Viçosa is nice. On Saturdays, there is some movement in the center, some people shopping for groceries, new shoes or just out to be in the crowd. There's sometimes a band playing the main square, too. Sundays, though, it's quiet. And the holidays, too. Only the bakeries are open. Oh and the churches. A couple of restaurants. Mondays at 8am there is traffic. And at noon. And then again at 2pm when people are returning from lunch. But the most traffic is at 6pm when everyone is out - leaving work or school and eager to get home. However, the most traffic on the running trail is at 7:30pm, as if everyone had planned that. Coming home at night, it is best at 10pm when people are getting out of their classes and you can walk home with a group of students. Biking in Viçosa doesn't have rules - just don't get hit. Playing soccer happens on Friday nights on that nice astro-turf, as long as it doesn't rain 3 hours before. How could I forget, for lunch on campus, there are two choices but at both of them you will eat rice and beans and salad and meat. There are all vegetarian options. Flowers bloom at different times and dusk brings a sound, smell and light across the campus lake.
Viçosa is a nice place to live, to study, to work, to have fun. But mostly, what gets me are the people. I think I could live anywhere in this world with some good people in my life. With that, I have been blessed. Good people hug away homesickness, funny people make you laugh at yourself, fun people get you to dance, determined people get you to study in the library, crazy people make you feel better about yourself, Hospitable people give you a comfortable bed and hot shower. Selfless people help you move apartments. Fit people share recipes with you. Loving people let you be yourself in whatever form. Faithful people get you to retreats. Understanding people listen without trying to solve. Needy people ask for help. And the best people make you food.
For me, people are what make a place and [X place] is nice, because indubitably there's one of these good people there, too.
This past week, I have been especially reflective as my dear friend cautiously and yet fearlessly welcomed her newborn baby son into this world, two months too soon. The complications caused by the pregnancy has left everyone on edge and on their knees praying to our good God to show His true colors and grace Levi with attentive doctors and miraculous progress. At the same time, my 101 year old McGrandpa found himself in the hospital for some fractured bones that were preventing him from walking without excruciating pain. These two lives at bookends of my time scale, being the oldest and youngest people I know, made me think of the challenge that it is to enter and leave this world. Birth and death have never been easy or graceful things, as much as we would like them to be. But perhaps this is part of the rites of passage in order to prepare for the new world that we enter upon birth and upon death. The cycles of life continue, whether or not we stop to appreciate the moments. Yet I don't see these cycles of life as graceful as the sunrise and sunset, as smooth as a baby's bottom or as calm as my grandpa's spirit. Rather, I imagine these cycles of life as erratic as exploding volcanoes, as rough as the bottom of my feet and as boistrous as a Palmer Family Christmas party. For what purpose? To prepare us for the next life perhaps. Levi is a fighting warrior, in the words of his father, and my grandpa continues to joke from the hospital bed about being able to tune his dentures with a fork. Indeed, they are gaining their rites of passage as we speak.
