Here I am again, on my 4th day in Brazil.

Yesterday was spent primarily eating and attending talks. And then eating and having the poster presentation. (It was fine, but the space was too crowded for my comfort.) Then eating and attending more talks. Here’s a look at what the schedule has been like:

7:00-7:45 eating (breakfast)
8:30-11:00 talks
11:00-11:30 eating (coffee break)
11:30-1:10 talks
1:10-2:30 eating (lunch)
2:30-4 posters
4-4:30 eating (coffee break)
4:30-6:10 talks

As you can see, there are some opportunities to eat. And I have been doing my duty. Tonight there is the banquet, which will take place at an old coffee farm. So we can add the following to the schedule:

7:00-?? eating

Last night, I was determined to see more of Campinas than 3 corners of this large traffic circle (hotel, conference motel, and mall), so I went with some folks to dinner downtown. My goal was accomplished, though I still didn’t see much, and it was too dark for pictures. Also, the food was pretty mediocre and overpriced. (It was a Japanese restaurant that the cab driver knew, and I think he was getting a kickback.) But I had fun with the people I went with.

Internet access has been a bit sporadic. At the hotel, we have to pay for wireless. At the conference, there is internet access via ethernet cables, but you largely have to miss talks to get a chance to use one of the connections. I’ve decided to skip the last session of talks for the day to put my feet up and sit here like a lump. (My ankles are are swollen up like sausages.)¹

Oh, and I do have reservations for a hotel in São Paulo tomorrow night. I’ll be taking the bus along with a student from São Paulo, which is great.

I have a couple of pictures, have even gotten them onto my computer by various means, but can’t seem to get them up on WordPress. I will post them when I can. However, I can almost guarantee that you will be underwhelmed.

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¹Also my brain is full. Actually, I’m just generally full. Why in French, you could even say I’m pleine.²

² Now the question is, am I really just full of it?³

³ Please don’t answer that question.

So, here I am. Safe and sound in the hotel in Campinas. It took me about 22 hours to get from door to door.

The flight was long, but largely uneventful. Which is what one wants in a flight. (At least the uneventful part. The long bit, not so much.)

We landed in São Paulo around 9:00 a.m., but had to wait around a while at the airport to get the bus to Campinas, as the earlier one was full.

My first meal here was therefore eaten in an airport café. I had a salad, a somewhat stale pão de queijo, and a can of guaraná.

The bus ride was about 2 hours long, and I slept through much of it. The bus was able to let us out “at our hotel,” by special arrangements of the conference organizers. This meant letting a group of us out on a busy highway so that we could climb up a pedestrian overpass, and then cross another busy street with no light or crosswalk, traipse through a gas station, and arrive at the hotel on foot. This was not so bad, in and of itself, but seemed a bit rough on the distinguished professor from Japan in his late 70s. Especially since we were all toting our luggage. On the bright side, we didn’t get squashed by a bus.

Have I mentioned that Campinas appears to not be very pedestrian friendly? It would seem that we need to take cabs everywhere (or a shuttle to and from the conference when available)¹. There is not even a restaurant (outside of the hotel) or little market nearby.

My travel companion and I ended up taking a cab over to the nearby “small” shopping center, which turned out to be a pretty substantial mall. We found what we hoped would be a supermarket, but turned out to be more like a Walmart (named, appropriately, Big).

We did pick up a few things for dinner and snacks, including some goiabada (a condensed guava paste) and Minas cheese, which when eaten together are called “Romeo and Juliet.” We also got a bit of fruit, including some little bananas that were not as ripe as their degree of yellowness and and softness led me to believe. (Hopefully they will redeem themselves later in the week.)

My Portuguese vocabulary is coming back to me in dribs and drabs. But I feel like I’m in a totally different country than the Brazil I knew 16 years ago. I don’t know how much of that is due to being in the outskirts of a very industrialized city without claims to tourism, and how much is due to the passage of time. Both, I think.

I’ve taken a couple of pictures of the view from our hotel window, but can’t seem to get my pictures to upload off my camera. I’ll post some when I can.

The conference starts tomorrow, so I expect I’ll be pretty tied up for the day.

Oh, also, a word of advice for those travelling to Brazil. Make sure to call all your banks or credit card companies if you hope to have access to your accounts in Brazil. I called one credit card company, but neglected to call our regular bank. My attempts to get cash from an ATM have resulted not in me getting cash, but in a hold being put on our account.

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¹ I may actually adopt the term “shuffle bus” into my vocabulary, as this is what was listed several times on the conference bus. It appeals to me that we will get shuffled around, especially since many of us feel a bit mixed up.

So I leave for Brazil in less than 24 hours, and I feel far from ready.

The poster and handouts are done. I have my passport and visa. I have confirmation about my flights. I have some of my packing done. (What I also have is a really bad cough. My flu of last week evolved into a persistant cough that I really hoped I’d have shaken by now. Can I say that I’m not looking forward to the 12+ hours in airplanes? Oh, right, and I’m also pregnant, which may also lead to the flights being somewhat uncomfortable.)

What I don’t yet have are reservations for my last 2 nights in Brazil. Which I need to work out, hopefully tonight.

I’m very excited about this trip, but there are a number of things weighing on my mind.

The conference itself is in Campinas, a city in the state of São Paulo, and about an hour away from the sprawling city of São Paulo itself. Campinas is an industrial city with a university. It appears, however, to be rather short of attractions that might be interesting to a tourist. If you look it up in the Lonely Planet Brazil guide, you won’t even freakin’ find it. Okay, it’s on the map, but that’s it. And this travel site shows 3 attractions, one of which is a nightclub. I feel a little like I’m going to Pittsburg. (I have never been to Pittsburg. I’m sure it’s a lovely city. But it’s not exactly known as an international tourism destination.)

My plan, therefore, is to try to spend some time in São Paulo, a city which has an actual chapter in Lonely Planet, for the couple of days after the conference ends. There are loads of museums there, and also some vegetarian restaurants, and a famous large outdoor market. I find myself thinking more about that end of the trip than about the conference.

I spent a semester in Brazil in 1991, as part of my undergraduate studies. It was an amazing experience, and I have a deep affection for Brazil. It amazes me to realize that I have not been back there in over 16 years. I have been hoping to find some time to write about my earlier experiences. I lived in Rio, where I stayed in sort of an uncomfortable living situation with a “family,” attended classes at a university there, and took every chance I could to get out of Rio and see the rest of the country. The high point of my stay in Brazil was when I bought a one-way plane ticket to Manaus¹, a city smack-dab in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon, and worked my way back down to Rio by boat and bus over several weeks.

I was 20 years old then. I took some risks. I had some adventures. I stayed in some really seedy places. I nearly got stranded. I met some interesting people. And I was very lucky. I managed not to be the victim of a crime, unlike large numbers of other travelers that I knew.

This trip will be very different from that other time in Brazil. I expect to be quite safe while attending the conference, and taking the shuttle to and from the fairly upscale hotel where I’ll be staying along with one of my professors.

But I do have a few misgivings about the end of my stay. My professor will be heading off for other parts, and I’ll be on my own the last 2 nights. São Paulo is considered to be much safer than Rio, but tourists are still regular targets of crime. For example, take a gander at this lovely bit from the US government Overseas Security Advisory Council:

The Department of State rates the crime rate for São Paulo as CRITICAL. Despite various organizations and state government entities reporting decreases in crime levels throughout São Paulo state, crime is still widespread with various degrees of severity. Violent crimes such as murder, rape, kidnappings, armed assaults and burglaries have become a part of normal everyday life.

Crime was a serious threat when I was in Brazil in 1991, too. It was a part of daily life. I learned ways of reducing my chances of being a victim. I got to be very good at looking like I knew where I was going, even if I had no idea. I learned to carry a bag like locals carry. I learned to keep my money not only hidden, but distributed across various pockets and such so that I wouldn’t have to fork it all over in the likely event of a mugging. I learned not to wear a watch, or any shiny jewelry, no matter how low in value. (I had a friend who was mugged over a cheap plastic watch.)

I’ve already taken off my wedding ring, and won’t even bring a watch. I’m planning to bring a 5-year-old laptop, rather than my more recent one, and I’ll keep it tucked away when I’m not in the safety of my hotel room. I’m not planning to even leave the hotel after dark. But you see, I haven’t yet picked a hotel. Part of me says I should just stay in some expensive place, to take advantage of the relative saftey. But part of me wonders just how much I should shell out. My various concerns make it hard for me to decide on a hotel, and then I still have to hope that I can even get a room.

It’s been interesting to think about this trip compared to my earlier trips in Brazil. I’ve come to realize that I value my safety a lot more now, and that I value my life a lot more than I did when I was twenty. As a wife and mother (and an expecting mother at that), my life and safety also mean more to more people than they did when I was an unattached student.

And on top of all of this, I’m feeling the pangs of being separated from Phoebe for over a week. (Yes, I’ll miss John, too. But I can email him, hopefully.) It was hard for me to put Phoebe to bed tonight, because I didn’t want to stop holding her. I found myself caving to her requests to read and reread more books than usual.

So now it’s time to get back to packing. And looking up hotels online. And paying bills. And doing all the other assorted things one always has to do before a trip.

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¹ Thanks again, jenny, for lending my that $300 to help me get my plane ticket when the airfares suddenly doubled. I couldn’t have done it without you!