Fitness, Buddha, and Mexican

I've been feeling like I need to not only update my blog, but to write more about my daily or weekly activities in this city - to give insight into my life in Brasilia. People always enjoy "seeing" the city where you live through your eyes and not what the travel books and/or Wikipedia write about a particular destination is like. I receive a lot of comments on Facebook whenever I take pictures like these. I'm going to try and add a more personal touch to my posts, as well as pictures that I've taken. I'll start with this post, with this weekend.


Yesterday morning E and I went to Brasilia Capital Fitness at the Convention Center in downtown Brasilia so that E could check out the "fitness scene" in the city and try to get some free samples. We really didn't succeed at either objective. This event was planned, as far as I could tell, to promote local gyms; to sell fitness equipment, workout clothes, supplements, books, and anything related to working out. There were also classes that you could participate in (or "try out" I'd say). These included spinning, a kind of step aerobics, kickboxing, and there were treadmills with people running (maybe some kind of competition?).  They did look like fun, especially the kickboxing class, but I was not dressed for the occasion and I wouldn't have felt comfortable joining by myself. The day before I had gone to a local gym in my neighborhood to get information about joining so I'm preparing to return to working out (and am happy about it). So I was kind of in the fitness mood when we went to the even yesterday.


One thing I noticed were the women's clothes. There was not ONE woman who was NOT wearing tight (in most cases FUGLY) work out pants. I'm talking spandex. And on top of that, most of them wore the 80s type scrunchy socks, but in this case (in this city) they pull them up to their knees. Very very 80s. And when I talk about the colors on the spandex pants, I mean, really ugly patterns with loud colors. Some women even had one piece workout body suits on, with cleavages and camel toes to boot. Holy culture shock! 

E wasn't impressed with the event and found the price of all of the protein supplements to be outrageous because frankly, they were. We ended up just walking around and around the arena until he decided that he wanted to try out "rock climbing". A local company had brought a "wall" with them and anyone was welcome to scale it. Although it wasn't challenging to him, E climbed up since he has ants in his pants and enjoys any physical activity. 

Neither of us was sad to leave this event.


Later on in the evening, after a relaxing afternoon at home, we went to the Buddha Temple in Asa Sul. There was a kind of festival happening there (a few weekends in a row?) where there was food, music, shops, games, music for teenagers, and the temple was open so that we could visit and get a taste of Japan and the Buddhist religion. We went with a few of my co-workers. We waited in a long time to pay for our food, then another long line to pick up our food and drinks, and then we sat down next to the temple and enjoyed our food. I'd never eaten caramel bananas before but man was it delicious (not sure if that's Japanese food) and E and I shared a Yakisoba that was good. We bought some homemade soaps at one of the shops; one was made of maracuja (passion fruit) and smells delicious. In fact, the bathroom is starting to smell the same way so it's great. It was fun to do something different and to support the Japanese community in Brasilia.

Finally, to end my weekend, I had a very Brazilian breakfast with maracuja juice this morning, worked on lesson plans and organized myself for school tomorrow, and then had lunch with some of my co-workers at a nearby restaurant called El Paso. It was pretty good. I had to say that I wasn't expecting it to be very Mexican, but it was pretty close, especially with the decor and the Spanish background music. It was nice to sit back and relax, talk, and eat something different. The food was delicious, too.


Overall it was a good weekend. I got to try visit new places, try different food, and hang out with friends. Next weekend is the garbage pickup in the city and the following weekend we're going out of town to Goias so there's a lot to look forward to.

Santa Ana Enclave Tops Orange County In Proportion of Single-Parent Households

I visited Census Tract 750.03 in Santa Ana last week. The Los Angeles Times reported that the area's Willard neighborhood has the highest proportion of single-parent households in Orange County. See: "A community of single parents."

I grew up in Orange, the city next door, and spent a lot of time in this part of Santa Ana as a kid. There's a street graphic at the Times' article. Here's the intersection at Main and 17th Street. My buddies and I used to skateboard at that building across the street, where that blue "for lease" sign is located. The flowerbeds are banked (or they were banked, until the property owners installed a brick perimeter around the flowers to thwart the skaters):

Here's a shot looking back at the corner where I was standing in the picture above. That's an illegal immigration law office. The fruit vendor, with the ice cooler, was selling cantalopes and mango slices to customers in their cars:

More pictures. At the top of the stairs a sign is printed in both English and Spanish:

Climbing back in the van to cruise around the neighborhood, I see a man walking north on Main Street with a sleeping back and personal belongings:

Turning right, I head South on Main Street. A couple of blocks up a see throngs of people congregating, near a bus stop and in front of an insurance office. Traffic slowed and I rolled down the window to snap a photo. A Latino man was working as a sign-spinner. He ducked down when I raised my camera. Probably an illegal alien making some money under the table:

Driving West now, across Broadway, an accountant's office:

The neighborhood is a migrant enclave, which helps explain the large number of single-parent households:

Although Orange County has the lowest proportion of single-parent households in Southern California, Santa Ana stands as the highest in that category, with 12,023, or 16%. Laguna Woods, a small city in South County, has the fewest, 21, or 0.2%.

The roots of this anomaly can be found in Santa Ana's decades-long history as a magnet for immigrants.

This part of the county was converted from orange groves to single-family housing to apartments, said G.U. Krueger, a housing expert in the area. Now, Santa Ana is one of the most densely populated cities in the country.

Michael Ruane, director of the OC Community Indicators Project, which studies trends in the county, said Santa Ana has always stood out statistically because of residential overcrowding, high school dropout rates and the educational level of adults.

But it's also one of the least expensive areas in the county.

"That's why you would live there, or have to, or be unable to move from there," he said.

There's a lot of poverty here as well. At the corner of Durant and Washington, a local Head Start center:

Heading East, Willard Intermediate School (discussed at the Times) and across the street a Mexican civil rights history mural:

Back over at the Los Angeles Times:

Laura Arreola, 43, may be one of those people. She's lived in various apartments off Parton Street for 14 years. All of her four children have attended schools in the area, where empty strollers sit on overgrown lawns and dusty toys spill onto the sidewalk.

Merchants hawk fried pork bellies and produce from white trucks that serve as gathering points for children. In this tract, more than three-quarters of the households include children.

But the only open space in the neighborhood is the local school, Willard Intermediate, which serves as the de facto park. Children also play in alleyways and the church's patio [nearby St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church].

Another mural, on Washington across from the school. This one records the promise of education to lift kids out of what looks like is some kind of desolation:

A couple of kids and either their grandmother or another older caregiver. It was about 4:00pm. School's out for summer and a lot of parents were still out working. The woman was speaking Spanish:

Food trucks on just about every corner. The second one was covered with graffiti, which was unusual. The food vendors were clean and organized, a part of the neighborhood. Reminds me of Mexico:

Despite the glum statistics at the Times, I didn't see a lot of social disorganization. There was very little graffiti on the walls. This batch below was few and far between:

Frankly, I found people to be enterprising. The food trucks are totally cool. And the food's tasty:

It's a Spanish-speaking enclave, however. People spoke Spanish in their interactions with each other and the woman spoke Spanish when she served me.

Santa Ana is the county seat and prides itself as an all-American city. It's a mostly Latino/Mexican-American city, and for whatever reasons --- language, low educational attainment, poverty and family breakup --- many in the community remain economically and socially distant from the larger economic mainstream of the society. That's not to say it's not a nice place. Just a lot different from what more demographically stable communities would exhibit.