Heights and the Mona Lisa in Garbage

Today we were in class for only an hour until Vanessa grew frustrated with our tired eyes and took us out to our internship. The internship is in between the cities of Recife and Olinda and it had a little of the change of going from a glossy, tourist Brazil to the Brazil that I knew for two years. While it was a bit of shock to realize that I had lived on streets similar to these for two years, after walking around a little it felt similar to what I knew.
  We met the group that we will be working with, CCJ. They work with giving free workshops on photography, design and media for communities that are poorer. They hope to be able to help train them not only to have a profession, but to be able to see their world in a different view. We were able to meet the core group and see a little of the area we will be working with.
Recife has many canals and rivers running towards a central lagoon/bay that goes into the ocean. But because of the extensive growth, the waters have become really polluted. The sad part is that many people use the river to bathe, cook and drink so they are constantly at risk for serious health problems.
  CCJ recently finished a program to help educate about this danger through a photo exhibition at a local art center. Each photo was framed by cardboard and there were bottles, wrappers, CDs and anything else that had been thrown in the river on the walls. It really made me stop and think about how many of my friends have been able to go to Europe and see the art galleries of Paris, Rome, Vienna, and London; while I am in Brazil looking at garbage.
  As we left, I was thinking about this and I had almost an hour of bus rides back home to think some more. It's funny that some of my best thinking time has been on the bus in Brazil. I was thinking that the European art galleries represent some of the finest art ever produced, masterpieces that grace our imagination and are used to represent the reaches of human thought and creativity. Contrast that to what I saw today; the evidence of squalor, misery and the danger of human apathy and ignorance. The two experiences could even be the juxtaposition of human interaction during the era of colonization, the growth of Europe at the expense of the Americas.
  On a lighter note, this exhibition was housed in a art center that used to be a huge industrial complex that used to be a slaughterhouse. Part of this complex was a tower that was about 6-8 stories tall. It looked like a lot less when I started climbing and about half way up I started to feel the height. My Angel's Landing flashback hit home and I started to break out in a cold sweat and started to breath faster. On the landing at the top was a large water barrel, which I kept my back to. It was a lovely view but I was trying so hard not to have a panic attack that I wasn't able to completely enjoy it. But I was able to come down in one piece, so we'll count it as a success.

A new friend I made at the pool