MSI Press Blog

  Curritiba Curritiba was never on my original itinerary for workshops in Brazil, but when Areta and I met at a national meeting in Brasília, plans rearranged themselves almost instantly. She invited me to her institute in Curritiba—she was the director—and of course I said yes. I no longer remember the exact workshop topic; it must have been something connected to language teaching or what we then called “learning differences,” long before the vocabulary settled into today’s understanding of neurodiversity. What I do remember are the people, and I remember the town. The City My time in Curritiba was lovely. It was winter back home, but in Brazil it was a balmy summer. Ipês, jacarandás, and bougainvillea spilled color everywhere, and the air carried that soft, humid perfume that makes life feel unhurried. The whole city seemed wrapped in green—parks, tree-lined streets, gardens that looked tended by people who loved beauty as much as practicality. And the people matched the...

Campinas Campinas was a place that would become larger than life for me, though nothing about it announced that at first glance. On the surface, it was simply a prosperous inland Brazilian city—warm, sprawling, modern in some places and worn in others, with jacaranda trees spilling purple blossoms onto wide avenues, and a rhythm that felt both industrious and relaxed. It was a university town, a tech hub, an agricultural center, and a place where people lingered over coffee as if time were elastic. I arrived expecting an assignment. I left with a story. The flight from Los Angeles to São Paulo was uneventful in the best possible way—comfortable, quiet, and long enough to settle into the strange suspension of international travel. I was in the middle cabin, up front, exit row, aisle seat B, with more legroom than I deserved. In seat A, by the window, was a gentle, pleasant conversationalist who introduced himself as Eduardo Pereira. The hours gave us time to talk, and Eduardo—soft...