Old Friends in Rio

Queila entered our lives when she was thirteen. (Somewhere I have a great picture of her and our neighbor striking fashion model poses.) She entered our home the week Erika was born, just before Queila's fourteenth birthday, and has been part of our family ever since. Her dad was a pastor in an interior town, and she came to live with us in Campo Grande to attend a better school. Two-year-old Katie had trouble accepting that Queila really had another family. Eventually, she came to Cambridge to live with Steve's parents and finish high school there. She married Vicente in college and their son Natan is in grad school.

They live in an apartment in Zona Norte, but we drove to the chique Zona Sul, where the beaches are.  There we climbed to the Monastery of St. Benedict.



The inside is covered with gold in the manner of seventieth and eighteenth century churches. This is not just a mueum; Mass will be sung tomorrow at 10.

I love green spaces in the midst of big cities. When she worked in this area, Queila used to bring her lunch to the garden in front of the church and listen to the music while she ate.

Our next stop was the Olympic Plaza, which Queila and Vicente say was always full during the Olympics. They were full of stories of the excitement of being part of the crowd and getting to see some incredible Para-Olympic events in person. Sadly, a lot of that enthusiasm in the city of Rio has disapated as life returns to violent crime and corruption. You can see the Monastery of Saint Benedict in the background of this Museum of Tomorrow. Those "ribs"are solar panels and can be repositioned to best catch the sun.

Afterwards we took the elevator to the top of the newly expanded Museu de Arte do Rio where we could sit in the shade under a concrete "wave" with a great breeze and talk. We had a wonderful view of the Olympic Plaza. In this panorama shot you can see the Museum of Tomorrow in the center with the Niteroi Bridge beyond, the naval port and the monastery to the right.