I'm going to Brazil

Uberlandia, MG, Brazil. Where my family lives

I don't know how I can live without this sunset! Uberlandia, MG,Brazil

I’m packing for Brazil. That’s right!
I’m leaving in a few hours. I love going there! It is my true and real home. My family is all there and I love it!! I just love it!!
I don’t know if I will have time to blog from there. You know, there are tons of fun stuff to do, and I want to do everything I deserve to!!!
Anyway, I’ll back in 4 weeks, after carnaval, with a lot of pictures!

I gotta go!! I'll miss you all!

I was targeted by Sume to do this MeMe. Thanks my dear!

I choose to pass it over:
Ayalguita Analog Girl Wonderer Layla

Have fun girls!

Take care!

Four Jobs I’ve Had in My Life
1-secretary
2-cultural producer
3-museum's internship
4-manager of small factory -Boy, I hated that!

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have
1-tous le matin du monde, by jean-pierre marielle
2-seven brides for seven brothers
3-dream, by akira kurosawa
4-terra estangeira- brazilian movie

Four Places I Have Lived
1-florianopolis, sc,brazil
2-curitiba, pr,brazil
3-blacksburg, va, usa
4-baden, ag, switzerland

Four TV Shows I Love To Watch
I don't watch a lot of TV, but…
1-mary tyler moore
2-gilmore girls
3-tudo a ver, brazilian channel
4-no going back, bbc

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
1-spain
2-ireland
3-portugal
4-france and many others, thank God

Four Websites I Visit Daily
1-orkut
2-my favorite blogs
3-brazilian newspaper
4-right now, french universities

Four Favorite Foods
1-cusine mediterranean
2-brazilian
3-chocolate - is it food?
4-pizza that I make, italian style

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now
I’ll live to brazil tomorrow morning
1-crossing the sahara on the caravan
2-a tour for all over the arab countries
3-Tibet, Nepal…
4-any beach of northeast of brazil

Little girl’s dream

Wall of the Mosque of Cordoba

One of the beautiful doors of he Mosque

Detail of the wall

When I was 6 or 7 years old, my dad gave me a sticker album. It was a very special album, because it was about art and architecture.
I was fascinated with it and I could spend hours and hours there, just looking at the world of arts.
I was born in a small town and I don’t remember going to exhibitions there. It had, better, has a small and not so active public library and that’s it.

Well, I did not know why a specific picture from my album was so important to me and until now, 34 years later, I still don’t know but I'm getting tons of clues and I'll go somewhere soon.
In fact, I loved all the pictures, or the stickers, even though they were not stickers. Anyway… I loved all of them, but one day I went to the store to buy a brandy new envelope of pictures. I got 2 of them. I opened and they were the same. The same pictures!! I got so frustrated and went home.

When I got home, I went to my bedroom, I got the album and I re-opened the envelope. When I paid attention on the picture, my heart just bit faster then ever before. I suppose that, because I don’t remember having an experience like that before, and until now, it was the most powerful memory in my mind from that time.

Well, this special image was about 10x7 cm, 4x3 inches. It was folded in half. I opened it again, and I looked at it. It got my attention so badly that I could not take my eyes out of it for long time. It was colorful, vibrant, and had something special, very special. Unfortunately or fortunately the album had no information about the pictures, and we just knew where to glue them because of the number on the back of the pictures.

Anyway… I continued buying the envelopes every week, but every day, I looked at that "strange" picture. I remember asking some relatives if they knew something about that place. OH! I didn’t tell… it was inside some building and not a canvas os sculpture.

Orange's garden of the Mosque

Almost there. Preparing to enter inside de Mosque

One day my father entered in my room, and asked me why I was so fascinated with that specific picture and I replied saying that I had no idea, but one day I would find out about it.
So, as I didn’t get any information about it, I decided that I never would know something related to that building. Never!
The time has passed, I grew up and I went to college and I never said to somebody how important that picture was to me. That picture was just in my mind and in my album. I could not look at it anymore, because all my childhood stuff was destroyed by years and years of raining days. All the pictures I drew in kindgarden… everything…

Before I started my studies in arts and art history, I went to law school. In Brazil we have a education system more likely the European systems. So, I quitted law school just one year before my graduation. Brave or crazy? Definitely, brave! I quitted and I started, finally, to study what I love, which is art history.
One day, in my art history class, I was kind of distracted when I looked at the slides the professor was working on and I saw the picture of my life, that enigmatic building. I screamed like the craziest person on earth. Stoppppp!!! My professor and my colleagues got very up set. They turned the light on; I asked the professor if she could talk to me out side. Thank God we were friends. I told her everything about it and she respected my decision to not know anything about it. That was great, my secret was preserved.

Qibla, or wall facing Mecca

I have no idea how my heart is still working

Time went by, I moved to the United State and I transferred my courses to there. Do you believe that the same thing happened there? I almost found out something about the building! I was so ashamed to scream stop again, but i did anyway! I did, and my professor was wonderful with me also. I was safe one more time!

But, secrets are not forever and I don’t know if it is good or not.
I went to Spain for the holidays and I spent 1 week in Andalusia. I was in Malaga, thinking about going or not to the house where Picasso was born, since I'm not a huge fan, and I saw a post card, exactly exactly as my picture back there. Exactly!!!

I was in front of Picasso’s Museum. I walked directly to the picture and I heard: It is beautiful, hum?! It is the Mosque of Cordoba and we are going there tomorrow.
Whattttttttttt???? I’m going there tomorrowwww!! I screammed loud to myself! I did not say a word, I just cried. I didn’t cry like a crazy emotional, sensitive woman as I really am. My cry was a mix of happiness and sadness all together. I always wanted to go to this place, always. But now I realized that I was so poor that I blocked all my traveling dreams just to not be more frustrated and I cried for everything I blocked in my heart, in my soul.

So, I looked for a coffee shop, I went to the restroom, I looked at the mirror and I cried hard. I knew what was waiting for me. I knew it!!
A revolution has begun into my heart, into my soul, into my mind and into my body since I went to France, specifically to Besançon to study French, last year. It is a painful and silent revolution, but a knowing one. I forgot when I got lost from myself and I got tired of that boring and cold Leandra that assumed my real place. So, it is just old friend returning home for good.

And what Besançon has to do with all of that? There, I realized my dream to live in a university's dorm and I was by myself again and I loved it, with tons of conscience guilty, but I loved it. And also and more important, there I met some people who became very, very
significantive to me. They are so important that I could not imagine my life away from them anymore. All my life I have been fascinated for everything from Arab world. Please, don’t ask me why, because I have no idea. I love the music, the food, the landscape, the people, the culture, the tongue, the problems, etc…those people I met there are from one of the most mysterious Arab World.

Well, after cry my eyes out in a very impersonal coffee shop restroom, I recomposed myself and I enjoyed Malaga. I did!! I did not thinka bout the "tomorrow"!

I cannot believe I'm there

Another day, I went to Cordoba. My heart was completely out of control. When I saw the walls of that building, I stopped talking and I’m talkative person. Do you know what happened? It was closed that day. One more day, I forced myself to think that I did not know what was waiting for me...

Next morning I went there. I went in there!! Oh my God... I'm crying right now…I cannot described what I felt when I looked at those beiges and reds arches of the Mosque of Cordoba. I was into my dream and I felt that I was into my true me. I cried, I cried and I cried. I sat on the floor and I cried… I could not do anything else.

Finally I was there!! I was there… a very strong feeling that I cannot and I don't know how to describe it started in a heart of that little girl who is a grew up women now, who still is that little girl.

This is exactly the picture I felt in love when I was a little girl

Les Verts - The Greens

Coupe d'Afrique des Nations

African Nations Cup - CAN
Today, at 16:15

Libya x Ivory Cost

Entraineur/Couch

Ilija LONCAREVIC


Joueurs/Players
·
n°1 Abdussalam ABBUD (gardien de but)
n°21 Meftah GHAZALLA (gardien de but)
n°12 Luis OGASTINI (gardien de but)
n°22 Madi AL FITORI (défenseur)
n°4 Mohamed DAWOOD (défenseur)
n°18 Osama HAMADI (défenseur)
n°17 Mahmoud MAKHLOUF (défenseur)
n°2 Walid OSMAN (défenseur)
n°13 Essam RAJAB (défenseur)
n°5 Alhousen SHIBANI (défenseur)
n°3 Neji SHUSHAN (défenseur)
n°16 Nader ATRHONI (milieu de terrain)
n°14 Tareq ELTAIB (milieu de terrain)
n°8 Khaled HUSSEN (milieu de terrain)
n°19 Abdessalam KHAMIS (milieu de terrain)
Marwan MABROUK (milieu de terrain)
n°6 Marei RAMLI (milieu de terrain)
n°10 Ahmed SAED (milieu de terrain)
n°23 AbdoulNasser SALIL (milieu de terrain)
Ahmed ALMISLI (attaquant)
n°15 Nader KARRA (attaquant)
n°7 Jehad MUNTASER (attaquant)
n°20 Salem REWANI (attaquant)
n°9 Ahmed ZUWAY (attaquant)

Saving Almotsarfiya online petition!

Dear Friends,

I got an e-mail from my dear friend Youcef Marzooq Youcef from Ajdabiya, Libya, asking me to sign a cultural petition, where he asks the Mayor of the city of Ajdabiya to take all the necessary actions to evacuate the historical building of Almotsarfiya, in order to transform it into the first museum of the city.
I would like to ask you to take some time to read it and after that, please sign his very valuable petition.

To do that, just click at the link below!
http://www.petitiononline.com/youcef/petition.html

Ajdabiya website in English: http://www.ajdabiya.com/eng.htm

I hope we dance

I would like to dedicate this post to a

very special blogger’s friend of mine.

Sume thanks for every single word and

I do hope we dance!

Always!

"Inspiration", by me

I Hope You Dance
By Lee Ann Womack

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder

You get your fill to eat

But always keep that hunger

May you never take one single breath for granted

God forbid love ever leave you empty handed

~ * ~ * ~

I hope you still feel small, when you stand beside the ocean

Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens

Promise me that you'll give faith the fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

~ * ~ * ~

I hope you dance ....

I hope you dance ....

~ * ~ * ~

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance

Never settle for the path of least resistance

Livin' might mean takin' chances, but they're worth takin'

Lovin' might be a mistake, but it's worth makin

'~ * ~ * ~

Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter

When you come close to selling out, reconsider

Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

~ * ~ * ~

I hope you dance

(Time is a wheel in constant motion)

I hope you dance

(Always rolling us along)

I hope you dance

(Tell me who)

I hope you dance

(Wants to look back on their years and wonder)

I hope you dance

(Where those years have gone)

Still Life

"Don't give up", by me

Do you know those days that the only thing we want is to fly away?
Well, I’m feeling this way… I’m thinking a lot about many things and I’m feeling very tired because of that.

The thinking process and the anxiety that comes along with it, is a very hard work, especially when you are so thirsty for new things. And I do mean new things. New things! Why is it so scary and so attractive??

I’m doing some rethinking about my life in every single detail. I’m checking my believes, my knowledge, my skills, my loves, my hates, my tastes, my life style and so on…
(Deep breath…) all this is so painful, so necessary.

I reached a level of my life that, if I do not do those "thinkings" right now, I succumb. I know that!
However, there is one thing I do know for sure: I want more, I want life, and I want live… a lot! And I will!!

"still life", by me

I love you, Tia Geralda!

Tia Geralda and me, 2004

Today I would like to honor a very important woman in my life who passed way this week in Brazil.
She is my Tia Geralda!
(Tia means aunt in Portuguese). We lived near each other my entire childhood and I have the opportunity to enjoy her company for many and many years. I will never forget the afternoons that I spent at her house, drinking the warm and fresh coffee that she made every single day. Just the 2 of us!! We talked a lot.

I knew for sure that she loved me, and she knew for sure that I loved her. This great love put as together even when I started living abroad. By the way, one day she told my mother that she was afraid to die without talking to me again…
Wow, that was something. I felt more special that ever, when I found it out!

She was 92 to 93 years old. Once she lost her memory, because she was taking a very strong medicine. She even did not recognize her only son. Well, my mother visited her and she did not recognize my mother either, but she asked if she knew me, because she missed me. How sweet is that? I cried a river when my mother told me that.

About 5 years ago, I got a tape by mail from my nephew’s birthday’s party and many of my relatives sent me some messages. When they asked Tia Geralda to say something to me, she looked at the camera and said: “Leandra, que saudade... eu te amo!", "I miss you very much... I love you!”

Tia Geralda was a happy, brave, funny and out going woman. She became a widow in her 30s, with 2 daughters and a son and she never gave up. She never had self-pity or something like that. She was a reference for me, for us.

Oh my god, I really love that petite woman and I will love her for all the eternity.

Tia Geralda thanks for being part of my life. I was a privileged to come to this world as your second niece. In fact, she was my mother’s aunt.
Thanks for the Saint John's parties that made my life so colorful, thanks for all cups of coffee we have drank together while chatting, thanks for those wonderful memories you gave me, thanks for asking all of us if we were part of your family because we were beautiful as you were, thanks for all “pao de queijo” you made, thanks for being you all the time!

I know that all the people we love and have made this travel already, prepared a huge reception party for you in heaven. Please say hello to everybody, specially my dad, grandma Cotinha and to Marcinha for me, ok!

Dear aunt, I will never forget you! Never! I will love you forever and ever...
Tia Geralda, que saudade... eu te amo!
"Aunt Geralda, I miss you very much... I love you!”

It was forever

Hope, by me

I believed that it was forever. I believed! But, I forgot that “the forever” always ends.

How many times I have died already? How many times I killed myself already? How many times I survived? How many times I was born again?
End... how many times I will again…

Ironing!!

Girl at Ironing Board, by Edgar Degas

I do hate ironing! It is a kind of a torture for me. So, why I don’t stop it? Because it’s even more torture for me to wear any clothes with any wrinkles! I iron even my pajamas!!
I try to have some fun when I need to iron, I do it twice a month, getting the iron board as surfboard for example and walking like “hey dude, wanna surf?”, but it doesn't work. I just need to look at my column of clothes for my "good" humor return even stronger!

I also have a kind of ritual to do it so. I need to make it up because there is no way I can escape of doing it.
After set the paraphernalia up, I look for something very domestic to watch on TV. In the US I had more fun watching Oprah, Dr. Phil or Food Network, but here in the boring Switzerland I need to look for others shows to start my monthly torment. Looks like I get my period hum! Well, thank God nobody ever saw me ironing when I got my period. I can bit someone easily, easily…

Anyway, the ritual!!! Oh yeah! The clothes need to be separated by fabric, style and gender. Then I make coffee and enjoy it as if was the last coffee in my life. Then, I iron the easiest ones such kitchen towels and save the hardest, such cotton or lining shirt with tons of details, for “le gran finale”! Oh boy! Oh boy! I love those!!!

I need to iron everything in one day and get the iron table out of my multi-task-entertaining-room! The TV plays a very important role in this play. It keeps my mind out of the ironing thing.

Anyway… I just said all that in my prolix way, to say that I have a wonderful friend that found another meaning, another dimension for the act of ironing. She is Claudia Franca, from Brazil. We met when she was my teacher in college there. She is the most complete artist I ever met and a girl that I cannot live away from.

Claudia just transformed the way I looked at ironing. Well, I’m not forgetting the poetic domestic scenes that Degas painted and posted here. However, when I look at those Degas’ women I do not see any sign of pleasure or love.

Let me tell you what Claudia did in a simplist way, if possible!!!

Some years ago, she starting making a list of every single person that she has met in her life. Hard hum!

After that, she contacted those people asking for a piece of their clothes in white color. It was a very hard work. Each person you remember is followed by emotions that make us traveling in time. Also, it is a great exercise of self-knowledge, since we are the some of all people that pass or stay in our lives and she does know that.

When she received all the pieces, she washed them and ironed them. After that, she made a huge column with “us”, folding all the white pieces in the same size and put one over other. It was placed in the middle of a university art gallery, where she was taking grad school.

Last year, 2005, she retook this work with a "new look" and she also did a performance on it. She assembled an iron board, a chair, a TV and a huge hanger in S shape. She ironed again all the white pieces and placed them carefully in the hanger.

Did you get what she did and why she changed my point of view about this task?
Claudia is a very sensitive and caring woman-artist-friend-teacher and washing, ironing and displaying her friends' clothes she was showing how she cares about us, how important we are for her. She was taking care of all her friends, old friends and new friends.

How great is that!!!

When I was talking to her about this exhibition, I started questioning myself how many women know the dimension of this incredible gesture, a gesture of love?

I’m asking because until that day, ironing for me was just a gesture of submission and I never though about it as a gesture of love.

Taking care of somebody clothes implies taking care of somebody…

I’m so far away from love ironing, but I don’t hate it any more. I think!

Take care!

A Woman Ironing, by Edgar Degas

Photos de Paris

Without comment!

Musée d'Orsay

Van Gogh's Room at Arles

Van Gogh's Room at Arles

stained glass window in Notre Dame cathedral

Free 2006

I'm flying, completely free, as I want to!

Malaga, Spain, and Mediterranean

I have no idea why but I don’t like, at all, the beginning of a new year. When I think that there are 12 months to go, a terrible agony invades my heart!

Every single year I’m afraid of those 12 months! It’s a lot to take, to digest and to wait.

My fears are diluting with time and I calm down near July or August. To be very honest, there is other thing that scary me to death, when the current year is finishing. It is the resolution’s list. I’m so afraid to take a look at this piece of paper... It is powerful than I’m and it has the Uncle Sam’s finger on my nose saying: look, aren’t you ashamed of yourself??!!

This year I started something new. I’m a kind of person who loves list. I make lists for everything and every time. Off course, I always made my resolutions’ list years after years.
However, I decided to change that habit and I entered 2006 without making any of it, and without any resolutions to follow. I did that because every single last week of the old year, I checked that important list and every time I got myself very disappoint again and feeling bad again and again because I did not do everything I promised to myself I would do.

So, I got tired of this stupid cliché thing.

I want to be free this year, completely free!! I just want to jump into 2006 with my heart and my arms opened, very well opened! I will wait for what will come and that is it!

I wish a free 2006 to all my blogger's friends!!