Tamar and Phil Are Married

It was with a measure of surprise that I surveyed the scene in my room in Hostel Manaus, not more than a few hours ago.  Two observations stood out.  My stuff was gone and someone sleeping in my bed.   "What can this mean?" I wondered.  "Do I have a room?"  "Do I have stuff?"  I grew vaguely nervous and left the room.  The hostel staff person was not in the common area, but three guests were, including my Russian roommate of some time who was recently back from, rather than going on an organized tour of the jungle, having simply gone to a native village and asked to stay for week.  He is an avid Skyper and seems a decent sort.

"Did you see where they moved your stuff?" he asked.  While I clearly knew the answer to this question, I struggled to articulate it.  Before I could, all three people were pointing at room 12, the single room I had been in before.  This was odd because I had spent the afternoon moving out of this very room.  You see all of the reservations are laid out in this impossibly formatted Excel spreadsheet that lets the manager see about half of the rooms on any given day at a time, running on an impossibly slow computer.  A question like "What room am I in?" generally takes about ten minutes to get an answer to.  In any event, at that moment the manager came down the stairs and apologetically told me that someone else had argued their way into my berth and that to settle the situation he had moved my belongings and that I would now be sharing room 12 (a double) with someone who has yet to arrive as of midnight.

I am again in possession of all of my belongings -- short of a green bag with a few essential items that hopefully will make its way to the front desk at Hotel Tropical Manaus, where the wedding took place.  Said wedding was between my classmate from UCSD, Tamar Benzaken, and her boyfriend of some years, Phil Koosed.  Both families are quite large, and thus the wedding was quite large -- to the tune of about five hundred friends and relations.

The wedding was lovely and done in traditional Jewish style.  One of Tamar's aunts adopted me for the early part of the evening and talked me through much of the symbolism and the procedure.  The service included English, Portuguese, Hebrew, Aramaic, and a Jewish Spanish dialect.  Tamar looked stunning in her wedding dress and both bride and groom were exceedingly happy throughout the course of the evening.

I say "evening" but by the time I was taxiing my way back across town to my more modest digs, the sun was shining in the eastern sky.  This was the finale of three nights of festivities to celebrate the wedding, and in that time Tamar's family made me feel very, very welcome.  I look forward to my next opportunity to visit the city!

Today, the Sunday after Christmas, is the first day I have seen the sleepy side of Manaus.  It has experienced an enormous boom in population and, as with much of Brazil, money is becoming more plentiful.  This leads to extraordinary traffic with cars crawling for miles and miles.  The air fills with diesel smoke from the buses that snake through the center.  But today, hardly a car moved through the downtown.  The wide streets today were pleasant avenues that one could leisurely amble across, rather than playing the usual game of Frogger.  Looking down the empty streets to the Rio Negro in the distance, the city at last felt peaceful and pleasant.  Tomorrow, no doubt, it will be life as usual.

Tomorrow I return the suit I managed to rent.  I will try to track down my small bag, and I may try to finally get that elusive yellow fever shot.  Then on Tuesday, I finally make my way into the jungle.  There I will have not internet, little electricity, and for a few days will not even think about getting work done.  I celebrate the new year's arrive in the jungle lodge, then return to Manaus on the 1st.  The next day I depart once again for Bogota.