Vacation Mode

Alright, I’m not too hot with this blog main­te­nance thing. The last few weeks have been mel­low as I have slid into vaca­tion mode. It’s been nice, I think I need it.

Part of the vaca­tion mode involved going to Cabo Frio, a beach town about three hours out­side Rio de Janeiro. The beaches in Rio are crowded and poluted, not ideal for relax­ing by my stan­dards. Tri­cia and I staid in Posada do Alba­troz, which was out of the hub of things and on the beach. It was lovely. For the first night, we were the only ones there aside from the owner and his fam­ily vaca­tion­ing from their native Argentina. I was glad to chat in Span­ish and remem­ber that I can indeed pull my weight in a for­eign language.

Tri­cia on the bal­cony of our room at sunrise.

I did a lit­tle beach comb­ing (with my cam­era). Found a san­dal that died
mid-crawl back to the sea. I will spare you the dead blow­fish pictures.

This is prob­a­bly a good time to redi­rect you to Tricia’s blog. She has been very dili­gent about post­ing weekly about the con­tent of the class.

Things have been pretty mel­low in Rio despite the Pan Amer­i­can games. There is no longer any report­ing in the major press about repres­sion in the fave­las. I won­der if things are bad and just not being cov­ered while the for­eign­ers are in town, or if they have actu­ally calmed down.

For the next week, I plan to catch up with friends and estab­lish bet­ter con­tacts with a few orga­ni­za­tions for pos­si­ble projects in the future. When I get back, it’s straight to Boot­Camp, a train­ing pro­gram for the Design and Tech­nol­ogy depart­ment at Par­sons. I was gen­er­ously granted per­mis­sion to switch to the depart­ment from Pho­tog­ra­phy pro­vided I audit the train­ing pro­gram from incom­ing grad­u­ate stu­dents. So con­tin­ues the sum­mer of pre­tend­ing I am a grad­u­ate stu­dent. I am look­ing for­ward to get­ting back to New York to ride my bike around Brook­lyn, have some­thing of a rou­tine, and see the good peo­ple I miss. I leave on Thurs­day night, arriv­ing Fri­day morning.

I did make it to Sao Mar­t­inho, the orga­ni­za­tion that helps street chil­dren off the street. A few stu­dents from the class and I vis­ited a shel­ter. Here are some pics:

And here’s a shot Tri­cia took of me on the top of Babalo­nia, the favela above Leme at the end of Copaca­bana beach. It is a tra­di­tion to have the class end with a hike up Babalo­nia. Behind me in the bay of Botafogo.