SIGET IV, Tubarão, Santa Catarina Island

Carl and I are in Florianópolis for the night and leave for the U.S. tomorrow. Our hotel has high-speed internet, so we just checked our return reservations and learned that we've both been upgraded to business class for the return flight. The Brazilian gesture for this is a thumbs up. We drove up from Tubarão with Chris Anson today, had a great lunch with him at a place on Santa Catarina Island recommended by Tom Huckin. Here's a picture of the fabulous South Atlantic oysters at Casa do Chico in Lagoa da Conceição. We left Chris at the airport, rented the same car he had had, and spent the afternoon driving around the island.

The conference, SIGET, was an interesting experience. It's the fourth genre conference here in Brazil, held at two-year intervals. SIGET stands for Simpósio Internacional de Estudios de Gêneros Textuais, and it was sponsored by the graduate program in linguistics at UNISUL, or Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina (University of the South of Santa Catarina, a private university). Most of the participants were from Brazil, and there were about an equal number of invited speakers from Brazil and from elsewhere. There were a number of recurring themes in the presentations: genre systems, digital genres, genre change and evolution, and the relationship between text and context. I had a chance to talk extensively with Amy Devitt, Paul Prior, and Tom Huckin, and to meet Brian Street and Mary Lea (both from England). It was also good to see John Swales and Vijay Bhatia after a long time.

Tubarão is a town you wouldn't go out of your way to visit; there are no particular historical or geographical features except for the river that runs through it. The way from our hotel to the university required us to cross the river on a pedestrian bridge that would both roll and pitch, depending on the rhythm and intensity of the traffic on it at any given time. Here's a picture of Carol Berkenkotter and Amy Devitt arriving at the university on the bridge. We had one lovely day there but then it turned cloudy and cool, about 17–18 C.

On the river bank Tom Huckin noticed some capibaras, usually described as the world's largest rodent. I saw a group of about six one evening. Here's a picture—a bit blurry, but it gives you the idea; the large animal in the foreground was about 18 inches high. We also discovered that one of the trees along the river was an evening roost for about a dozen of of some kind of ibis; they would gather in the top of a particular tree (identifiable at other times only by the guano underneath) and squawk noisily. I took a picture, but the light was so dim that it didn't come out well.

The last day of the conference, yesterday, was Angela's birthday, and some of us gathered to celebrate after the last session of the day, which was the session I was in. I should note that the conference schedule had us working from 9:00 am to 10:00 pm for three days straight, so this birthday celebration started at about 10:30 and lasted until after 1:00 am. Here's a picture of Judith, Chuck, me, and Angela—these were the people central to my experience in Recife and UFPE.