Uma Cidade das Contradições

São Paulo is a city of contradictions. It's fast and slow, dangerous and safe, hideous and stunning, unbelievably wealthy and blatantly poor. The hardest part about these contradictions is that they exist, more often than not, side by side. An old person will be slowly hobbling across the street as cars zoom by to make a tight right turn. Twenty story buildings with no windows and nothing but a flat grey exterior neighbor rusty pink colored apartments with balconies covered with beautifully carved embellishments. Our program directors talk about the city like everyone is carrying a knife around looking to rob you and encourage us to never go out in groups smaller than three, refrain from pulling money out of ATMs after four pm, and demand that we take taxis after 10pm. At the same time, all the locals I talk to say that it is a deceptively safe city and that it requires no more precaution than any other big city. New apartment complexes abound, everywhere I look there's advertisements for up and coming high rises (read: palaces). It's illegal to paste signs up, so the companies pay people about $15 a day to stand and hold a sign promising paradise only 10km away! Yesterday I saw three homeless men wrapped in blankets cooking food on an open fire and then around the corner, there was a block lined with barbed wire fences. A prison, I questioned? No, just a row of brand new apartment complexes. What else would you expect?