Mama Shayna’s Musings

The last week has been a whirlwind… starting last Friday with my colleagues calling me into the office for a special, urgent meeting, of which I had less than an hour to get from my house to get to in Recife´s morning traffic jam. Moreover I´d spent the week finishing up grad school applications, my final Fulbright report, and final report for work, and had been running on no-sleep and all-caffeine.

I arrive, and my colleague Sofia calmly says ´lets go get a coffee?´ I was too exhausted to process what was going on, but next thing I know the whole staff of Diaconia is in the kitchen with a spread of fruits and cake, wishing me a warm Brazilian farewell with hugs & kisses, a prayer, lots of food, and a beautiful card.  Which pretty much sums up the sweet experience that I have had working with this wonderful organization over the past six months.  I then ran home, cleaned my room in anticipation of my dad´s visit, and packed for the upcoming trip to Minas Gerais.

The morning before travelling to Minas my roommates and I ran a 10K in Recife. Originally scheduled for an afternoon along the ocean, for some reason the run was re-routed to start inland at the Jaqueria Park, my favorite local spot to jog, and was to wind through some closed off, main roads around the neighborhoods of Espinheiro, Casa Forte, and back to the park. Well, being organized in a very Recifan style, in the 8am, 90 degree heat we snaked our way around the neighborhood, running in the left lane of a busy street, skirting city buses and Sunday morning traffic, gulping down lungfulls of car exhaust, only to make it an hour later back to the park to down a few liters of water and agua-de-coco because the run only supplied 1 cup of water around the route! It was a fun accomplishment, however, as it was my first race since Chicago´s also sweltering 88 degree marathon in 2007.

Maybe I could make my next career jump to running in overly hot, uncomfortable race conditions.  I did meet a dude who ran the marathon in Madagascar´s heat, no rest stops or water stations, and being one of a few runners he even placed in his age class.

Post-race, post-hydration and carb loading, my dad and I jumped a plane to Minas, arriving in Belo Horizonte on Sunday evening and here in the stunning colonial town of Ouro Preto on Monday morning.  We´ve visited ex-slave-owned gold mines and incredible baroque style churches, and have been staying at a pousada (bed and breakfast) which has hosted the likes of Brazilian composer Vinicius de Moraes (he wrote Girl from Ipanema), who hid out here during the dictatorship, to US poet Elizabeth Bishop and her Brazilian girlfriend, to Henry Kissinger (Nixon´s Secretary of State) over 20 years later.   Unfortunately we´ve been hit up by tons of rain, resulting in a re-routing our trip from the National Park of Caraça to another mining town, Tiradentes,  but my dad is a wonderfully relaxed travel companion and is up for anything.

More to come… I can hardly believe that this has all been in the past 5 days!