot of fans had complained about a drop-off in quality, and I used that as an excuse not finish watching the whole series. But last week I decided to just plow through the last season because I love my girls so much that I don't really expect perfection from them, I just love their company. The first half of the season wasn't wonderful, but to my surprise the writing really picked up for the final few episodes, some of which rival episodes from the brilliant first few seasons.

As the number of episodes left to watch dwindled, I started to get pretty emotional because it finally dawned on me that there is a finite amount of Gilmore Girls in the world. By not watching the last season I was maintaining the illusion that the show just went on forever. But everything comes to an end eventually, and during the last episode I had a full breakdown. Just ask my roommates, Seth and Micah, who watched it along with me. I was a wreck - I was crying and sniffing and 'awwwing' all over the place. The last episode featured a "It's a Wonderful Life"-type assemblage at the end, and if you're going to go there I'm gonna have to cry like crazy; I'm like Pavlov's dogs.

It's been a few days since my meltdown and I've come to terms with the ending of the show. Ultimately, the message of the show is that you can never plan exactly how your life will turn out, so open yourself up, take risks, dare to dream, and let yourself fall in love. And if everything fails, pop in a DVD and Lorelai and Rory will be there with Chinese takeout and Casablanca (or Pippi Longstocking) to make everything better.

My Love Affair with Roller Coasters

One of the longest and most passionate relationships of my life has been with roller coasters. But not just any roller coasters - the biggest, tallest, twistiest, fastest roller coasters. Growing up in Utah I had no place to get my crazy roller coaster fix - the only amusement park around is Lagoon and the biggest roller coaster there when I was growing up was the quaint Colossus, a mere 89 feet tall. (I just read that Lagoon now has a taller coaster - 110 whole feet! 55 mph!) That simply wouldn't do - I needed roller coasters that go so fast they're like those Japanese cartoons where they're flying around so fast that the landscape disappears and is replaced by whooshing lines.

When I was about ten years old, my family was trying to decide where to go on our summer vacation and I put together a full audio-visual presentation advocating Six Flags Magic Mountain in Southern California, complete with clips from "National Lampoon's Vacation" (yep, Wally World was actually Magic Mountain) and "Step by Step" (the opening credits are also Magic Mountain). I may have made some pie charts too - I can't remember exactly. I don't know how they could argue against my case - did they not see how much fun those families were having? That could have been us! I can't remember where we went instead, but it was definitely somewhere more educational and less roller coaster-y. (I finally did make it to Magic Mountain in 2003, when I went on a road trip with 4 friends over spring break. The ride called "X" completely changed my life).

Three years ago, when I spent my first summer in Ohio with the Ohio Light Opera company, I began my long-term relationship with Cedar Point. The first time I saw that vista of towering roller coasters as approached the park I knew that I had found true love. Having Snoopy and the Peanuts gang as their mascots is another huge plus. In fact, the Snoopy connection may be the key to my whole attraction to roller coasters: they give me such a pure, childlike sense of fun, excitement, and freedom. I practically skip from ride to ride.

Those of you who have never experienced Cedar Point may not be fully able to grasp its sheer awesomeness, so I'll provide some facts and figures about the place, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Cedar Point is a 364 acre (1.5 km²) amusement park located in Sandusky, Ohio, U.S. on a narrow peninsula jutting into Lake Erie. It currently holds the world record for most roller coasters with 17, one of them being the world's second tallest and second fastest roller coaster, Top Thrill Dragster, which reaches speeds of 120 mph and a height of 420 feet. Cedar Point is also the only amusement park with four roller coasters that are taller than 200 feet (61 m). As of 2008 Cedar Point will be the only park in the world with 75[1] rides, becoming the park with the most rides. The park also has a mile-long white sand beach, two water parks (Soak City and Castaway Bay, an indoor waterpark (which also includes a hotel service), two marinas[2], several hotels, and "Challenge Park" featuring attractions such as go-karts and miniature golf. Known as "America's Roller Coast", Cedar Point has been voted "Best Amusement Park in the World" by Amusement Today for the past ten years.

Over the years my relationship with Cedar Point has only deepened. I returned the following two summers that I spent in Ohio. However, now that I live in Ann Arbor I am actually closer to Cedar Point than I was in Ohio. So when my friend Chalsea organized a Cedar Point trip for yesterday, I was all over it. As incredible as all my previous Cedar Point trips were, this last trip was the best by far. In my estimation there were three factors that made it the perfect day: it was a Tuesday, many public schools are still in session, and there was a somewhat unfavorable weather forecast. Translation: we practically had the place to ourselves. On previous trips I had waited 2 or more hours for certain rides, but yesterday we never waited more than a half hour for anything. By about 6:30 pm we were walking straight onto the rides with no lines whatsoever. And instead of frying in the sun, it was nice and cool and there were refreshing short showers throughout the day.

Our group of 12 friends was another reason why it was so great. They were all from my ward, but I didn't know most of them all that well beforehand. But I often find that I have the most fun at activities where there are combinations of people that I wouldn't have necessarily assembled myself. I got to know them all better and had a really fun time together. Most of the time a group as large as that can be rather unwieldy, and people can't agree on what to do and everyone breaks off into little groups. But we were surprisingly harmonious and stayed together pretty much the whole day. Some of us were seasoned roller coaster enthusiasts and some of us were conquering fears by even going to the park (my friend Amy wrote a great piece about facing her fears), but everyone was game for everything and we did it all and then some.

Sara and I prepare to be shot off at 120 mph. I'd been on this ride maybe 4 times before this, but never in the very front - it completely transformed the experience.

Scot and Phil stand in awe of the Millenium Force. It's my favorite ride at Cedar point - wicked tall and Japanese-cartoon fast, yet smooth like buttah.

After one last ride on the Dragster I found about six bugs smashed on my face, which is a sign of two things: you've had a crazy fun time, but it's time to go home for the day.



P.S. It was my friend Jacob Solomon's birthday, but he didn't say anything about it until we were at Burger King after leaving the park. I hate for birthdays to go unrecognized, so I asked the friendly employees to sing to him. They also gave him a crown - very nice touch, I thought. Would that I could spend my birthday at Cedar Point, but alas, they are not open in March.