My Government and Yours

Today was a day of officials.  We started off with a debriefing on education here in Brazil.  Some of it sounded painfully familiar.  Some of it was totally new.  It prompted questions and gave a platform from which we sprang for the rest of the day's adventures.

After lunch, we traveled through the now-hectic Monday traffic to the US Embassy.  We talked to officials there about education.  Again and again we heard how much Brazil is trying to better their education system and how interested the United States is in helping them and in making stronger ties with Brazil in general.  I am glad to hear it, but I had to wonder how many average Americans (whatever that really means) think of Brazil when they think of nations important to the US.  I don't think that we think of Brazil badly, but I don't know if we think if it immediately when we start thinking of vital global partners in the way that the government officials here seem to want us to do.  That means that there needs to be work in the US, not just here, and maybe that's happening.  Maybe I personally am a part of that.  It just made me stop to ponder.  A greater awareness raising is needed, perhaps.

Another thing that came out of the meeting was how very many programs and opportunities for exchange there are on every level with Brazil that few of us knew anything about.  Only one or two of us knew about programs that had been around a long time that would allow Brazilian students to come to the States or for us to send our students to Brazil if they got through the application process.  There are even teachers coming here to do EFL.  This is the kind of knowledge that will allow us to open doors for others to come here and make the kind of connections between the two cultures possible.

The second visit we did was with Brazilian Senator Cristovam Buarque.  I liked him the minute he walked in.  He sat down coming straight from the floor of the Senate where he'd been speaking and asked us who we were.  That sort of non-political straight-forwardness was to mark the entire time we had with him.  He is the person who is helping to shape Brazil's education reform, and he answered every question we put to him.  The things he said seemed to be based in common sense and logic.  He talked of reform taking years, decades even, under careful guidance, instead of it being some kind of jumped-up radical run-around half-done situation that we all-too-often experience at home.  It was refreshing.  He stayed with us longer than he should have and kept some people who were far more important that we were waiting.  He also said he'd love to talk with us again later this week about education in the US.  I hope we will get the chance to have that meeting.  It would be great to hear more from him.

After the meeting with the Senator, we toured the National Congress.  It is another confection of exposed concrete.  We had a tour guide who showed us both the House and Senate chambers.  It was somehow a bit surreal to be standing in the heart of the government of another country.  I haven't even been in the Capitol (the parking lot just doesn't count) of my own.

We fought our way home through traffic that was inching along during the five-o'-clock rush and finally arrived back at the hotel.  Everybody decided that the food court at the nearby mega-mall was the way to go tonight, and so we walked over talking about the day.  I wound up getting a calzone with heart of palm and feeling absurdly proud of myself for being able to use even minimal Portuguese to get it (even though the girl behind the counter handed us a menu in English).  I also was able to decipher the flavors at a gelato place for desert and had some fantastic pistachio.  The crowning glory on my day, though, was found in the shop in the basement.  They had Sonho de Valsa, one of my favorite candies in the universe.  My friend A. got me hooked on them when we lived in Bloomington, and then we ate them in Japan because there was a Brazilian grocery there.  I put a handful of the hazelnut-chocolate bonbons in my basket with a big guarana and some bottled water and dragged my weary self back to my room.

Tomorrow will be another busy day, and I'm taking a little while alone to decompress and think of all I've seen and heard today.  This trip is filled every moment it seems with almost impossible amounts of information.  I think I'm going to be digesting it (Sonho de Valsa and calzone not included) for a long, long time to come.