This photo was taken at Cris' birthday party. She is wearing a brand-new dress from Jeremy and me. The look on my face is betraying something like "She actually likes it?!" Later that evening I decided it must have been our luck and not our fashion judgment that was to thank for the success when "the tourist gringo/a" was made the butt of another revelers' joke. He remarked (as per Jeremy's precise and ever-patient translation): "No matter where they go, those gringos always stick to the same American dress!" I took this as encouragement to ditch the lightweight REI pants.

Here Tainá and I are having some early morning snuggles. Taken before Tainá is sure she's ready to meet the day or the camera, this photo was stolen by Jeremy before morning café in Cris and Douglas' house (just look at my eyes!). Soon, the little one would be running circles around all of us and hamming it up for the camera.

A few more pictures (con't)

Here are Jeremy, Douglas, and Maranhão--two friends from Castelo--at a land reform meeting in Novo Progresso in late August.

A few more pictures

With the ease of a fast connection, I thought I'd post a few more photos from Brazil. This is a photo of our Santarém hosts, Steve and Áurea, at a father's day party.

Back in Davis

The Fall Quarter is winding up here in Davis, where I finally arrived on Monday mid-day. It was a lonely trip home, but I was met by cooler tempertatures and good friends once I arrived back in California. The back-to-school buzz is unmistakable on UCD's prisitne grounds (what different woods these are from the Amazon!). Although for the first time since I was 5 years old, I am not part of the gang heading back to classes this fall, it is heartening to be in familiar surroundings, breathing fresh air, and bumping into old friends on the street corner. As I became increasingly sleep-deprived on my journey home, I began to have some reservations about going back to the joys and comforts of home before being jolted, once again, into a challenging non-home situation. But, already I can see that those concerns were unfounded. In every respect this short time in California has exceeded my expectations. I feel incredibly supported in this small town and, I am coming to see, I feel a sort of community I haven't had since my early childhood in southwest Minneapolis. I am continuing to follow the news out of Algeria with extreme interest. I was recently informed of the possibility that my fellowship could be canceled due to security concerns (despite the fact that the primary security threats in Algeria are located in the northeast and I will be in the southwest). I am scheduled to leave on October 2nd. With the help of my Davis support, I am trying to practice positive thinking through this very frustrating situation, which is largely out of my control. Of course, your positive thoughts are welcome too! In just a moment, I will be taking off for San Francisco to catch up with Katie and some friends. I will say hello to your city for you, Jeremy! Love to all.

Everybody's traveling

Maddy's gone for California, and tomorrow morning Jeremy heads back south along the Br-163. So this post is our first while each of us is in a different part of the world. Much more of that to come, until we are reunited in the Canary Islands on Christmas Day. For now, boa viagem a todos e a todas.

Marriage celebration update: Memorial Day Weekend 2008!

As we mentioned in our very first post, one of our hopes for this blog is to keep you all informed about our upcoming wedding celebration. We have really enjoyed planning the event over the past six weeks. Here are the plans so far:

Saturday, May 24th, 2008 @ 6:30 P.M.
Sudwerk Brewery, Davis, California
www.sudwerk.com (I think they are currently updating their site)

Since this is Memorial Day Weekend, Sunday and Monday are left open for us all to play in the valley. Save the date!

Pop tarts.

Eat your heart out, MoMA. Macs are so cool!

At the dunes.

Here's Maddy (click on the thumbnail to get a closer look) at the Lençóis Maranhenses on Tuesday. It's kinda grainy, but then again, so was the desert! Get it? Grainy!

...and we're not burned to a crisp

After a couple days on the Maranhão coast, we’re proud to announce the following: 1) we’re having a great time; 2) we haven’t yet overdosed on fresh fish oils; and 3) we have, by some minor miracle Jeremy thinks, avoided getting sunburned. The picture at left is of the Lençóis Maranhenses, in the national park on the Maranhão coast of the same name. The gullies and valleys between these dunes collect rainwater from December through May, then dry up in the subsequent months. We visited on Tuesday, and went for a swim in several of the shallow lakes. One never goes dry, and has a few billion (maybe more?) tiny fish in it. We’ve also walked through old-town São Luis, and can’t decide if it’s charmingly rustic or desperately run-down (or both). Downtown, we found some wonderfully purple liquor (aguardiente da mandioca), but decided that the risk of potential blindness wasn’t worth it. At our hotel (right on the beach), we’ve put a hurting on the gorgonzola pasta and cuxá rice, not to mention the caipirinhas and…oh, yeah, the fish. And more fish. We’ll be heading back to Santarém tomorrow night. We’ll write at least one more post from there before Maddy leaves Brazil on Sunday for her 5-flight, 6-city voyage home to California.

Off to São Luis!

We are still recovering from a massive Lebanese meal last night at Santarém's premier (and only) Arab cuisine restaurant. It took over an hour to prepare and multiple waiters to serve the feast of swarma, falafal, kaftas, hommus, tabouli, and pita. It is a good thing that all we have on schedule for the day is packing for our upcoming trip to the beach. We are flying to São Luis (pictured, right) early tomorrow morning and will be staying until Friday night. Fun!

Another hammock picture

It might seem like all we do is lie around, but we'll have you know that some hard-hitting social science research, about the history and possible futures for the communities and forests along the unpaved Br-163 federal highway, is being conducted too! In fact, hammocks are a necessity for such research! We promise! Diógenes Leal, noted cinematographer from Belém, sums of the significance of the hammock this way: “Everything happens in a hammock—from before we are born through the arc of our life, til our friends carry us to the bone yard—It all happens in a hammock.”

That big pan in the background is actually a huge batea, or gold miner's pan. The idea is: run muddy water into the batea, then sift the water out, leaving the gold at the bottom of the pan. This one requires 2-3 miners.

Ah, systemas naturaes

So, no, this isn't really a picture of the tarantula we slept with a few nights ago. The one with whom we did share a room at Bosque Santa Lúcia was much much cuter. We named him Tito.

We're back from the forest, where the nights are dark and the monkeys (howlers) sound like a dozen diesel 18-wheelers stuck in neutral, revving their engines.

We spent a delightful evening and day in the forest, walking on old trails and swinging in hammocks at Steve & Áurea's reception area (really a little house with wood samples, animal skeletons, and the like in it). We were unaware of this when we arrived on Monday, but later learned that we had the honor of being the first folks to spend the night out at the Bosque. Since receiving power a couple months ago, the convenience of electric lights (and a computer or two) grant solace to the camper: flashlights were at the ready, too, in case our new spidery friend got too close. Thanks, Steve & Áurea! Thanks Tito, hope to see you again soon!

Festa, festa

Our weekend has been chock-full of festivities. Friday was Independence Day here in Brasil. We headed across the street to a neighbor's house for a lively lunch but saved most of our partying energy for a birthday brunch for Áurea this morning. Yesterday, we headed down to the waterfront where we listened to live music and discussed our fear and excitement at receiving a real paycheck. Will our present priority to earn (however meagerly) in order to do good work (however obscurely) someday give way to a way of living that prioritizes work only to earn?

Now we are watching Brasil take on Team USA in soccer. Brasil trounced Algeria a couple of weeks ago--and with its B-team, at that--to Maddy's disappointment. Our eyes have been on the news coming out of Algeria and the U.S. Embassy there. In the meantime, we will likely take off for a night retreat in the woods tomorrow evening. Steve's small forest post on the outskirts of town recently received electricity, so we're hoping to do some quiet thinking and writing into the wee hours (and when the sun sets at 6:00, that means, like, 9:30).

No Room in the Inn

It has been an eventful and steamy few days in Santarem. Jeremy has been busy working on a field report, synthesizing the past few weeks for his advisor, as Maddy has begun gravitating northeastward towards Algeria in her thoughts and even dreams. Together, we have managed to work up quite a bit of excitement about her launch. We’ve also begun quietly preparing for our three months apart before our reunion on Christmas Day in the Canary Islands. On Tuesday, we volunteered with the Brazilian chapter of Operation Smile, which is in town performing free cleft-lip and palate surgeries all week (no, we did not operate on any kids). Over two hundred kids showed up on Tuesday, but only 60 were chosen for surgery. We were on photography assignment, documenting the hectic and joyful reception of the kids’ and their families. On Wednesday, we had hoped to beat the heat with a night at the air-conditioned and massive Amazon Park Hotel, pictured but not quite captured here. The Park is a vast concrete complex that resembles a deserted colony in outer space. Though we found no signs of extraterrestrial life, we did find the place utterly deserted (as Jeremy has every other time he has come to enjoy the Park’s pool or wide beer selection over the past 7 years). Built in the 1970s as a contribution to the “inevitable integration of the Amazon into the Brazilian nation,” the 300-room hotel hasn’t operated at even half-capacity since its opening celebration. Nowadays, it is probably sells no more then 10 rooms on a good night. But, when we arrived and attempted to check in, the receptionist told us that the hotel was full. Without skipping a beat, Jeremy asked, “Full of what? People?” It turns out there was a conference that had bought out 35 rooms or so, leaving us out of luck. Overfull, by Park standards! Fortunately, we were able to use the pool and bar before heading back into town. Other memorable activities: Maddy went to the salon with our host, Áurea, where she had her hair coiffed and nails elaborately designed. Oh, and Jeremy has nearly memorized all the lines to the film "Fargo," but he still hasn't mastered the accent.

"Because of you"

When unable to communicate in substantive conversation with her Castelo hosts, Maddy frequently took requests to sing various American songs, whose meanings were already known to the audiences (apparently you don't have to be any good to be dubbed in Portuguese). One of the most frequent requests: Kelly Clarkson's ever popular "Because of you." At the 27th birthday party of Cris, Maddy and Jeremy's cast-n-reel move on the dance floor won more laughter than applause, but no one was laughing at our stellar work as gauchos on the BBQ. A note on how to create a slow burning blaze to roast your pig's head the Brazilian way: 1) Take 1-2 rolls of unused toilet paper. 2) Douse them in cooking oil. Light. 3) Add small flammable things. 4) Add charcoal gradually over the course of an hour. For best results, fire-tenders should drink several cold beers whiling completing step 4.

Up to no good.

Here we are clowning around with Tainá, no doubt teaching her some off-color phrase or expression in English. She's a smart little cookie, as by the end of our visit in Castelo she was mimicking our talk well enough that her parents were beginning to openly doubt their choosing us to be Tainá's godparents. They were just kidding, of course. After all, those cigarettes on the table don't belong to anyone you see in the picture...in fact, this might be a portrait of the only three people in Castelo de Sonhos who don't smoke. Anyway, besides the good times, this picture also shows some gray skies, made grayer by the lingering smoke of forest fires in the area.

Does he look like a spy from Greenpeace to you?

We arrived back in Santarém early this morning after a more annoying than harrowing 36-hour voyage North. The road was not in such bad shape despite some bad whether. The greater delay was an overturned 16-wheeler loaded up with wood, broken and stuck in the middle of the road. We watched as a tractor cleared the scene, and we considered the recent report we had watched on Globo (the national TV network) about how Western Pará leads the nation in illegal lumber extractions. In this part of the Amazonian forest, "greenpeace" is one of the worst insults you can have hurled at you; most of the trucks feature bumper stickers saying "Greenpeace out of the Amazon, Amazonia is owned by the Brazilians!" Though Jeremy had never been openly accused of working for "them," we seemed to garner more suspicion walking down the streets of Castelo as a couple. More than once, muscle-bound cow-jerks rode by in pick-ups or motorcycles with the casual greeting, "E aí, Greenpeace!?!" Since they didn't stop to discuss environmental and development policy with us, we could only laugh at the accusations, and continue whistling along.