Geeky Yet Waterproof

On Sunday morning, Iza and I went into downtown São Paulo and walked around the market at the Praça da Republica (Plaza of the Republic). It was full of art and native Brazilian artifacts — it reminded me of the Eugene Saturday market, only Brazilian, instead of… Eugenian. After spending some time there, we took the subway to Liberdade, the Japanese neighborhood in São Paulo. It was like Chinatown in any big city, only everything was Japanese, and there was an abundance of Hello Kitty in every shop. We walked around for a while, then took the subway again to Sé, which is a very poor part of town but is also the site of the foundation of the city in 1554.

Afterwards we went home for just a few minutes, and then drove to her grandmother’s house for a bigger family party than the one the night before. There were probably twice as many people here now, but the amazing part was when I found out that they had planned all this just the night before, over the course of about five minutes! And then they said they did it all for me! I couldn’t believe this, but it seemed like everyone wanted to talk to me, even though only one person could speak English (Sandra, Iza’s cousin, who is in fact an English teacher). Needless to say, I think my Portuguese improved by about 200% that day. It was hard to understand people at first, and some had different accents (there was even one uncle who spoke a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish, and people kept having to correct him — he was the hardest to understand), but it got easier as the party went on. But when everyone started getting drunk… it all just went downhill. Sandra was trying to explain to me in English something about somebody’s bad hair, and she kept mentioning garlic… I didn’t understand the significance of garlic, until Iza came over and whispered to me, “She means curly.”

One of Iza’s uncles climbed a tree and shook down some fruit for us to try, which I had never seen before. Then he went up the hill to the “banana house”, cut off a bunch of green bananas for frying, and proceeded to cut down the entire banana tree, pick it up, and carry it over to the garbage pile.
By the way, he’s 60.

The center of the party was the churrasco, or barbecue. They barbecued three types of meat: bife (steak), carne de porco (pork), and picanha (ox meat). There was also a sort of appetizer, which was coração de galinha: chicken hearts on a stick. Now before you vow never again to read my blog, let me tell you that it was delicious. I think I ate about 20 hearts, and all the little kids probably had just as many.
All of the food was amazing, and meat was constantly being barbecued and consumed for hours. After a while, they stopped cooking more meat and started roasting pineapples covered in cinnamon. They told me (in Portuguese) that you’re supposed to eat the pineapple after all the meat, because the acidity helps you digest. Well let me tell you, this was definitely better than any digestion pill I’ve ever taken.

The party started to quiet down after about eight hours, and people started going home with full bellies. Now I know what Brazilian parties are like.

“Fear me and my barbecue!”

After he cut off the bananas, he cut down the tree. With that knife.

Sandra, Eamon, Angela, Cassio, Cintia

The outside portion of the party

Bife, linguiça, and chicken hearts

“The Banana House”