Under the rainbow

Last night after arriving at the bus station in Belo Horizonte, I experienced a major personal triumph in being able to give a taxi driver directions to my apartment building the Brazilian way--not by address, but by landmarks (which in the case of my neighborhood, funny enough, is the McDonald's). This was not a flawless affair; when he suddenly drove up on the sidewalk in front of a hotel, I re-explained that the turn was a few blocks after the hotel. The crazy thing is that I have not yet memorized my address or phone number; I'll have to make a concerted effort to do so.

Yesterday was the national holiday for the founding of the republic (not Independence Day, as I'd previously reported to some family and friends). This was the second national holiday this month. As an acquaintance was scheduled to defend his thesis last Friday and celebrate over the weekend, I planned to travel to São Carlos (in the state of São Paulo) to spend the long weekend with my friends there. Luckily, we realized that I needed to renew my current visa before heading out of town, and my coordinator, Teca, accompanied me on the quest for the magic visa stamp. Imagine our delight when the bureaucrats informed us that they needed to see the entry form that you get stamped when you go through customs, which of course, I did not have with me because I did not wish to lose it (a previous experience in Uruguay impressed upon me the importance of this piece of paper on one's planned exit of a country). Silly me--I tried to ask why the same exact stamp in my passport with the same exact date was not sufficient. Alas, a US$20 (can somebody please stop the dollar from falling?!) round-trip to my apartment was required to fetch the essential paper. And then, of course, the line was much longer when we returned. Hours after our first arrival, I was finally in possession of a visa that would not expire before I went home to the U.S. for Christmas.

But back to the São Carlos trip--another friend was kind enough to drive me most of the way back to a bus stop where I got the bus to take me back to Belo Horizonte. This was not the "executive" class which I'd previously taken, which was fine with me because it was more affordable and didn't freeze you to death with air conditioning. I'd brought a book with me and was recalling that in my bus trips thus far, I had not really seen other passengers reading, knitting, etc. as I tend to do on long trips. When thinking about possible reasons for this, I decided I was very glad that I bring my activities. At one point, I looked up from the book to see part of a large rainbow, and pointed it out to my seatmate, noticing upon further inspection that not only was it a full rainbow, but it was a double rainbow, and we were going to drive right through the middle of it. The lady then replied that it was actually the 3rd rainbow we'd already passed. Here I was feeling sorry for my fellow passengers who were only looking out the window and occasionally conversing to pass the time, and here I was missing all of the natural splendor through which we were driving.

The landscape here is really stupendous after you leave the city. The soil is a very intense reddish-brown, and it will easily put up a fight against the strongest laundry detergent. I've noticed this time as in my previous visits to Brazil that the clouds seem much closer to the ground. I don't think its because of elevation, but I haven't done any serious research to figure out why.