October 3, 2009
Dear Carla:
I am asking Elena to deliver this note to you because I do not have your email address. When I was in LA the sun had baked my brain. You warned me. When I was asked what my favorite word is in Portuguese, I should have responded amoa.
Elena told me how happy you were when she told you that Rio got the Olympics in 2016. I was happy also.
Elena is amazed about how passionate people in Brasil are about their country. The day I arrived for the first time in Rio in 1975, I was in utter shock about all the poverty and the favelas. When I went through customs, my bags were inspected by a charming and well-dressed Brasilian man who spoke perfect English. He was smoking a pipe. When I looked at my bags later at the hotel, I realized that he had stolen a bottle of whiskey and a tin of pipe tobacco from my bag. When I got in a taxi to go to the Acapulco Hotel in Copacabana, I had no Cruzeiros. I gave the taxi driver US money and got cheated out of $50.00 US.
It was a bad start. Over the next five years I fell madly in love with Brasil and Brasilian people. Under all of the hard times and violence there is happiness, love, and a great social life. Brasil always touches my heart in a special way. I’m sad that Elena never spent enough time in Brasil to get to know it the way we both do.
Felicidades sempre,
Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
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