Geeky Yet Waterproof

On Monday Iza, Cintia, and I met up with Iza’s godmother and her nephew, Philippe, and we all drove three hours out into the country to a little town called Brotas, which is known for its rafting attraction. I need not mention why we were there.
When we got there, we met our guide, picked up our lifejackets and oars, then took a 10 minute bus ride to the river. He gave us a quick lesson on how to hold the oars and what all his commands meant, and it wasn’t until afterwards that he found out I didn’t understand a word he said. He was a little worried at first, but then he remembered that most of the commands are in English anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
When we all got in the boat, we started out in a small “training lake”, where our guide made us practice following his orders, stopping the boat, doing cookies, etc. After about five minutes of this, we got out, picked up the boat, and walked across a finger of land to the river.
At first the water was pretty calm, but as we went on there were some tough spots. Eventually we got to our first 4-foot waterfall, and I think some of us thought we were going to die (go ahead and laugh). But then a little later on, we came to a series of several larger “cliffs”. Before we went over the edge, our guide had us back-paddle hard to stop the boat… then he dipped his hand in the water, blessed himself, and shouted “FRENTE!”
Fortunately there were photographers stationed on rocks all around.

By the end everyone was completely soaked through (partly because the guide pushed us in!), but we eventually we dried off in the Brazilian weather.
But when we got home, we discovered that while we were paddling down a river three hours away, in São Paulo people were also paddling (or driving?) down a river. In the space of 10 minutes, it rained the amount that it’s supposed to rain in a day!

Author’s note: We’re leaving early tomorrow morning to go stay in their beach apartment about 45 minutes away from here, and internet access may be inaccessible. I apologize to all my readers, but you may have to wait until next year to read about the rest of my trip! (I’ll be back on January 9th, so check sometime after then.)
FELIZ NATAL PARA TODOS!

Tia Rosa, Philippe, Iza, Eamon, Cintia

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”

On Saturday, we (Iza, Cintia, their mom, and I) had a private tour of the military base here in São Paulo. The reason this was possible was because Cintia’s boyfriend, Cassio, is the guy in charge of the whole base, even though he’s only 21! This base is the only one in the world that can repair tanks of a certain kind, so it has a large storage area with tanks from around the world. He let us get in the driver’s seat of a tank, and he even had me start it up, turn on the siren, and rev the engine (although it was in neutral).
I hope this sentence won’t scare you, but hearing the sound of that tank engine when I step on the pedal feels powerful.

Later that day, Iza and I hung out at Nathalya and Leticia’s apartment for a while. We went in the pool even though it was freezing (I think the pool wasn’t heated, and the weather wasn’t that warm either), but then we warmed up again in the sauna. Afterwards we all walked to a little restaurant a few blocks down and had ice cream and panquecas (similar to a crêpe).
That night I went with Iza and her family to her tia’s house for dinner, where I got to meet a lot of the family. Cousins, cousins, cousins! It reminded me of one of our own Filipino family reunions… only, as they told me, this was only a portion of the family.
The food was all really good, and everyone was really nice… and most of them already knew who I was! I had to speak a lot of Portuguese to communicate (obviously), but it was really fun, and they made me feel like part of the family.

Leticia, Nathalya, Cintia, Iza, Eamon

On Friday, Cintia, Iza, and I met up with two of Iza’s friends, Nathalya and Leticia, and we drove about an hour out into the country to an amusement park called Hopi Hari. It was pretty similar to Disney Land, only smaller. The park even had its own native language, which was a modified version of Portuguese. (The “enter here” sign said “Entrakí”, etc…)

I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t been to a real amusement park since Las Vegas in 2006, so I wasn’t “used to” heights. Needless to say, the first high-drop almost scared the lunch out of my stomach, but after about the fourth round I got used to it.

We ate lunch in the onsite cafeteria, the quality of which surprised me. I wouldn’t dare eat at a place like this in my home country, but the food here was actually pretty good — even being hamburgers!
We stayed almost all day, until we had done almost every ride at least twice. The only one we didn’t do was the 100-meter skydive, which I must confess was my fault. Nevertheless, we all had a great time, and I think my Portuguese improved a lot that day, trying to talk to the Brazilians.

Afterwards Iza, Cintia, Nathalya, Leticia, and I all went back to Iza’s apartment and ordered pizza for dinner. I was surprised and delighted when one of the pizzas we ordered was brigadeiro pizza! (Brigadeiro is a Brazilian chocolate dessert similar to pudding.) You may not like the idea of chocolate pizza, but if you tried it, I assure you: you’d change your mind.

Cintia, Nathalya, Eamon, Leticia (after the “Splashi” ride)

Eamon and Iza preparing to be dropped from a very high place

The line to get into Montezum

They didn’t play “It’s A Small World”… but they played something very, very similar.

Hoje depois de almoçar a gente foi para — nossa! What happened to my English! *bladdabladdababberblah*
As I was saying, today after lunch Cintia, Iza, and I went for a drive down the Avenida Paulista, which is the most famous avenue in São Paulo, because all the major businesses and expensive buildings are located along this street. We even found a Starbucks (which surprised even the Brazilians)!

After that we drove to Ibirapuera, the São Paulo equivalent of Central Park. There the three of us rented bikes and rode around the park for an hour (with me taking terrible shaky videos with one hand and trying to avoid pedestrians with the other). We wanted to stay around until it got dark so that could watch the light show which started at 8pm, so we walked around for a long time and then went into a sort of Brazilian art museum, which had pieces of art and jewelry on exhibit and for sale arranged by booths from each state in Brazil.

The light show wasn’t much (probably because we were watching from the side, so all we could see was the vertical factor), but close by was a more vigorous light show located on an enormous Christmas tree. And by “enormous”, I mean that the star at the top weighed no less than 120 tons.
When we got home, we ate dinner and the spent the rest of the evening getting ready for our activity the next day: HopiHari.

Yesterday, for the first time ever I woke up in Brazil. Iza and I had breakfast which consisted of warm chocolate milk with bread and cheese, and then Cintia, Avó, Iza, and I went to the feira — a big street market where everybody goes to buy their fresh fruit and vegetables. We bought about three shopping bags-worth of really fresh produce for probably the equivalent of about $5, then for lunch we had pastels, which are a sort of pastry stuffed with anything you want (mine was filled with four cheeses). To drink, we bought two bottles of freshly-squeezed-on-the-spot juice from sugarcane!

Later, Cintia took Iza and me to the mall so that I could get money from an ATM and find a phone card for my global phone (both without success). We were going to go for a walk afterwards, but suddenly it started pouring rain like nothing I’ve ever seen… within 20 minutes, the streets were flooded and cars driving down the road looked like boats going up a river!
As walking was no longer an option, we did the only obvious(?) thing: Cintia took Iza and me to the driving school and taught us how to drive manual in her car! Iza won’t let me forget that she made it to 2nd gear while I didn’t get past 1st, but I’m holding onto my one defense: I had to learn in Portuguese!

That night Iza, Cintia, Izildinha (their mom), Cassio (Cintia’s boyfriend), and I all went out for dinner to a sushi restaurant, then drove around looking for Christmas lights on houses. It wasn’t until we got home that we realized the best Christmas lights were at their own apartment!

Arrival at the airport: Leticia, Eamon, Iza, Nathalya

Arrival at the airport: Cintia, Eamon, Iza, Izildinha

Feira

Iza, Avó, and Cintia at feira

Sushi: Cintia, Izildinha, Iza, Eamon

As of noon yesterday, I’ve arrived in São Paulo! Iza, her family, and a few of her friends met me at the airport, and then we drove to her apartment which is about an hour from the airport.
São Paulo traffic is almost like the Philippines, only with a slight difference… In the Philippines, because of the traffic, cars simply don’t move. Here, either the cars don’t move, or they move really fast!

We pretty much had the day free, so Cintia, Iza, and I drove around São Paulo a little bit and they showed me Iza’s school. When we came back we just relaxed around the house. I also got to meet Iza’s godmother, who came over for dinner.

Check out my photo gallery, which I’ll probably updating every day with new photos.

UPDATE: The link to my photo gallery didn’t work before, but I’ve fixed it… try it again.

I hope you’ll forgive me for re ridiculously long sabbatical, but I’m going to jump-start this blog right back up in the present tense. I’m currently on the 3rd of my eight hours layover at JFK in New York, waiting for my 10:30pm flight to Brazil to visit Iza for 3 weeks! It’s ironic that there’s no working wifi in the busiest airport in the world, so I’m blogging from my iPhone over the cell network.

Anyway, the roads back in Oregon were maliciously decorated with black ice last night, so we had to leave home at 2am to get to PDX in time for my 6:30am flight! I didn’t get to bed until midnight because I wasn’t done packing, so I’m running on about two hours of sleep right now.
I don’t know how often I’ll be able to blog while I’m down there, but I’ll be uploading photos as often as I can. Links thereto will be posted here, so check back whenever the urge strikes… Over and out!

DISCLAIMER: DUE TO A SUDDEN LACK OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS IN ROME, THE CAUSE OF WHICH BEING MY UNWILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR ANOTHER NIGHT OF INTERNET, THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN POSTED ONE (1) DAY LATE. SHOULD YOU SEE ME AT SWIM PRACTICE BEFORE YOU READ THIS, DON’T SUE ME.

Today, which marks three weeks of this trip, was our last day in Rome. We didn’t have time to see the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum Romanum like I said we would, but we saw a lot of other things. To be able to see all of Rome, I think the ideal amount of time to spend there would be, maybe… 78 years.

We walked to the Vatican (where the nearest bus stop is) and then rode one of those good ol’ Hop-On buses to the Piazza del Populo. The Piazza del Populo is a big plaza surrounded by buildings (including two churches), with an 80-foot obelisk in the middle.
Here we witnessed a situation that can only be unique to Europe: a man selling roasted chestnuts on the corner, with two people playing an accordion duet on the other side of the street, while a horse and carriage passed through the middle. If you ever catch a scene like this in Oregon, call me and I just might award you a sock monkey.

From the Piazzo, we walked a few blocks to the Spanish Steps, which is, in actuality, just a big set of stairs lined by flowers with a sign that says “Do Not Defecate”. But apparently it’s famous for the fact that it has been featured many times in movies as a meeting place in Rome.

A short walk from this was the Trevi Fountain. The Trevi Fountain is also a famous monument — it’s even been copied by Las Vegas. It is a huge stone fountain adorned by sculptures of deities, and legend has it that if you throw a coin in, you’ll return to Rome someday. (We threw in a coin.)

Our next stop was another well-known ancient landmark: the Pantheon. You probably know what the Pantheon is, but let me refresh your memory just in case:
Pantheon is Greek for “many gods”. As the name suggests, it was a temple for the worship of many gods. It is a large, round, stone building, with well-recognizable stone pillars outside the front supporting the entrance. The ceiling is dome-shaped, but there’s a big round hole right in the middle! When it rains, you don’t want to stand under the hole, but water will drain through smaller holes in the floor.
Although the Pantheon used to be a place to worship many gods, it has now been converted into a church. It’s strange seeing statues of saints and Roman gods in the same room…

After poking around the Pantheon for a while, we headed over to the Vatican to look through the Musei Vaticani — a huge museum containing ancient artifacts spanning thousands of years.
The first few rooms were full of ancient Roman statues. It was fun looking through these, because some of them we had seen before in pictures and textbooks — and these were the originals. There was one sculpture of Laocoon and his sons being dragged down by serpents, which Isa and I recognized immediately because there’s a picture of it in our Latin books!
It was also fun looking at all the busts of Roman noblemen, because you could tell whether or not the sculptor liked his model… Some looked like Greek gods, whereas others resembled primates.
Another cool thing we saw here was a very large, intricately carved sarcophagus, which turned out to be the tomb of St. Helena — Emperor Constantine’s mother.

After looking at these we went through the Etruscan-Italic room, which contained pre-Roman artifacts from the Etruscans — most of which were from around 700 BC. There was a lot of weaponry and armor, and even some ancient action-figures. One thing we noticed was that many of the helmets had some form of gruesome sword-shaped dent or terrible puncture hole on the back!

One of the most amazing things we saw at the Vatican was the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was built in the 15th century, and is famous because the whole ceiling is intricately painted by Michelangelo, and one wall contains his fresco The Last Judgement.
Because flashes of light can eventually destroy frescos, no photography at all is allowed in the Sistine Chapel. But every two minutes or so, some tourist who couldn’t follow rules would take an illegal photo, and all the guards would shout, “NO PHOTO!”. I was one of these tourists. Come on, if something says not to take photos, it must be really good, right? Well it was, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice a photo like this. At least I didn’t use flash, and I didn’t get caught!

We were at the Vatican for hours and hours trying to see everything there was to see, and by the end my legs were cramping up just from walking. When we came out, we trekked through the rain to a gelateria and then a buffet restaurant, to have our last supper in Rome.

Thus concluded our last day of this Mediterranean voyage. Rome was definitely my favorite place in the whole trip, with Casablanca second. I hope to come back here sometime (sooner, rather than later), and see the other 95% of Rome we didn’t even get to yet.
Since we’ve reached the end of this trip, I’m ready to disclose how many photos I took in the last three weeks: 1001. No, wait, that was the last three days!
OK, how many total? 4,230 photos and videos. I’m not kidding — that’s how much we saw in three weeks.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this travelogue series, because I sure had fun writing it. It’s going to be hard to get used to The Real World now… sort of like trying to get used to solid ground after being at sea for five days (I almost fell over several times, thinking the ground was still moving). But I suppose a few 5am swim practices will pound it back into me (should I walk out alive).
So, thank you for putting up with this ridiculously long posting, and I hope you’ll excuse me to go play Caesar III finish my Latin homework…