e nós também...

i actually wept when i looked into the eyes of the girls tonight when i said my last goodbyes. i cried because in my head i just kept thinking YOU DESERVE SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU ARE BEING GIVEN.

i think mom knows what i mean, as she came and visited the girls twice. they are just so dang rad, and have so much going for them, and yet have been so utterly smashed by their families and communities and even at times lua nova itself. my esteem for these moms has just skyrocketed since september, and i feel like any and all respect for lua nova as a functioning organization has just plummeted. and for this i weep for the girls, because again, they deserve so much more than the halted, disorganized and scattered care lua nova provides for them. if any of them manage to overcome their addictions and turn their lives around, credit must be placed squarely on their own shoulders - lua nova provides shelter and employment for them in the process (which of course is no.small.thing.at.all), but so little else. so little therapeutic care or direction or just plain ol' love and respect.

and so i weep thinking of what will become of the girls here now, just as i think daily of dear suellen who ran away, of larissa and alessandra and vanessinha... oh! neal maxwell once said... 'compassion is important, but it can readily degenerate into the kind of pity which immobilizes us in terms of our ability to really help one another'... i remember reading this shortly before i went to mozambique back in 2004 (!). oh how he hit the nail SO SQUARELY on the head it's not even funny. if there were any sentence to sum up my time in brazil it may just be that. i love these girls so dearly, but would so often be utterly immobilized in the extent of my frustration on how to effectively act on that love. (don't we all feel this way at times?)

i would be frustrated not only by lua nova's incompetencies, but mostly my own. the best days were simply those when i could trudge through the hour bus commute with these totally pointless doubts and negative thoughts swirling in my head and just arrive at aracoiaba and be with the girls. work through my paralyzed mind. realize and accept the fact that yes, there are 10,001 negative influences and people in these girls lives that i cannot control, but i can control this time i spend with them. i can own that time, and simply pray that it in some way rubs off into the other 95% of their lives.

'to look life in the face. always, to look life in the face and know it for what it is. at last, to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.'*

so i am putting away brazil as i fly off tomorrow, and it tore my heart tonight to realize that in putting it away i no longer can have these beloved conversations with this beloved group of moms here in this corner of sao paulo state....

...ai ai... fiquem com Deus, meninas!

beijos,

ju.

*from the hours.

beginning of the leaving scenes

toni and i are truly quite torn to leave our very first little home as husband and wife, even if it is a shack with semi-functioning plumbing and multiple cracks large enough to see outside through... but it's our first home! we have been so utterly happy here....

dinner set for two in nossa cozinha da casinha.

we will also be really sad to say goodbye to dear friends we've had here. today our semi-adoptive brazilian family took us out to the country outside sorocaba to see some RAD 200+ year old buildings in this gorgeous park-cum-lake. it was absolutely fabbbbulous. history! beauty! hilarious company!


aaah.... this picture is such a perfect expression of the matriarch of this dear family. they have all been so kind to us, doing absolutely everything they could to make sure we had a home and furniture and love. with the occasional pastel or pao doce thrown in. what would we have done without them all, truly?

madness to think of it all ending so soon - so soon!!!

leaving again

i kinda feel like the last 4 years of my life have been a series of leavings...

i left oxford (oh sniff)
then i left DC (i'm kind of ok with that one)
i left new york (sniff sniff)
i left berlin (sniff!)
i left brazil (visas!)
and now i'm leaving brazil AGAIN. (BLERG VISAS)

toni and i, especially now that we're hitched, are sort of keen on just arriving and BEING for a little while. you know? to have a kitchen where we can buy pots and pans. and have shelves to put books on. and not always be wondering if we'll fit under luggage weight restrictions. all this luggage schlepping is why i have not bought new clothes since before oxford (i do not kid).

BUT the good news is that all worked out beautifully: toni got his exams changed, we're almost completely done in the (semi-)refunding-previous-flights-purchasing-new-ones department, and i'm off to araçoiaba today for some good time with the girls. i just can't believe i have so little time left here with them. all those feelings of guilt on not having done enough just skyrocketed like crazy.

sigh.

BUT for your information: toni will be stateside on april 28th, i'll join him there may 15th (have i mentioned i'm going to ghana and then canada to present at back to back conferences? um, amazing. i'm beyond lucky and ashoka is beyond generous).

see you all SO SO SHORTLY OH MY GOODNESS,
joojie.

oh blerg

looks like my brazilian visa didn't get it's second extension (super surprised, but then again since this is brazil! no, not at all surprised), so looks like all my and toni's plans are UPENDED and we are leaving brazil in 2.5 weeks. tons of mixed emotions! the girls! the end of sorocaba! reuniting with family! the girls! omg all the changed flights and various fees and what-nots! (sic?)

2.5 weeks!

well, i am out of here for sure. or else i will have to sell my soul to the brazilian police. toni my beloved husband of just 2 weeks (today! our 2 week anniversary!) is still up in the air and PLEASE EVERYONE PRAY that the london school of economics lets him take a round of tests in the US rather than sao paulo as he originally said, or else he will be here for ONE FULL MONTH ALONE.

noooooooooooooo! no! no!

but here's hoping!

gaaah!

you think you know happiness...

...and then you run off to new york city and get married to your dear german at city hall and then spend a week frolicking through the city and truly! how the level of bliss has just grown and grown!

toni and i are married! we are married! married! mar.ried.! ! !


we realize it came as somewhat of a shock to 98% of our general acquaintance, but this was to be expected as we had told only our families and a (literal) handful of friends of our plans. it made that tuesday at city hall feel so intimate and wonderful, and then we were so so excited to burst with the news afterwards to the world. (and boy did the world respond in kind - heavens how wonderfully kind people have been to us!)



are there words to contain all the feeling? heavens no. deliriously happy/bursting at the seams/absolutely ecstatic doesn't come close.

love!!!,
toni&julianne
:)