em que eu tento comunicar

saturday night, blair was invited to a party at a bar, and he brought us along. blair, emily, shaina, and i took the bus to el dorado where we met up with david, an american student at UNICAMP in campinas who came to SP for the night. we took a taxi to the bar and went inside. i was terrified! we were all wearing jeans and casual clothing, and everyone is dressed up and looking nice. plus, it was the birthday party of several people, so we all felt like we were crashing a house party. how sad! blair's friend joana was there and she was really friendly, plus her english is excellent so we all felt a little more calm. we hung out for awhile, and i had my first caipirinha in brazil. it was great- i had it with strawberries instead of limes. delicious, but the problem is that you can't taste the cachaca (brazilian sugarcane rum). joana said to be careful- that it's easy to tell who the tourists are by seeing how many caipirinhas they drink, and how quickly!

there was a guy there that kept hanging around 'the american girls' but joana said he didn't speak english so even though he clearly wanted to talk, he couldn't. david (from UNICAMP) is pretty decent with portuguese, so i told the guy to come sit with us and talk. it was hilarious- the guy (i don't think i caught his name) was speaking a mix of spanish (so i could understand) and portuguese (so david could understand), and david and i responded in portuguese and spanish, respectively. i actually understand a lot of portuguese, i just can't respond in kind! but spanish has been very useful. anyway, the guy was telling us all about brazil, culture, economics, etc. apparently there's a guy by the name of santos dumont who had the first flight, or at least that's what the brazilians are taught! the guy had never heard of the wright brothers, and insisted dumont was the first. it's strange to see history through someone else's biases! he also said that we were nice for americans, as the general consensus amongst brazilians is that americans are snobby and greedy.-i'm glad to be here defying stereotypes!

while our portu-spanish conversation was going on, blair was busy chatting up joana's friend valdir. he's a lakers fan and is one of very few people (or students, anyway) that has a subscription to SkyTV- including ESPN! blair is very charming, despite speaking almost no portuguese, and convinced valdir to have us over to watch the game sunday night. things started to die down so we took a taxi home and passed out until...

sunday! blair came over and we hung out with rafael and renata downstairs (the brother and sister that live in the place where i'm staying). we dropped renata off so she could go to church, then the three of us went to a park to watch the sunset. it was gorgeous!

with blair, en route to the park

the park

me at the park


blair, me, and rafael

sun-setting

it's done!


after the sunset, we decided to go have pizza. rafael took us to faria lima where we went to a pizza buffet. it's about $8 USD and the pizza doesn't stop. i must have had 5 slices- it's different from the pizza in the states, but still delicious. one strange thing was the cheddar pizza, which had a kind of soft (think velveeta) cheddar cheese on top. it was my least favorite, but i had to try! after the regular pizzas they bring out pizzas doces, dessert pizzas. the crust is a mix between pie crust and pizza crust, and the toppings include chocolate pudding and fudge with strawberries, just chocolate, coconut cream, and my favorite... grilled bananas with vanilla ice cream! i couldn't believe i ate so much, but it was just all so appealing. we will definitely have to go back to that place soon.

we came home from dinner and valdir was there to pick us up for the basketball game. we went to his apartment where we met his roommates and waited for the game to start. once the game began, all the roommates left the living room (i guess they aren't into basketball) and it was just blair, valdir, and me sitting around the TV. valdir and i were both rooting for the lakers, but blair was for the magic. it was really entertaining because valdir doesn't speak much english and neither blair nor myself speak much portuguese, so it was a lot of 'yeah fisher! yeah kobe! defense!' from me and valdir, and not much else. lakers won so i was happy, and valdir took us back to our neighborhood.

monday morning, blair and another student, justin, met me at my house at 8. we went to the paderia (bakery) up the street to eat before school. we all had pao a chappa (sp?) which is a roll, cut in half and buttered, then toasted on a griddle with a heavy metal press (kind of like an iron) on top of it. i also had my first cafe con leite since arriving in brasil, and immediately regretted it (only because i know there will be much, much more where that came from.) The woman working behind the counter, Andrea, is familiar with blair because he goes there a lot. she introduced herself and figured out that i could understand her, so with some broken english and portuguese we realised we could both speak spanish, which we did. she was very sweet and patient with us, and told me to tell blair he looks like eddie murphy (he kind of does...) while i still wish my portuguese was better, it felt good to communicate with someone (someone not american, that is) and to feel useful because i can understand what's going on! i'm just thinking of it as more motivation to study the language.

my work in the lab was uneventful- i'm just learning how things are done around here. this is a long weekend, so i'll post more later.