July 14
Happy Bastille Day! Today began with another leisurely
morning. I had not made distinct plans with anyone, so I decided to just go to
two nearby markets and shop around. However, right as I was crossing Paulista I
was fortunate enough to run into Naomi, Miguel, and Aileisha, they were also
hitting the Sunday feiras so I joined their group and went to a feira that was
actually located inside of a shopping mall called Shopping 3 (there is not a
Shopping 1 or 2, I checked). The market was full of neo-artisans selling
jewelry, clothing and handicrafts. We spent about an hour and a half wandering
around the feira before we got hungry and decided to look for some food. Since
Paulista is my area I was able to make a recommendation! I suggested that we
try the PicNic, the Brazilian Panera, for something that was quick and not
fried. It was a good choice, and I got a veggie quiche and a fresh
strawberry-orange juice drink. Afterwards we broke up into groups, Aileisha had
an appointment to do laundry with her host mom and Naomi and Miguel were going
to a coffee shop. As we were going out separate ways we bumped into another
pair from our group, Andrew and Elliott, who were taking advantage of the open
bike lane and free bikes on Paulista, which are a part of the city’s initiative
to promote bike transportation for those who live short distances. After we
split up I decided to catch up with Roxanne, Jenike and Molly in Vila Madalena
to look at the famous street art area called Beco do Batman. Since they were
already in Vila Madalena getting lunch I told them I would meet them on the corner
near their restaurant. This turned out to be harder than expected.
Since I did not have directions on
how to get to the specific streets (and all the maps here seem to skip
streets..) I went into an internet café to look up the metro and walking
directions. According to google maps the restaurant should have been a 15 min walk
from the metro station with only two real turns. I should mention that this is
the same metro station location where Angelika and I got sort of lost the first
day we were in São Paulo, but I thought that by now I was wiser and more city savvy
and that this tricky station would not be a problem…I was proved wrong. Getting
to the station was easy and I had complete faith in the pictures I had taken of
the google map on my phone and I even took a picture of the map in the metro
station just to be safe.
It
turned out to be a moot point as I still ended up getting lost. I think that
the problem is that when you walk out of the station there are several angled
roads that you can take, and the angles of the roads on the map and in person
do not entirely match up, which means that you end up walking off at a slightly
wrong angle and miss your cross streets. This is the second time that this
station has fooled me into walking down the wrong angled road (and let it be
known that these angled roads do no connect) and, therefore, missed my cross
street. After about 15 min of walking and not finding the correct street I gave
up and decided to hail a taxi. I knew that I was really close to the corner but
not exactly where it was. Unfortunately, neither did the taxi driver…or he just
wanted to drive around in circles and stop to ask for directions, either way,
we drove way out of the way but eventually did get to the street corner where
the girls were waiting.
Once I finally made it there we had
a great time walking around the little hipster boutique stores and bars and
looking at all of the street art. The Beco do Batman is a little winding ally
way that is tucked into one of the residential streets of the neighborhood and
it is famous for its ever changing art from local graffiti artists. The street
art there was absolutely amazing! There was so much detail and thought put into
how the designs fit to the wall and made use of the whole ally space. While we
were there we saw two artists putting up a new design, and a family and couple
doing professional photo shoots there. It was such a cool location to have
engagement photos done! After we had spent plenty of time and film taking silly
pictures together we decided to walk down one of the central streets in Vila
Madalena to sit on the bar patios and enjoy the last rays of weekend sunshine.
While we sat together we settled our
plans for the evening. Roxanne and Jenike decided to head back home to Paulista,
while Molly and I decided to meet up with Aileisha and our Brazilian friend
Mari to see a popular Brazilian comedy at the movie theater in Shopping
Bourbon. We both walked down to the bus stop together and one of the first
buses that came by said that it went down Avenida Sumare where the shopping
center was located. I checked with the bus driver and he said that he would go
nearby, so we said bye to Roxanne and Jenike and got on the bus. It was a bit
of a ride and since we did not know the exact stop where we needed to get off I
asked Molly if she could asked the bus pass clerk if he would let us know the
stop we needed since she was closer. Unfortunately, she got confused about where
we needed to get off and instead of asking for Shopping Borbon she asked for
Barra Funda which is a metro station in the area we have used several times. So
we ended getting off at the wrong stop and since we did not trust our map when
it told us that we were not far from the shopping center we asked for directions
in a local lanchonete. They recommended that we hail a cab since it would be a
long walk, luckily since we were right next to the Barra Funda metro/bus
station it was easy to get a cab driver. We were able to get back on track and
arrived at the Shopping Bourbon at 6:50, just in time to meet up with Mari and
Aileisha.
On
our way to the cinema we ran into Isaiah and his host mom who were doing some
grocery shopping on the lower level, and she was able to give us direction to
the movie theater which was very helpful considering the size of the shopping
center (5 floors!!). We found Mari and Aileisha already in line to get tickets.
We joined them and were almost to the front of the line when the manager came
out and made an announcement that all of the 8:00 movies were sold out except
for the first row in Minha Mãe e uma Peça, which was the comedy that we were
going to see. Given the options we decided to get better tickets to a later
showing and get some dinner and wander around the mall first. So after we
bought our tickets, not as cheap/awesome as Costa Rica sadly, we walked to the food
court and decided to eat at a por quilo place.
As
we walked back to the table Aileisha was saving a man rushing right through the
crowds ran in to Mari full on and sneezed all over her and then ran off!! Everyone
on that half of the food court saw it happen and could not believe their eyes!!
It was the rudest and most hilarious thing that had happened all week, and we
could not stop laughing over the sheer audacity of it all, we even had people coming
up and asking if it was a prank for a camera. After dinner we explored the mall
for about an hour checking out the clothing stores and the Livraria Cultural
which is a really neat bookstore chain here in São Paulo, before going to the café
in the movie theater.
The
movie itself was actually very funny. It is a story that a man wrote about his
overbearing, blunt, and interfering real-life mom (they had some home video of
her at the end of the movie) that satirizes the traditional mother-child
relationship in Brazil. The son actually dressed in drag and played his mother
and he was perfect for the part as he had all the mannerisms down pat! The movie
takes place in Rio and centers on the mother finding out that her kids are
frustrated with her crazy behavior so she runs away to her older aunt’s house.
The (adult) children then have to fend for themselves and realize that she
really has been a good mom. It ends happily with the mother and children
overcoming their differences and the mom getting a job hosting a
tell-it-like-it-is parenting show on local tv. The movie was overall a good
experience, except that, since it was a comedy the actors all spoke really fast
so it was hard to understand the actual lines and we mostly just had to follow
the vibe of the movie.
The
movie ended a bit late, at 11:30, but Mari’s mom has a car and she was able to
drive us all home. It was a long, fun day and one that really demonstrated the
benefits of being flexible and going with the flow. It was also really
interesting to note how many people from our group that I randomly ran into
today, granted we all live relatively in nearby areas but it was still a lucky
break in my mind that I was always able to meet back up with friends. Our group
is taking over São Paulo!
**since I took the pictures with my phone I do not have a way to upload them to the blog yet so I will redirect you to my facebook page where several of them are!**
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