Sao Paulo Is Not So Bad

This past weekend I was in Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo has about 16 million people. My friend Ana used to live there, and the first time that I came to Brazil, I stayed with her in her apartment in Sampa, the Brazilian nickname for Sao Paulo. This time, I stayed with Natalia, who, like me, is also a reporter for Free Speech Radio News. Natalia has great energy and is very upbeat, and it was really a pleasure to stay with her.
My perspective on Sao Paulo has been that it's not a place where I care to spend any time. This visit made a dent in that. My purpose for being there was to do some interviews with people about Lula's plan to build 1,000,000 homes and with other folks about the elections coming up in Lebanon on June 7th. There is a pretty substantial Arab community in Brazil. About 8% of the population has Arab origins, so the election in Lebanon is relevant. Unfortunately, so far I haven't found anybody interested in paying me to get this story together. But still, it's one of the things that took me to SP.
On Saturday night, Natalia, her boyfriend Alé, and I went to the Virada Cultural: 24 hours of music and performances on 16 different stages around the city. There were 800 shows altogether during the 24-hour period. On Sunday afternoon, we saw a man dancing with a tractor. That was pretty impressive.
Saturday night, my favorite piece was a series of metal sculptures with clay pots of fire, appropriately positioned throughout the Jardim da Luz, the Garden of Light. There's a tiny picture here: http://viradacultural.org/programacao/centro
Tuesday morning I got on a bus, again, and came back to Rio. So that's where I am now, finishing up the story about Lula's housing plan. Yesterday was my birthday, and I went out with some folks from the hostel for a low-key evening of pizza and the Brazilian version of pool, sinuca.