A Sunday in the Park

June 23rd
Today was a very nice, tranquil example of a Sunday in Latin America. I got to sleep in (yay!) then I made plans to meet Jenike (a girl in my program) for lunch and to walk to the parque Ibirapuera which is a very large park in São Paulo that is their version of central park that has a planetarium, modern art museum, playing fields, Japanese garden and two lakes. We are getting very used to walking around the city and it only took us about 45 min to walk all the way to the park. The park was a great place to people watch on a Sunday. There were lots of people out enjoying the (typical) grey São Paulo weather by picnicking, walking their dogs, riding bikes, skateboarding and playing. Right as we arrived at the park something very interesting happened, what looked like two tour buses pulled up and lots of people got off and began to give out little pamphlets about their church, Igreja Universal, which is a very popular Pentecostal church here in Brazil. The entire pamphlet was based on the idea of the prosperity gospel it was very interesting to read the stories that it highlighted from their members.
We spent a few pleasant hours walking around the park, buying snacks from the food cart vendors. The only thing that complicated this bucolic afternoon were the bikers and skateboarders who had very little regard for the pedestrians ambling through the park, but we managed to make it through with no injuries, although there were some close calls! The park also had some really interesting, and good, live music. While walking we ran into a very hipster music group that consisted of a banjo, bass, washboard and kazoo, they were even called the Moustache Band. It was strange to see instruments right out of the Appalachian mountains in Brazil but the group was actually really good! They were doing a mixture of scat and bluegrass that was unexpected but fun!
After we finished our partial lap though the park we decided head back towards Avenida Paulista which meant a walk back up the steep hills that are all over the city. We are definitely keeping fit! Jenike went back to her apartment to work on our readings and homework but I had made plans to meet up with Roxanne and Ailesha to meet at our fruit bar to get an Açaí. Since I was on such a roll I decided to walk all the way up Paulista from the park. On the way I saw a crazy group of cars with banners on them honking their way down the road. When I got to the MASP (another art museum right near my apartment building which has a large open space convenient for protests) I saw that about 100 people had gathered for a “protest” but it was really unclear what in the world they were actually doing there. I’m pretty sure that it was a religious thing since a lot of them had posters and banners with a cross or Jesus-like figure on it but some people were also in weird attention grabbing, carnival like costumes. I asked another guy who was watching them and he said that he thought it was about gasoline, but that at this point the people were creating a culture of protest since they felt they were gaining positive outcomes from the other demonstrations. There were not very many and since they seemed more religiously/emotionally charged more than anything, they did not have a big effect on the traffic of the street. Taking into account the earlier event in the park where the buses dropped off the men to give out the religious pamphlets I think that today might have been a type of crusade for the Igreja Universal, a large Pentecostal church here in São Paulo.

Once I got down to the fruit juice shop I met up with Roxanne and Ailesha and we talked and ate tons of Açaí. When I walked back home afterwards the “protesters” were already gone!

A view of the city from the park

The Mustache Band

Açaí!! YUM!