Alexandre Rodrigues's blog

Back home and getting used to the newsroom routine again, I am still reflecting on the experiences I had during the WPI fellowship. The tasks are the same, but I am different.

After two months trying to explain my country in forums and social meetings and investigating another country, USA, I see things in Rio with a kind of foreign eyes. And everything is a comparison for me.

I wrote for this blog about how I saw the Occupy Wall Street movements in Chicago. I also published a story about it in my paper. So last week I went to cover a very similar story in Rio.

 When I arrived in St Paul, two months ago, I was terrified by the nightmare that I couldn’t understand a word of what  Minnesotans speak.

One of the most touching moments of this trip through USA was the remembering session in Boston on 9/11 anniversary. Like happened in many cities in this country that Sunday, hundreds of people attended to the commemoration on Boston’s State House stairs.

 I was happy to be in Atlanta, the city where Martin Luther King Jr started his struggle for civil rights, for a society where it doesn't matter if you're black or white.

 I arrive in a very crowded bar, cool music played by a dj, many girls dressed to kill hearts, boys grooving and drinking nice daikiris. But suddenly I realize that there are only black people in the room. After a couple of minutes searching, I finally see one white bald head-- it was the waiter...

With unemployment reaching almost 10% while marketplace is stuck by the economic crisis, Americans know that’s not  the best time to go shopping. In a large mall in Minneapolis, I saw many empty stores on almost dead corridors, despite of the SALE billboards everywhere. But there was an exception: the  Apple Store. Crowded, lively, noisy, it was a kind of island of consumption, almost disconnected of the current economic environment.

Since I arrived to United States, two weeks ago, I have been asked how free is press in Brazil. Even in the small Ely, in North Minnesota, that was the first question. Interesting to notice the high interest about this issue in the world’s longest democracy.

Seeing things with our own eyes makes a lot of difference, isn’t it? When I was preparing myself to land in Minneapolis, I had Michelle Bachmann and her conservative outlook as the current political face of Minnesota. I had been exposed everyday in Brazil to massive news about the Tea Party and its battle over president Barack Obama, but something was not making sense to me.

It was December 26th, 1799. Hipolito da Costa, considered the first Brazilian journalist, took a note: “George Washington was buried today. I couldn’t see the funeral because I was not in deep mourning (and don’t have enough money to buy it), but I have the description of the papers.”