Watching the Olympics definitely puts my life into pretty harsh perspective. People my age or younger are achieving their life goals, winning medals and making history. And I am trying to fit my clothes into a suitcase.
Take Michael Phelps, for example. He is six months my junior and has now become one of the greatest Olympians and athletes in history. He is so amazing that he even makes me incredibly proud to be American, just so I can say that he's one of our own. At the same time, his incredible accomplishment has overshadowed more normal, but no less important Olympic feats.
For example...Cesar Cielo Filho, the Brazilian swimmer, kind of came out of nowhere and won gold in the 50m free, winning the first gold medal at the 2008 games for Brazil and the first swimming gold ever for Brazil. Lula even called him after he won--on his cell phone! Cesao's become a real hero in Brazil, for just one gold.
Also, along those lines, I found out that Kobe Bryant is fluent in Italian and I nearly fell over. He sets a great example for Americans by proving his linguistic skills.
NBC showed Michael Phelps with his Ipod before every race, and I always wondered what he listens to to get pumped up. Hip hop? Heavy metal? Rock? The Hannah Montana soundtrack? So I'm going to share one of my Ipod playlists here, if you care to know. It's a very motley mix.
--Processional, from Alvin Ailey's "Revelations"
--All These Things That I've Done, The Killers
--Will You Be There, Michael Jackson
--No Me Doy Por Vencido, Luis Fonsi
--Real, Goo Goo Dolls
--Olodum, Brazilian National Anthem
--Dreamer, Chris Brown
--Say What You Need to Say, John Mayer
--Pais Tropical, Ivete Sangalo
--Como Yo, Juan Luis Guerra
--Ya No Llores, Baby Boy
--O tempo nao para, Cazuza
Since I've been home, and with my interaction with gringos in Brazil, countless people have been shocked to find out I've voluntarily decided to live in Brazil. So many people are in awe, saying they love Brazil, that it's their dream to live abroad, or they'd love to just get up and go somewhere. They always say something along the lines of "That's amazing!" or "You're so lucky!" I get the impression that people seem to think I'm living some dream life, sipping coconut milk in a hammock all day as I listen to bossa nova. Obviously, that is not the case.
The truth of the matter is that living in Brazil actually greatly complicates my life. Rio is now in the top 40 most expensive cities in the world, though salaries haven't caught up with the cost of living. I depend on my meager savings and whatever jobs I can get, but I still feel constantly overwhelmed. Though I have this compulsion to avoid a 40 hour a week office job, it doesn't mean I'm excited to do just any other job. Even though I don't have to work as many hours, I get paid considerably less than I would in the US.
I get to be with my boyfriend, but I'm far from my family and friends. I'm not rich enough to go home to visit (especially not with airfares as they are now), so I have to resign myself to not seeing my parents, my brother, my dog and my best friends for at least half a year. I'm thousands of miles from the comforts of home, from Starbucks, from CVS, from the TV and music and movies and shows you actually get to see before the rest of the world. And living in Rio doesn't afford me the peace of mind I have at home, and I can never quite shake a feeling of uneasiness, a subtle but constant pit at the bottom of my stomach.
It's not that I'm complaining that I get to go back to Brazil. I'm excited about all the possibilities, all the things I have left to do and see, even in Rio, apart from the obvious excitement of being reunited with Eli. But I think a lot of people assume that moving abroad, especially to a tropical city, implies fun, excitement, and adventure, rather than a daily struggle. I hope there will be more adventures, but this move is no vacation.
The first challenge will be getting there, with a tropical storm right in my path.
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*Important Update Below*
I'm not really sure what adjective to use to describe this, since so many come to mind: awful, outrageous, frightening, embarrassing, ridiculous. For some reason, it makes me feel ashamed on behalf of Rio, its residents, and its government.
I'm reporting this because the mainstream international media hasn't gotten to it yet, and because I want to clear up some things about it before everyone freaks out.
I'm going to tell you the version I got from the Brazilian media, since the few stories in the international media are reporting some very different things.
On Saturday, a high-level Vietnamese embassy employee and one Chinese tourist were kidnapped during a heist on the road leading to the Christ statue in Rio. According to the family members of the Vietnamese man and the Chinese tourists, twelve armed men wearing black clothes and ski masks stopped both vehicles, a taxi with the Vietnamese and a small van with the Chinese, and robbed everyone. Upon learning of the Vietnamese man's status, they then proceeded to take the embassy employee by force and put him in the trunk of one of the getaway cars. There are conflicting reports about the Chinese tourists, but the Brazilian media claims one of them was also kidnapped. The police interviewed all of the robbery victims, who were so freaked out they refused to leave their hotel, and said they had a great deal of trouble since many of their stories contradicted one another (which also brings to question what language they were all communicating in--probably English--and if much of the story was lost in translation).
Both kidnap victims are missing, and police are searching in the area around the Christ, though it seems to me the kidnappers took them far away from there.
So allow me to clear up a few things:
This is not typical. Thousands of tourists visit the Christ statue each day and millions of tourists visit Rio each year without incident.
The reports of where the incident took place indicate that both vehicles stopped before reaching one of the look-out points, which could mean along the shoulder of the road (they probably wanted to take pictures). It was then that the robbers advanced. Assuming this was the case, it is never a good idea for tourists to stop in an isolated area, where they become vulnerable. In safer places it's different, but this is Rio.
If this story makes big headlines, it will have a smaller but similar effect to 9/11 in New York, in that people will assume that this is what happens when you go to Rio and that it is therefore unsafe to go. Many of Brazil's problems snowball in this manner, in which stereotyping due to isolated incidents cause people to form opinions about cities and entire countries.
Finally, the atrocities that happen in the favelas each day don't usually make the headlines around the globe, atrocities that the Brazilian and city governments have been unable to appropriately address. I pray for the safety of the victims, and hope for the reputation of Rio and Brazil that this event serve as a big WAKE-UP CALL that Rio is going nowhere fast as an international, modern city when this type of thing happens. And you can forget about the Olympics.
UPDATE, 8pm: According to Globo, the Vietnamese vice-ambassador, along with the three other hostages, were taken to the favela Vila Cruzeiro, where they were confined for 24 hours. They managed to escape through a hole, and somehow got separated after the escape. A good Samaritan from the favela helped the Vietnamese guy by giving him flip flops and putting him into a cab to Copacabana. One of the other hostages escaped and two are still missing, supposedly lost. (What the hell happened once they all escaped??) The Rio police are searching for the other escaped hostages and are investigating the case, which they found very suspicious, since the incident was out of the ordinary.
Before I begin, I'd like to make it clear that I have a great respect for medicine and American doctors. Our system is one of the most modern in the world, one that people in other countries can only dream about. But that doesn't mean that the system works, nor that the system is meant to guarantee every American his or her health.
I'm extremely thankful that I'm in good health, though this summer I had to make trips to two doctors to renew my prescriptions. Here's how it went down at my last appointment.
I made the appointment over a month before. I asked to speak to a nurse to see how much they would charge me without insurance, which I don't have at the moment (my travel health insurance only covers me outside the US). She had no idea and told me to call Billing. In Billing, I talked to a rude woman who barely spoke English, who also had no idea how much it would cost...even though she worked in Billing.
So off I went to the appointment. I babbled an explanation to the nurse, who seemed a little perplexed by my situation, but murmured, "Brazil. Wow, that's like my dream." Since my regular doctor was booked solid for the entire summer (read: entire), I had a slightly sour, disinterested doctor. I pleaded with her to give me the absolute minimum check-up, which she kindly obliged. I asked her about a simple outpatient procedure I was interested in that would let me go off my prescription, and she informed me that it would be at least $900 without insurance, and that some insurance carriers didn't cover it anyway. I scraped my jaw off the floor and that was that. I asked the doctor how much the visit would cost, and she too, had no idea. At the front desk, when I confessed I didn't have insurance, the secretary told me she'd put me down as "self-pay" and that they would bill me. The bill hasn't come yet, and I'm very afraid.
Meanwhile, my brother, who's frankly, a hot mess, does have health insurance, since he's still in college and therefore qualifies for my parent's insurance. (If he didn't have it before his condition began, I'm not sure he would have gotten insurance, since the insurance companies don't want to cover anyone with a "pre-existing condition") He's in one of two clinics in the US that deal specifically with his ailment, and thankfully his co-pay was a mere fraction of the thousands of dollars they're charging for him to be there. He is scheduled to be there for a week, while he is pumped full of drugs that are supposed to cure him. Though two of the same "doctors" see him daily, they are for all intents and purposes students, since they cannot change medication or major decisions. Meanwhile, the accredited doctors that do make those decisions are different people every single day. This means he may not see a single doctor twice, and they depend entirely on his chart and whatever groggy thoughts he manages to verbalize as a way of knowing what's going on. And I must say that the doctor on Day 1 did not inspire much confidence when he reminded me more of Stephen Colbert at 1:04 of this video than say, a doctor who knows what the hell he's doing.
Meanwhile, the hospital itself is a sight to be seen. A supposed modern American hospital, the lobby more closely resembles a Holiday Inn Express than say, a high-tech hospital, complete with check-in desks and cashiers. There are flies and fleas everywhere, including my brother's room, which has a TV bolted to the wall that you have to pay $5 a day--in cash--to watch. There is a security desk at the entrance, but the guard and the employee only pay attention and enforce the visitor badge rule 25% of the time (making me feel not so confident in say, the security of the hospital), but chewed my mom out when she tried to bring our 5 bags to my brother's room without a pass.
Yet through it all, I have to be grateful to be an American within a flawed American system, since immigrants seem to be the most vulnerable ones here. The New York Times had two separate and unrelated articles in mere weeks of each other, one about private hospitals illegally deporting immigrant patients who can't pay, and another about a legal immigrant resident who died a horrible, gruesome, painful death after being thrown into an alien detention center after a bureaucratic mishap. The immigration authorities didn't believe he was really sick and insisted he was faking it. He died of cancer of the liver, lungs and bones at age 34.
One of my strongest personal convictions is that everyone has a right to health, and that it's a crime against humanity to make health a privilege. People who are sick deserve care no matter how rich or poor they are, because doctors are meant to heal. People who aren't sick deserve adequate care to help prevent disease, too. The patient should be the core of the system--not the companies that profit from his misfortune. Unfortunately, due to the death grip health insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and private health care businesses have on the US, I don't anticipate a change in our deeply flawed system anytime soon.
So, Brits and Canadians, the next time you complain about a long wait, or bureaucracy, or whatever's bugging you about your health care system, just remember how lucky you are.
I went shopping in Manhattan to stock up on (well-made) clothing basics and to buy some electronics per request of Eli's dad. I've never been mistaken for being a foreigner while shopping at home, because in the good old days, that's what New Yorkers did.
But every time I set foot into an electronics store, the store clerks would eye me warily. One clerk, a big black guy, asked me where I was from. "I'm American!" I told him, though I confessed the loot was really en route to Brazil. He stared dreamily into space and breathed, "Braa-ssil. Oh man, I love Braa-ssil." I told the same story to a clerk in another store, and his co-worker was eavesdropping and came over and started trying to talk to me in Portunhol. "Pero por que voce no quier la camera?" "I'M AMERICAN!!!" I cried. "I know it's hard to believe!"
In the meantime, I've never seen mid-town Manhattan's stores so empty, and more importantly, so void of, well, New Yorkers. Everywhere I went I heard lots of Spanish, French, and Nordic languages I couldn't identify. All the Europeans and I do believe, South Americans, were greedily making their rounds on Fifth Avenue, seemingly unconcerned about prices. I actually felt guilty to be shopping.
I'm going back to Rio on Tuesday for another six + months. I have really mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand, I feel like I'm going home. A year isn't that long, but I grew so accustomed to life in Brazil that it feels like the normal thing to do, especially because I really didn't experience any other life after college. In the grand scheme of things, it's actually the easier thing to do, between putting off a 40 hour a week job and being able to be on the same continent as my boyfriend. I learned everything the hard way and now I really feel like a Carioca. I'm looking for new jobs, so in a way I feel that I'm starting fresh without having to start from scratch. I'm going back to teaching ballet at the NGO, so I feel like I'm continuing unfinished work.
On the other hand, I feel, now more than ever, like the New York girl I purport myself to be. As much as I complained about commuting, I feel best when I'm wandering around the city. I love trying new places and seeing new shows and movies, going to festivals and having zillions of options of things to do. I have very much enjoyed the luxury of being taken out by my parents and family, and of not having to completely take care of myself. I loved seeing my friends, and sheepishly will admit that I felt a bit Carrie Bradshaw-esque meeting them around the city. I just feel like I'm in my element when I'm here.
And as Benny from "In the Heights" says to his love interest, "Everything's easier when you're home."
But I really have no idea where home is, at this point.
I'm a little obsessed with some of the Olympics commercials (that doesn't mean I endorse the companies!) Here are some of them.
1) Even though I think Visa is kind of full of it, I love this commercial that reinforces my whole schpiel about how the US starts to care about the rest of the world during the Olympics.
2) The next commercial is for Oreos, and it's simple, with no dialog, and I think you can interpret it two ways. One, that we are fundamentally all the same (and that we all love Oreos), no matter where we're from. Two, that the rest of the world just imitates the US, especially our consumer trends.
3) This Nike commercial is just really creative and I love the song. It's has a similar message to the Visa commercial, but without spelling it out. At around twenty five seconds you can spot Brazilian gymnast Daiane dos Santos. I think.
4) Who knew McDonald's would use an old school Brazilian rock song for a prime time commercial?
Though I'd been very aware of this before, I was again struck by how little Americans know about the rest of the world. It always seemed to me that most people were disinterested, but I've discovered that's not necessarily the case.
Part of the reason I love New York so much is because it's like the whole world shrunken down to a city. There are communities here from countries all over the world: in one day, I hear a Russian meat skewer vendor screaming at her husband, a French businesswoman quietly speaking on her cell phone waiting for an elevator, a group of Chilean tourists chattering away as they peer at their maps, and a Chinese grandma playing with her grandson on the subway. In New York, you can eat almost nearly every every type of food you can imagine, find books in Japanese and Korean, and see movies in Hebrew and German. You can feel like you've traveled the world without going anywhere.
But just because we have so many foreigners here doesn't mean that even worldly New Yorkers are genuinely interested in them. Some are, to be sure. But just because you eat Chinese food and go to see a French movie that got rave reviews in the New York Times doesn't make you an international citizen. What I believe is that at least in the case of New Yorkers, people are only interested in limited aspects of other cultures, ones that are hip, cool, or fun. It's better than nothing, but many New Yorkers see other cultures as a part of New York life--just another bar, another cafe, another book. It's still better than most of America, though.
On a similar note, something I've always noticed about the US is what a short historical memory we have. This differs enormously from other countries, where even young people are deeply aware of events that happened fifty years, a hundred years, even centuries ago. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but part of it, I think, is disinterest in the past and a strong interest in the here and now. Our culture is very much an instant gratification culture, one where we are most excited by the new, the innovative, and the cool, like the Iphone or the latest bestseller. I think there is a possibility that this is changing, due to the multiple shocks my generation has suffered--9/11, disastrous wars in the Middle East, the economic crisis. I think the historical event that most people of my generation remember is World War II, since our grandparents have drummed it into our heads and we learn a lot about it in high school. Yet more recent events, like the Korean and Vietnam wars, are often glossed over in school and we learn about them in bad movies and on monument tours in Washington. There's hope, I think, that my generation has the opportunity to maintain a stronger collective historic memory, so we stop repeating our mistakes, over and over again.
I've raved a lot about the movie Wall-e, a futuristic Pixar film about a robot living in a world inhabited by garbage instead of humans. But one of the scariest things about it was its vision of the humans, living aboard spaceships since Earth is uninhabitable.
They're obese, to the point of being like blobs, and float around on hover armchairs, eating all of their food in liquid form from a Slushee cup with a straw. They move around, but all they see is the screen in front of their face, playing games, watching TV and talking to friends via video messenger.
The thing is, I really think we've come a little close to that, and I myself am guilty. I notice that people walk everywhere with their cell phones plastered to their ears, Starbucks in hand, not really paying attention to their surroundings. People bring their laptops to cafes, only to talk to friends virtually. People fiddle with their Blackberries and Iphones on the subway, on the train, on the street, in line, in the park, in the elevator. And don't get me started on the obesity part.
It just seems to me that we've begun relying so much on technology that we've become practically blind to the world around us and personal, face to face relationships have changed, for the worse. Why talk to your co-worker across the room when you can email them?
The other thing that Wall-e touches on is how big businesses have basically come to control the world, and people have fallen hostage to a constant bombardment of ads and promotions, as well as getting everything they own from a monopoly.
It really does seem that big business has gotten completely out of control, more so than I've ever noticed while living here. I can't do anything without being flooded with ads--on the street, on the Internet, on the subway, even in the bathroom. It's unbelievably annoying.
But the other, creepier thing is the hold corporations seem to have on America. I'll talk a little about the health care system later this week, in which big business have a firm and iron grip, but it's not just that. Oil companies obviously have us all on a short leash at the moment, but many Americans don't seem to realize how corporations control our entire lives. I've been reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has showed me that major agricultural corporations control what we eat and actually want us to eat more calories than we can process per day, due to a corn surplus. (We're walking corn chips, apparently, since so much of our food has a corn base).
In turn, this has made me think about all the other companies that benefit from Americans eating more than they can handle, and as a result, getting fat: diet pill companies, gyms, weight loss programs, therapists, health magazines, plastic surgeons...it's endless, really. There are the car companies, the realtors, the insurance companies, the investment banks, the regular banks, the credit card companies...what do we have that isn't controlled by big business?
Another thing that's brought me to this realization is the American economic crisis. So many Americans got loans and mortgages from companies that were looking for big, short-term profits for their own benefit, which has, in the long-term, screwed the consumers big time. Credit card companies target people who will rack up big bills, whether or not they can pay, since they charge ludicrous interest rates. As a result, millions of Americans have incredible amounts of debt, and only now have some big businesses begun to suffer because of it.
I'm hoping that by the time I return from Brazil next year, perhaps we will have stood up to big business and told them, in the words of the great Kathy Griffin, to suck it.
Today was a little frustrating again, because the doctors loaded my brother on a sleep-inducing drug, so we sat around the hospital lobby all day waiting for him to wake up--which he did once, for ten minutes. At least he has started treatment and the doctors are closely monitoring him.
I've kind of fallen for Philly. New Yorkers kind of look down on it as a wannabe city, but I love it. Though it has sprawling ghettos, the downtown part is gorgeous, with parts from the 1700s with gorgeous red brick townhouses and buildings. It's charming, yet completely unpretentious (unlike New York), and has a big restaurant culture which of course, makes me love it even more. It's clean and quiet and laid back for a Northeastern city, and the people, like the city, are pretty unpretentious. It's more of a Gap town than a Gucci one.
All I want to do is wander around the old town and take pictures of the stunning murals and mosaics everywhere, and the heart-breakingly beautiful tree-lined cobblestone streets. But alas, that is not why we are in Philly.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about where I want to live when I come back from Brazil, and Philly has been tempting me, despite the fact that it's sunny and warm now but gets very cold in the winter. At this point, since I seem to have fallen completely off the career track, I just want to go to a liveable, fun city. But I fear that I may be too much of a city snob for this town.
We're in Philly today and I am just on the verge of going bat-shit insane.
The hospital told us to be at the hospital by 8;15am, and we were there by 8. We were in the drab, depressing room by 8:30. We were then told a doctor would come by so he could start treatment, and a doctor arrived promptly four hours later. By then, I had braided my hair, gotten coffee, put surgical gloves on my feet, and tried making a surgical glove balloon. My parents and I took a break to go to lunch at a cute, hip restaurant in the achingly beautiful neighborhood where we're staying (in a stunning townhouse, which belongs to a family friend), and then we went back to the hospital to watch my brother sit around and wait for the head doctor to come.
I went to Starbucks to try to get Internet, since I had some business to attend to, and found STARBUCKS NOW CHARGES FOR WIRELESS. So I wound up back at the hospital for another few hours, and only now did I find wireless at Cosi.
In other news, my brother is ok. I stared at him and the wall for a good 7 hours today so I'd know! Now my mom and I are going to drown our sorrows in some wine and a movie before I spontaneously combust.