Blog Updates

I know, dear readers, that many of you are sitting at the edge of your seat, wondering how some of our ongoing dramas have turned out. Well, let me not keep you in suspense. Here are a few blog updates:

Teaching Through Chocolate Chip Cookies (posted November 3, 2011)

Mark and I had really gotten psyched about our involvement with the after-school program known as COEDUC. The kids seemed to be excited too. But just as we were finalizing our schedule, drawing up "lesson plans" and deciding what dishes we would be preparing in the cooking classes, the owner of the property that COEDUC was renting decided to close the place down. The good people in charge of COEDUC have yet to find a new home. And we’re just biding our time.


Girl’s Night Out (posted November 10, 2011)

My weekly Girl’s Nights Out with Cristina are still going strong. But people have really cottoned on to us, so we’re doing our damnedest to keep our days and times and locations secret, and to stay under the radar . . . go ahead, see if you can pick us out in this picture.




Stupid Purchases (posted January 5, 2012)

I’m sure you’ll all be relieved to know that we found a way to get rid of the rusted, pitted and useless clothes dryer Mark and I bought during our first month in Brazil. We did the obvious and donated it to the washing machine repairman, who happily carted it away to dismantle for parts.







Gran Ciné Bardot (posted January 30, 2012)

After three years of loyal membership, Mark and I have abandoned the Videoteca of the Gran Ciné Bardot, at least for now. I won’t say we’d seen all of the 4,000 or so DVDs available, but we did feel a bit as if we were scraping the bottom of the barrel. And nowadays we’re able to stream incredible movies on YouTube. Which leads me to . . .

Watchin’ Movies (posted May 7, 2012)

We’ve now seen 1,735 movies here in Brazil, up from the 1,460 we’d seen at the time the blogpost was published. And thanks to YouTube’s archives we’ve added Egyptian, Armenian, Serbo-Croatian and Kenyan to the mix of nationalities.



A Smart City (posted September 3, 2012)

with blades . . .

. . . and now without

Remember when I reported that Búzios had been chosen to be the first Smart City in Latin America? I was skeptical then and I’m skeptical now. For one, we’ve been losing electricity a lot lately, and all it seems to take is a gust of wind. And a few months ago the large blades on the ultra-modern wind turbine in front of the Smart City showroom came crashing down. The company in charge of all this intelligence has yet to replace the blades. I’m happy to report, though, that nobody was hurt.



On Being Number Two (posted January 7, 2013)

In keeping with its habit of coming in second to the United States in almost every category, Brazil is now second only to the U.S. in number of fans on Dog TV’s Facebook page.







Moqueca de Peixe (posted April 1, 2013)

Our fabulous new clay pot for cooking moquecas exploded while we were preparing our moqueca number four. Everything was bubbling away nicely, and I was (thankfully) on the other side of the kitchen when I heard something that sounded like BB guns going off. Mark and our guest of that evening came running. I was okay, but the oven was now covered in bits and pieces of fish and green pepper and onion and tomato, not to mention shards of clay. Sometime much later that evening we all had a nice pizza down the street.



Paradise Lost
(posted April 22, 2013)

There’s been positive forward movement on this front. Citing an inability to break contracts already signed and paid for, our neighbor continued renting his house for large, loud parties. At the fourth such rental in a month, the renters did us the great favor of setting off fireworks throughout the night. This finally got neighbors who had not previously wanted to get involved very involved indeed. And this time it was neighbors other than us who called the police, who filed formal criminal complaints, and who called the owner in Europe. It appears that reason has prevailed, and there will be no more party rentals.

Teaching Through Chocolate Chip Cookies

One day recently Mark and I were chatting with a woman whose picture-framing services we had used a few times over the years. Before we took leave of her, she asked what our nationality was. French? Swiss? Since Brazilians generally accept you as you are and don't ask too many questions, we were surprised. The "Vote for Obama" sticker on our car hadn't already given us away? But Sonia had a reason for asking. In her spare time, she runs a non-profit, after-school program called COEDUC for underprivileged kids. On Thursdays she had been bringing in foreigners from among the alleged 96 nationalities living in Búzios to talk to the kids about their countries of origin and to prepare some kind of typical food for them to sample. Sonia had already found an Englishman, a German, a Bolivian, a Chilean and an East Indian. Now she had bagged Americans. She told us the whole business would take about two hours. But what actually happened was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

As I see it a basic problem of the public education system in Brazil is simply that the kids are in school for only half a day! They either get the morning session (8 am to noon) or the afternoon session (2 pm to 6 pm). A mere four hours, some of which is spent eating a school snack. With the school day so truncated, parents and educators are challenged to find a way to keep the kids off the streets and in some kind of engaging educational program for the rest of their day. One of the answers to this challenge is found in these COEDUCs. They're financed mostly by donations, staffed in large part by volunteers and — like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire — rely an awful lot on the kindness of strangers.

When we were asked to "do" the U.S.A. we didn't know what to expect. We weren't sure that 25 preteen and teenage kids would even be all that interested. Wrong! The kids were not only interested, but they already knew a lot about the U.S.A., and they were bursting to share it! I told them I was born in Miami Beach and they knew that it was in the State of Florida. But that was a gimme, Brazilians know all about Florida and Miami and Disney World. But when I told them I was raised in New Jersey, how could they know that New Jersey was right next door to New York? What American schoolchild can name any state that borders Brazil's Pernambuco? These kids learned that Mark was born in the capital of Massachusetts, and they shouted out Boston? (Clearly, the steady stream of American exports like CSI, Friends, and Two and a Half Men does more than just entertain.)

After the talk it was time for the food. We had brought PBJs and BLTs, and real Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies that had come fresh out of our oven that morning. These tasty American childhood treats are not known here. Thanks to Wikipedia, I also had stories about the history of the sandwiches and of the cookies. They liked the stories, they liked the sandwiches, and they loved the cookies! They jumped up and down. Too much sugar perhaps? They clamored for the recipe or, if not the recipe, could we come back the following Wednesday on "Culinary Day," and show them how to make them, could we, pleeeeeeze?

We did return the following week and the kids continued to impress. I was particularly struck by how the older ones helped the younger ones, how they all made sure everyone had a turn at measuring and mixing, not to mention tasting the buttery, sugary, scrumptious raw batter. Look at these pictures! Student chefs at the New York Culinary School aren't that focused, serious or dedicated.