Things That Worry Me More Than Zika

If you've seen snow in the last month, the Zika virus should not bother you. You're gonna make it, son. You weren't worried about Bird Flu, Small Pox, Swine Flu or Ebola, so, why start now? Or maybe you were, in which case anxiety fuels your life and I bet you'd make for a decent comedy writer.

Here in Sao Paulo, we've had about the same number of confirmed cases as the US. Here's what keeps me up at night more than Zika:

-When I'm walking past the lady that maintains our building and she takes the initiative in helping me practice Portuguese.

-Netflix's vow to block VPNs.

-I can't say no to soda.

-Bacterial meningitis.

-When I go for a run, that one tree that's always full of pigeons.

-"The Big One" that will inevitably destroy the US west coast this century.

-Bernie Sanders.

-Everything I've learned from the show Scam City.

-When I'm waiting for a movie to start and I'm afraid someone else will sit on my row, blocking the exit.

-Segredos de Minas doesn't deliver on Mondays (Americans: Think Sundays and Chick-Fil-A. It's always Sunday when you want Chick-Fil-A).

-Death.

-My inability to fantasize about hitting the Powerball without factoring in legal fees and destroyed friendships.

-If Adele can be the top selling artist of the decade but can't write a happy hit song, what's the point of going on?

-The fact that I honestly don't know if I have one or two college degrees.

-Turning 2̶0̶, 2̶3̶, 2̶6̶, 3̶0̶, 34.

-The number of people running small businesses that read about Steve Jobs and decide, "Hey, I'll  just become an asshole."

-UNCW making March Madness this year and their first game being on the day I'm traveling.

-Any time someone is really smart, good looking AND funny.

-Getting a great idea and then immediately thinking about the tens of thousands of others that have probably thought it.

-People not visiting Brazil when they really, really should.

An Update

In all honesty, and I never told my wife this, my big reason for wanting to move here was to go ahead and do the time. Dani and I met in Virginia. We dated there. Got engaged there. We laughed, and we played, and we learned each other, and I dried her homesick tears many a night. Marriage is a partnership and I was determined not to let our first big decision end with me on the take.

We would go to Brazil because then she would have that. It could never be hung over my head. I would make sacrifices. She would see the graffiti and litter-covered city again through new American-pampered eyes and then we would turn back. Sure, it would be an adventure for me, but that was secondary. I needed her to get this out of her system. It would probably take a year.

And then some time passed. Next month will mark two years. Still no end in sight.

Not that Brazil isn't making a case for us to leave. Word from back home is the Zika virus has even the snowed-in in a panic. The economy continues its dig toward the Earth's core. The upcoming Olympics are poised to be a national embarrassment. The historic drought from last year is under control, but at the cost of record-setting rainfall and floods. The poor are getting poorer. Times are tough.

Crime is up. A group and I went around the table earlier this week naming our scariest moment in Brazil. I've got a handful of friends that have had guns in their faces, but none were at this dinner and the stories came off pretty tame. We said our goodbyes and went home. 

I got a message from one a half hour later. He and his fiancee witnessed a shooting break out on the way home. An argument between some guys escalated to about eight shots fired. The men turned and ran in their direction. My friends hid in the shadows. Someone limped by their hiding spot, pistol in hand.

I'm diligent with Dani on minimizing our risks. The routes that we walk are short and populated. Cabs take us everywhere after dark. There are dozens of city-sized chunks in this megalopolis I know I will never step foot in.

Yet, you can only prepare so much. The unknown has its way of always outdoing itself. And so sitting at a stoplight the other night and seeing a man pop up at the open window of the car in front of us, then hold onto their door as they tried to drive away, puts its hooks in you pretty deep. No one wins when your wife says she's going out for a walk during daylight hours and you argue with her.

One prediction Dani and I have always felt pretty certain of is this will be our only time in Sao Paulo. Her family lives here, but their longterm plans don't and neither of us can see ourselves putting up with all the bullshit as we get older. That being said, the one-and-done approach makes you appreciate the place so much more. Like college, you know you're on the clock and this particular version of you will never live again.

Mix that in with a comfortable daily schedule, a growing list of drop dead restaurants and a historic exchange rate and its easy to accept all the other problems as collateral damage. When I moved here I only really knew Dani, but now I look around our occasional for-no-reason barbecues and see 50-some friends. Restaurants like Le Jazz and EMA torture me daily. The weather is warm. There's the social currency that's often yielded just from being a gringo. And there's a real magic in going out with a group, grabbing the check off a table covered in bottles and paying the whole US $30 yourself.

I can't imagine the tidy little life I could have chose.

The update is we're doing just fine. I'm still working. Still writing a ton. I run about three 5Ks a week. I may finally pull off a tan. Carnaval is about to start. I found a place that sells Cherry Coke. There's Ben and Jerry's here too. Until we're the ones hiding in those shadows, waiting for death to walk past, I don't see us buying those final plane tickets anytime soon.

An older couple in my church in Virginia used to live in Sao Paulo in the 1960s. They ask me for updates whenever I'm back in town. The Sao Paulo they describe was very different from what I see now, but one statement the lady always underlines holds true: "You cry when you get there and you cry when you leave." 

I did and I will.

Testing

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Three Months of Travel: Istanbul

Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Duration: 5 days
Population: 14,377,019

It's Europe. It's Asia. It's the Middle East. It's none of these. Prayers are called from the minarets starting at 5:00 am, but you can't hear them inside the nightclubs. The men are hairy and proud. The women are bronzed and beautiful. Salads are strange. There are burkas and there are midriffs. The state of the art metro system runs below cobblestone streets. Traffic is unbearable. There's basically no crime if you don't count taxi drivers preying on tourists with slight of hand. It's not really clean. Not really dirty. Not really fun. Not really boring. It is the incomparable city. It is the center of the world.

By the Bosphorus on the European side. Over there across the bridge, Asia.

You can smoke pretty much anywhere in Istanbul. It was kind of cool to see ashtrays on tables again.

A typical salad. It's like ten different things going on. I can identify about four of them. I think I enjoyed as many.

There are lots of street cats in Istanbul. Here are a couple of sweet boys.

At the historic Blue Mosque built in 1616. You have to take your shoes off and carry them around with you in a plastic bag. Women have to cover their heads to enter. You can Google to see what the inside looks like, but I'm pretty sure it can't be fully captured on any camera.

Istanbul.

Three Months of Travel: London Round 3

The line to get into the UK looked more than an hour long. Luckily, I wasn't headed there.

Three Months of Travel: Alexandria Round 3

Thirty six hours in town and lucky enough to have lunch with Wes and Tamires.

Three Months of Travel: Campos do Jordão

Location: Campos do Jordão, Brazil
Duration: 2 days
Population: 49,512
Nickname: Brazilian Switzerland

Two and half hours later, our bus wound its way up the mountains that were, just a little while ago, lining the horizon. Dani and I were getting out of the big city for our one year anniversary. She said this was a place worth going. A little town high up in the Mantiqueira Mountains called Campos do Jordão. We were almost there.

Campos is one of many communities in Brazil founded by the Germans. The main industry here is tourism. Not that there's a ton to see or do. There's German architecture and there's Brazilian architecture. Side by side in some cases. There's a chocolate factory and plenty of good restaurants. The real thrill of it all was summed up by Dani in two words: It's cold.

I forgot to bring my jacket and regretted it immediately. The sun set on the first night and the temperature free-fell through the 70s, 60s and 50s before finally coasting to a stop at 41 degrees. We were walking around the little downtown at the time, me wearing just a long-sleeve shirt. I could see my breath.

We found a nice shopkeeper preparing to close up. I bought a kind-of-ridiculous-pleather jacket and a sleek sweater. With the exchange rate, the total was just US $60. The day before, the news announced that the country had officially entered a recession. The bundled up tourists of Campos, happy and prosperous, didn't seem disturbed. The locals, however, looked a little more fragile. The Winter tourist season only had a few more weekends to bear.

Campos is sweet and small and full of beer and chocolate. Our hotel was from a different time and our reasonably-priced suite was bigger than our apartment in São Paulo, which to be fair, isn't saying a lot. Temperatures got up to about 90 during the day and were half that at night. We went on walks and played air hockey and mini golf. It was a nice town to visit, but it was even nicer to be one year older with the girl I love.

 A walk along the train tracks in Campos.

Dinner at La Gália.

Downtown Campos do Jordão.

Our room at the Flat Hotel Palazzo Reale.

Hotel.

Dani in downtown Campos.

I'm not sure that's how it's played.

Dani's first game of mini golf. Hole 17: the nearly-impossible "pyramid."

Adeus, Campos.