Nazare

This weekend has been insane, and been a major culture shock for being in Brazil in general. In a wonderful way, of course. It began when I opened the refrigerator on Thursday to find, to my delight, suco de abacate. Avocado smoothie time. It's almost as good as goiaba juice.

This weekend was Cirio. Brazil's largest religious festival, here in Belem. The largest Catholic festival in the world. Slightly larger than the annual hadj to Mecca. Today, there were most likely 2 million people here just to celebrate nossa senhora da Nazare. A friend who lives right along the main street where the procession takes place was nice enough to let me stay at his family's apartment for two nights. Well, I should say the family was nice enough to let me stay there, as was Maura for being completely cool with me just sort of doing whatever all weekend and taking in all that Cirio has to offer. Cirio here to the Paraense is what Christmas is to the rest of Brazil. It's the time when your family flies from all over Brazil for one weekend. Saturday night the procession , consisting of the Virgin of Nazare "idol" and the thousands or millions of devote followers march from the Basilica da Nazare to the ingreja in Cidade Velha, the old part of the city. Then on Sunday morning, the same group marches with the Virgin back to the Basilica. Luckily for me, there is much to do over in Cidade Velha, so my weekend was incredibly interesting and engaging.

Thursday night, I took a break from working on Mini-ISP to go to this nice jazz club called Casa das Onze Janelas, which I went to during our first week in Belem. Instead of actually going into the club, Nigel, Sam, and myself all ran into each other, along with their respective host brother/sister, and ended up being in this huge party out in the plaza, complete with concerts, trying to talk in Portuguese, and so forth. Being here so far in Brazil, we have gotten to see and talk to so many different people, but haven't gotten any sort of feel for the everyday social life here, so it was a lot of fun to just let our guards down and be out and about. Friday night was more of the same. It's also just cool to experience someone else's host family, and how different each of our experiences here in Belem are. Especially with my family being Protestant and, well, everyone else's being Catholic.

Saturday I had another fun "Dan-takes-the-wrong-bus-several-time-and-then-tries-to-take-a-taxi-to-meet-up-with-people" experience. Talking with taxi drivers is pretty fun, and if you are friendly with them and actually try and have a conversation, at least here in Belem, they let a few reais slide by when it comes time to pay the bill. Almost as fun as trying to communicate to the person cutting your hair in a hair salon, but thats different. Much more frightening. When I actually managed to find people, we met up at the Praca da Republica for a giant Cirio festival-esque party. It ended up being this very large gay-pride festival that everyone else just kind of ends up going to, so it was pretty intense. It was hard to even walk around, but fun. Lots of street food, music, and crazy antics that, in Brazil, of course only happens during a large religious festival.

Today was the actual procession. It was insane! In an awesome way, as is everything in Brazil. Things tend to go to either extreme here. People don't seem to muddle around in the middle grey area. All or nothing, and it's a cool way to approach the world, I think. Needless to say, thousands upon thousands of people walking along the avenue, some walking for fun, some walking to have their prayers answered, and so on, was a very cool experience. Intense and somewhat overwhelming. But worthwhile. It makes me keep thinking how important religion is to people, and how much sometimes I wish I had that something to bring myself together with some sort of community. Quakerism was something along those lines, as was Buddhism back then a little ways. I've actually had a number of talks with people here, most on the boat trip, when all cool conversations happen, about what Quakerism is, what it means to me, etc, and made me really appreciate more what Westtown gave me, in that regard. I miss Quakerism a lot, sometimes, to be honest. Even if just for that community aspect.

This week we have a lot of down time to work on our ISP ideas more fully, so I will keep updating about that. We also have a lecture with IMAZON, the Amazonian environmental research institute, and I'm looking forward to that. I'll also try to post pictures of Cirio that my friends took.
Tchau, e boa noite