Sao Paulo is huge. Flying over the city, I thought I had a sense of its scope, but I didn’t at all. You can never see where it ends. Standing on a mountain in the forests above the city, the urban landscape seems to stretch forever, with atmospheric perspective engulfing the horizon.

I am living with a family in Villa Madalena, which is one of the nicest areas of the city, in my opinion. It’s located about fifty minutes away from Mackenzie University, where our classes are held. My roommate Alex (who is also in my program) and I can either take a bus or two trains to school. The trains are a little faster and less crowded, but there is more of a walk involved. We’ve probably taken a different series of routes to get to school everyday for the past week.

There are very quaint and clean bars and restaurants in Villa Madalena located about a fifteen-minute walk away from my host family’s house. Most of these bars seem to have a European influence, which makes sense considering that Sao Paulo has the largest Italian population outside of Italy. They can accommodate thousands of people on a weekend night without feeling too overwhelming. To celebrate Alex’s birthday last night, we went to a bar that had a host of liquors I’d never heard of, including cachaça, which is the primary ingredient in a caipirinha (muddled lime, sugar, ice and cachaça). These drinks really knock your pants off. After leaving the bar, we went to a nearby club called Favela, which is also the name for Brazilian shantytowns, so I’m not really sure what I think about the name…There was a live band that was really good, although I couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were singing. But after a couple of drinks, I don’t even try to speak or understand Portuguese, and don’t mind stooping to the level of gestural communication when I speak to Brazilians.

—

A few days ago, Alex and I spent the day with Silvio de Abreu, who is a family friend of mine and happens to be a famous telenovela writer and director. It was a very surreal experience to be picked up in his Mercedes on the quaint street where I’m staying and be driven through Sao Paulo’s bustling downtown behind tinted windows. We ended up going to a restaurant with food from Minas Gerais, which is an area north of São Paulo. It was supremely tasty. The host at the restaurant addressed Silvio by name even though he’d never been there before. Silvio then took Alex and I to a nearby mall, which was definitely not like any mall I’ve ever seen. There was a live orchestra on the mezzanine, each clothing store and its own café, and many people came up to Silvio to shake his hand or just stare at him. Next week, Alex and I plan to take Silvio up on his invitation to stay at his beach house in Guaruja next weekend.

—

As part of our program’s numerous site visits, we journeyed to an abandoned office building that was part of the Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra). The program, mostly centered in the abandoned offices of downtown São Paulo (the buildings emptied when offices began to move into residential neighborhoods in order to shorten commutes), offered much insight into a seemingly informal and perhaps even illicit/criminal initiative that is in fact extremely successful and well organized. The building that we visited, which was about ten stories tall and designed in the 1930’s, housed over 150 families from around Brazil and Latin America. The families paid a sum of about R$200 (approximately $87) each month for utilities including water, electricity, and wifi. The program manager, Miguel, made it very clear that this was not a rent payment, as no one other than the business owners (who let the buildings sit abandoned) actually owned the property. Here is where the process gets very interesting: the Brazilian Constitution stipulates that it is illegal to own property that does not serve a social use. One cannot buy empty land and let it sit vacant, nor can one let an office building sit abandoned. However, somebody can sell the rights of land development to another person/company so that they can further develop their own separate piece of land, effectively fulfilling the quota of development for the land that no longer needs to be developed.

—

Yesterday, Silvio picked Alex and I up from school with his wife and took us to a classic Brazilian Barbeque restaurant with food from Rio Grande do Sul (kind of the Brazilian equivalent of Texas). Everyone wore traditional outfits from the area and came around with huge cuts of meat and cut off slices for you. There was a coaster that you could flip over to the red side to indicate that you didn’t want any more food. It was absolutely delicious. Later that night, about 20 people from our IHP group went out to a small bar in Vila Madalena that had beers from around the world, and I finally enjoyed another IPA (although with import taxes, the beer turned out to cost about $10, which is a crazy price in Brazil).

—

Today we went to an initiatve in the peripheral community (synonymous with favela? I’m not sure, they look pretty similar) of Brasilandia. The program was about gardening and environmental education, and we helped repaint a geodesic dome that was being built. We made paint by extracting the pigment from clay dug at the site, which seemed like a very sustainable process. The total commute from my house to the favela took over three hours, even though Google Maps says it’s only thirty minutes away by car. These are the types of issues we encounter when interacting with the built environment and infrastructure of São Paulo, especially within peripheral communities.

—

I just got back from a very long day. We went to a favela in the north of the center of São Paulo and it was extremely moving. We have been to a lot of initiatives within the peripheral communities, but they don’t accurately portray the real story. Today we saw how the other half actually lives, in garbage and sewage. While it was very alarming to see such poor conditions of human existence, there was hope. The reason we were in the area is because it is a site that has been chosen for redevelopment and is receiving a lot of architectural input. A river runs directly through the community, which has been deemed unsafe given how much flooding occurs. It will be cleaned and the banks will be made into a public park. This will prevent homes from being built too close to the banks while also offering public space and beautification.

After the site-visit, we went to a bar near our school. It is actually two bars on either side of a street that merge on Friday nights to create one huge party for college students from nearby Mackenzie University. I met students from the university through a Portuguese friend and staff member, Caio. Unfortunately, a knife fight that happened halfway through the night. No one was seriously hurt, but the incident reaffirms the idea that nowhere can be deemed totally safe. There are always reasons to be on your guard.

—

This weekend Silvio took Alex and I to his house in Guaruja, which is a peninsula off the south-eastern coast of the country. It was ridiculously beautiful. His house was in a gated community of luxury homes that looked like Hollywood Hills (Silvio said “Welcome to Hollywood” as we passed through security on our way in). Alex and I biked to the beach after we arrived. The beaches are nestled between the mountains, which are covered in dense foliage. The white sand of the beach, the green of the mountains, and the blue of the sky and the water create a stunning combination of colors. Most of Silvio’s house guests were friends and personal trainers who were all really nice, and maybe a bit too beautiful.

However nice Silvio’s home was, it was hard to ignore the favelas that we passed as we drove along the highway from São Paulo. They were huge informal settlements made exclusively with the goal of housing the poor service industry workers near their jobs in the wealthier communities in the area. We passed dozens of communities that sprouted up from the side of the highway and continued for miles along the road. Even upon entering Guaruja, it was clear that we had not yet reached the wealthy area. This experience of clear poverty upon entering made the beach town itself seem much more artificial and maintained.

—

Now, I’m sitting in bed, preparing a presentation about transportation in South Africa to present before leaving Brazil. “Blue Monday” by New Order is being blasted in the street outside, which makes me remember being in Costa Rica four years ago and cherishing the feeling of hearing someone play music I knew that wasn’t Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga. It makes the world seem smaller and more accessible, and makes me want to keep traveling!