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July 10, 2007

If any time were right to begin life in Brazil – specifically in Rio de Janeiro – now is undeniably perfect.

I arrived in Rio on July 8, just one day after the city's ubiquitous post card monument, the Cristo Redentor statue spreading its arms out over the city from its perch atop Corcovado, was named one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. This Friday (July 13), the 2007 Pan-American Games begin in Rio. Thousands of international athletes and tourists are pouring into the city, and O Globo, the daily paper, uses most of its ink on speculation and scandal about the upcoming competition. To make daily life even more interesting (and assuredly noisier), Brazil 's national soccer team (the beloved seleção) ousted Uruguay 6-to-5 in penalty kicks to move on to the finals of the Copa America.

Brazil is basking in international recognition, and there are few countries so adoring of attention and so effusively thankful for it. Brazilians are famously open and endlessly kind, prone to long conversations in the streets with mere acquaintances. Eager to greet any and all with a two-cheeked kiss, cariocas – what Rio 's inhabitants call themselves – are perhaps the most outgoing of all Brazilians. Yesterday I went to a local open-air supermarket and ended up chatting with the two store owners for over 40 minutes while they showed me almost every single vegetarian item they had in the store.

I arrived from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I had been studying abroad for the last five months. Brazil and Argentina are famous adversaries in South America , with a fierce soccer rivalry and a century's worth of fighting for continental predominance souring any hope of an alliance. It seems, at least for now, that Brazil is winning. The nation is booming economically; just months ago, the exchange rate was 2.2 reais to the dollar, and it sits now at 1.9-to-1. President Lula's push for mass-produced biocombustible fuels has President Bush excited and Venezuela 's Hugo Chavez seething. Meanwhile, in Argentina, President Kirchner just announced that his political neophyte wife will be running for president come October, and the inflation rate is rising despite clandestine governmental intervention.

Moving from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro has been both a difficult and an exciting change. I now know Buenos Aires better than any other city in the world, so a change in geography, public transportation and language has removed me from a comfort zone I spent months establishing in Argentina. I got off my flight in Rio and proceeded to customs, where I immediately – and without thinking – began speaking to the customs agent in Spanish. Portuguese and Spanish are similar enough to make understanding both relatively easy and different enough to make responding in one or the other maddening. In just a few days I've found that Brazilians are much more likely to know English rather than Spanish, and I've taken to a three-language cocktail if I worry I'm not using the correct Portuguese word.

Landing in Rio is as breathtaking as are the aerial photos of the city, and the entire urban expanse is dotted with huge palm and fruit trees and bikini-clad residents returning happily and noisily from the beach. In that sense, it could not be any more different from Buenos Aires, which gives off a distinctly New York City feel in its proud indifference to the plight of others. Rio de Janeiro cannot easily be matched with a US counterpart, although it might well be a strange mixture of Southern charm and chattiness with Hollywood glitz. The beaches and the mountains make it wholly unique in its landscape, as does the overwhelming ethnic diversity you see everywhere you go. It is a nice respite from Buenos Aires, where homogeneity both in appearance and, more tragically, in food, were growing tiresome.

I have yet to mention my job, mostly because there is so much to say about Rio itself that work seems trivial. I suppose my job is a reflection of Rio's most pressing modern issue: I will be working with youth in the favelas of Ilha do Governador, where I will be giving English lessons and helping out with a sports-based curriculum that teaches its very poor participants employability and life skills. The program's model was suggested by national soccer hero Pelé, who hoped that soccer would be used to aid development in Latin America.