Cold

I am snuggled under a blanket on my bed, both the words "blanket" and "bed" being foreign to me at 10:30am in Brazil. It has been two days of rain. Rain that is so thick it tells me I need more sleep, it speaks loudly and reminds me that if I go out, all I will get is wet and muddy legs and feet.
I went out this morning. All I got was wet and muddy legs and feet.

Plans were cancelled yesterday because of the rain, but I was able to do that from the safety of my apartment and only venture out in the evening to turn in my final paper before winter vacation at college. Yes, winter here--opposite of the equator--where the water also goes down the drain the other direction...or does it? My mother's experiments have left me clueless.

My mother, who promptly woke up in the middle of the plane flight here to ask the stewardess if they were passing the equator soon, because she wanted to flush the toilet. In her findings, water direction was inconsistent. The stewardess, however, knew of a museum on the equator that had toilets on either side, so you could properly assess the situation.

So yesterday was full of paperwork and endless projects that I have been creative enough to busy my life with. But today I set out to Mussurepe, unable to catch Flavio on the phone. Apparently Flavio wasn't able to catch himself either, the roads washed out or just a dead cell phone, because he never showed, and the wet road dangerous for motorcycles, I was forced to return home.

An hour waiting/riding on Kombis to Mussurepe, an hour of waiting, and hour to return. In the rain. So I find myself here, blanket and bed. I was grateful for my kindle, which I am finally embracing (with only minimal continued struggle as I still cling to my books. Real books), and reading about happiness around the world: "Geography of Bliss."

There is something to be said for waiting under a haphazard shelter in the middle of a mud puddle in the rain with soaked people coming and going while sitting on an old palm tree stump with a kindle in your hands, discussing the cultures of the world and the intricate designs of happiness. I can't decide if it was transcendent or depressing.

Yesterday was Valentine's day in Brazil, which is called "Boyfriend/girlfriend day" and celebrated as such. I told the kids to open their eyes a bit and see all the people they loved, especially their friendships: "boys are great friends, but they vale nada as boyfriends until they grow up a bit."

I told them about Valentine, who risked his life for love (whether or not the legends are true), and how we should fight to bring love to everyone we know. I passed out little Winnie-the-Pooh valentines, bought on sale after our Valentine's day, and the children were enchanted. The confusing part to them was the envelopes. "We really have to lick it? Isn't that weird?" You glue envelopes closed in Brazil. They kept looking at each other to see who would lick it first, and questioned if it was sanitary. I had never thought about that. Perhaps it isn't.

Now that I have adjusted to life with a boyfriend (10 months), I wish I could go back and tell my single self that Valentine's day has no power--that it can't/couldn't hurt me. I always spent the day tensed, as if waiting for the invisible hand of shame to smack my face. Or maybe I was tense, waiting for my magical Disney prince to invite me to the ball.

My experience has led me to believe that relationships are much less magical and much more practical than I had imagined, and I am completely fine with this trade. Besides, hearing "I love you" creates more than enough warm fuzzies to make me happy about magic-lessness. And that is its own kind of magic.

This rain has plunked down a block of time into my lap, and I am not sure what to do with it. Eric Weiner had such a cool idea that when I started reading "Geography of Bliss" I was completely jealous. He traveled around the world and dissected their culture and wrote about it concisely, while adding all his learning knowledge of happiness, and what makes people happy, along the way.

The Netherlands, with legal drugs and prostitution...well, it just isn't as fun if it is legal. Switzerland, with all its rules and prosperity until life is too boring to be happy. Bhutan, hidden away and never conquered, with TV only arriving in 1999, but now they are addicted to WrestleMania. Qatar, the desert people with so much sudden money they have nothing to do.

Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India, and America are the rest of the chapters. it talks about the connection between money and happiness, trust and happiness, choices and happiness, democracy and happiness, weather and happiness, presence and happiness, belief and happiness, clean toilets and happiness, and their delicate balances.

And I feel like I am getting great wisdom about these places, something that would have taken me months to gather, if I'd been on my own, traveling the world. And this, I think, is what a good book should do.

"Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else...Make it simply easier to "be" and therefore "be happy." "The rain continues, and I begin to feel claustrophobic.