mercados and museus

We're going to Parati this weekend, leaving tomorrow at 8AM and not coming back until Sunday evening. Apparently some of the best scuba diving in Brazil is there, so I hope to have a pretty good time.

Today is Sao Paulo's birthday! There are all kind of cultural events going on. The museums are open late and accessible for free. There is also something really confusing with local bakeries and cake that my host mom tried to explain to me. I plan to go out today to find some pants and painting supplies. We'll see how far I actually get. I had the same goal yesterday and came back with nothing but a belt made of old map print fabric.

Tuesday we went to the Portuguese Language Museum, which was one of the coolest places I've ever been, and Sao Paulo State's art museum, the Pinacoteca. Here are some pictures.

Here's the outside of the Museu da Lingua Portuguesa:


And here's the entrance area:


We went to the third floor and watched a short movie on the history of Brazilian Portuguese. After that the movie screen lifted and rotated so we could duck underneath it to a huge almost barn-like room beyond. It was very dark and the floor was some kind of polished black stuff with bits and pieces of poetry and prose illuminated from below. We watched another presentation on Brazilian poetry and music, with graphics and words and all kinds of crazy stuff flying around on the ceiling and walls, thanks to at least four projectors poking out of the walls. It was insane, and way better than any presentation I've ever seen in an American museum. Then we went to the second floor, and the museum got better.

The second floor's whole ceiling was dripping with fabric "pages," taken I think from an old book written by one of the guys who explored Brazil. The pages had all been "edited" to make sense in modern Portuguese. You could pull the strips sewed to the bottom of the pages to bring them down and read them, which would make the cans and bags of sand fly up. So the whole time the entire ceiling was moving and shifting as people looked at different parts of the story.


The floor was covered in bits of rubble, brick, and odd, colorful symbols. I didn't hear very well, but apparently the symbols relate to different characters in the book, and if you follow them around and read what they lead you to, you kind of walk the path of the character in the book. Everything had words painted on it.




There were also these crazy barrels filled with water and lit up words that you had to read using a mirror. The guy is John. He's nice.


Here's Graham and Brandon standing in the middle of my shot of the Pinacoteca building:


Unfortunately, the Pinacoteca didn't allow pictures. It also had only one painting by Tarsila and nothing by Maria, so I was a little skeptical about the claim that it's the best museum of Brazilian art in Brazil. They did have some really gorgeous contemporary stuff, though. I'm having trouble finding names of artists I liked, so I'll go back again and take notes.

Afterward, Graham, Brandon and I went wandering on the Rua 25 de Marco, which is the crazy discount street. There were more people on that one street than I have ever seen in my life. I'm going back today and taking pictures, if I feel like I can do it without getting my camera stolen. I got some graffiti outside the Metro station before the crowd got really insane:


Eventually we wandered into the Mercado Municipal. It's a giant indoor market with seemingly more fruit than the world could really realistically eat. There are also tons of restaurants and things of that nature. It reminded me a lot of the market in London, Canada. There was even a crepe seller!



We went up to the second floor and had some really awesome sushi. Here's Brandon and Graham sitting "in" the restaurant with the Mercado in the background:


To the right of us:


Brandon bought some pretty impressive shoes for $15 (US):


That'll be it for now and probably until Monday!