News from Brazil, where the nuts are from: Chucrute e Camarão (Sauerkraut & Bahian Shrimp)

The buffets are killing me in Brazil - I want to try everything and then I end up with "It's a small world" on my plate!

The first weekend of October we went to two conferences in Ponta Grossa (about 4 hours from Londrina). The first evening after the meeting, we had time to rest a little and then go to dinner at La Gondola. This place looked like stereotypicial Austria/Germany with huge mirrors and candles on the wall. And then hanging on one side of the room was a flat screen tv! Again, totally out of place with the rest of the decoration. But , as is usual in Brazil, they had a buffet with just about every kind of food imaginable. This is a problem for me since I always want to try a little bit of everything but then there are too many different food groups on my plate:) At La Gondola, first, I saw German sauerkraut and sausage, which I took, and then suddenly there was sushi and risotto, lasagna and shrimp from Bahia and my plate was a mess! I also asked for the house wine, which I assumed was a dry wine, but it turned out to be incredibly sweet and more of a dessert wine, which was a disaster with what I was eating! So, with this mix on my plate and sweet wine, plus a chocolate mousse dessert, you can imagine I wasn’t feeling too well by the end of the evening!

Telma & Jussara at La Gondola

Brazil's President Vargas had come to Ponta Grossa in 1943 and had stayed in the same hotel where we were - Planalto. He made a popular speech to a large crowd from the balcony of his room. So, although not stocked with memorabilia like the Beatles' hotel room in Seattle, we were still able to go in and take photos from the balcony:) Unfortunately, the view is now blocked by thick telephone & electric wires, but still you can have an idea. I think the hotel clerk thought we were a little nuts, but he obliged us anyway. He let us in the room and then went down to the street and took pictures of us with everybody staring! I wonder how many people would even ask to do this???:)

Telma, me & Jussara on the balcony of Planalto hotel where President Vargas stayed during his visit in the 1940s

Crossing the street to a very typical Brazilian corner - improviso bars with plastic chairs & election propaganda everwhere:)

Ponta Grossa is Brazil in a nut shell with its 70s style pedestrian area, plastic chairs & street vendors ready to sell any kind of burned CD, DVD, jewelry, etc. You can see their system here of having a bag laid out with strings ready to pull up at a moment's notice if the police arrive!

Telma & Jussara looking for interesting DVDs or music videos - the only way to shop in Brazil:)

Setting up again after a false alarm from the police! They weren't too happy about me taking pictures of them either!

And here, I need to re-paste a story I wrote at the beginning of the year about having a CPF when shopping in Brazil at Casas Bahia and Lojas Americanas, the kinds of stores here that have balloons everywhere, where you can buy everything on credit, and that look like they are straight out of the 70s. I was finally able to get a picture to go with that story so you can take a look again here:)

Foreigners can’t buy anything here…

One of the most comical things here has been trying to go shopping and make all the purchases I need for my apt., etc. How can a country go towards globalization when every system in the shops is set up to require a social security number? That was our question after trying to shop for the first time here. If you don’t have this, you can’t buy anything! Luckily, I was with a local, my host teacher, Telma, most of the time who could put things in her name. But now my phone, my printer, and even my alarm clock are in her name. If I don’t pay or skip the country, she is responsible!:)

Shopping is quite an experience. In most of the stores, you can’t just walk in and look around. As soon as you enter, a sales clerk comes right up to you, immediately, and asks you what you are looking for and what your name is, so they can talk to you personally for the remainder of the time you are in the store! Each time you have to say that you are just looking and then they will leave you alone, for about 5 minutes, at which point they come back up to you to see if you have changed your mind:) It made me laugh thinking of the Europeans who say that the American system is annoying with over-friendly sales girls. This is much worse. They are very helpful, but it would be nice to be able to enter a store and then ask for help only when you needed it. For this, I much prefer the European way.

You can buy almost everything on time (in installments) and one store especially, Casas Bahia, is well-known for its installment plans on furniture and appliances, among other things. You feel like you are in a time-warp in this store; it reminds me of a store right out of the 70s. They have balloons on the ceiling, which look either like a Republican convention or a 70s sitcom where all the balloons fall down on the 100th customer of the day:) Everything in the store looks 70s – green and orange sofas, large refrigerators and washing machines for sale all on display in the same large, open space, and all with desks around the store for customers to sit down and talk to a clerk about how many installments they can arrange to make the payments. I again felt like one of the 70s sitcoms where the father works at an appliance or dry cleaning store – aka The Jeffersons, Good Times or Maude. It’s quite an experience to go there. I had to exchange my alarm clock that didn’t work and it took one hour. The time to talk to one clerk who sent me down the store to find another person who sent me downstairs to a little office where another person proceeded to tell me that they could exchange it, but it wasn’t possible today because it was Saturday! So, I had to go to a different Casas Bahias to make the final exchange at the Mall where they are open on Sundays and can exchange:) Luckily, I finally received my temporary ID card from the Federal Police, which means that I have a number with can allow me to get another number (CPF, like our Social Security), which will allow me now to buy things on my own and also make hotel and airline reservations online, something that is also impossible for foreigners to do unless they have this CPF number!

Ponta Grossa - ENFOPLI & EPLE conferences
The first of the conferences we were at was ENFOPLI on Thursday. This is a group of English teacher trainers throughout the state of Paraná who meet once a year and the rest of the time communicate via an online forum. This was just a one day event so, needless to say, we were all just a tad tired after taking the overnight bus, arriving at 4:00am and then starting the meetings at 8:00am!

But it was nice. Samantha, the coordinator of the online ENFOPLI site talked about all the tools to using the site to its utmost capacity. And then teachers talked about research and projects they were doing at their institutions and we discussed a text on Communities of Practice and how those networks can form for teachers, both at the university and in online communities. Everyone had a chance to say things they hoped could be improved at their institution next year, especially with regard to the internship programs which send future English teachers into the public school system for a teaching practicum.

The second conference was EPLE (for Teachers of all languages in Parana). This was Friday and Saturday and in addition to Telma, Jussara, and Samantha's presentation on Communities of Practice, I also presented on book clubs and reading groups at the university, and three of our students at UEL also gave presentations on projects they have been working on at the universtiy as well. So, it was three very full days in all and then we went back to Londrina Saturday afternoon by bus.

Everyone at the Botequim bar after the EPLE conference on Friday