Geeky Yet Waterproof

On Friday we made a second attempt to drive to the waterfall which we failed to reach the other day because of the bridge. Again we failed, again because of the bridge, which again had broken. So instead, we made reservations to go canoeing in the river for three hours that afternoon.
After we had lunch and poked around some shops (one of which had three crabs hanging outside on a string, with one still alive), we headed over to the river which was nearby. There were four canoes in the water, because some other people were doing the same as us, along with a (very high-strung) guide. There were two or three people to each boat, and in our boat were Zi, Iza, and me in the middle taking pictures instead of helping to paddle.
Within the first minute after we embarked, we crashed into some trees and didn’t know how to get out. It took us several minutes to get unstuck, and the guide had to yell instructions to us from another boat. But we didn’t feel foolish from this for long, after we watched Cintia and Cassio crash over and over again, then try to catch up to the rest of us by putting on extra speed, passing everybody and ending up in front, and then as soon as the next curve would come up… *thwack*.
I was surprised to see that all along the shore on both sides of the river were little red crabs. Most of them were just sitting in the mud, but some were several feet up in trees. No wonder everybody kept running into the banks… they wanted to see the crabs!
And whenever we stopped our paddling and listened, it was never quiet! There was a constant hum of tropical insects and animals, and in some places, the distant sound of live forró music being played.
Eventually we came into a big open area where there were lots of people swimming, and then to a sandy bank on the edge of the open sea. We landed here, and everybody got out to walk around on the sand for about half an hour. Iza and I went swimming, and I made some embarrassing attempts to walk on my hands in the surf before we all reentered our boats and paddled back up the river to where we had started.
After everyone had gotten out of their respective canoes, someone explained to me in labored English how banana trees work. They don’t produce seeds, so while the tree is producing bananas another stock grows up from the base, which eventually becomes the new tree. When the bananas are ripe, somebody comes and cuts off the whole bunch, then cuts down the old stock, which can no longer produce fruit. Now I understand why Iza’s uncle cut down the banana tree after harvesting the bananas…

You’ve probably noticed that as it is now the year 2009, last night was New Year’s Eve. And in this country, people like New Year’s Eve.
I’ve never spent New Year in a hot place before, so this was a new experience. For at least a week, people have been setting off scarily loud fireworks every few minutes 24/7. No matter where they are in this city, you can hear them. When we first got here, I thought there was a rebellion going on and people kept exploding grenades.
Another thing I forgot to mention earlier (which doesn’t have anything to do with the New Year) is that about every 4th car that goes down the street here has a custom ear-blasting speaker system and drives along with the back hatch open and about 3 people hanging off. It’s so loud it can thump your chest from up here on the 2nd floor with the window facing away from the street.

Anyway, back to December 31st. Avó, Zi, and Clovis were making food all day, and by the evening we had more than a table completely full of delicious food… ham, fruit, rice, fruit, salad, fruit, fruit, beans, fruit, pudding, champagne, and fruit. And there was even some fruit.

When all was ready, we had to carry it all up to Iza’s uncle’s apartment on floor 5, where we’d be having dinner after midnight. Once all the food had been delivered (after three trips by six people), we stayed there for a while watching the sea of people from above before going down to the beach. It was insane — the crosswalk directly below looked like Times Square, and there was a group of people dancing in the middle of the street. They were following a car that blasting music and driving about 3mph (it couldn’t go any faster because of all the people). It was just like a parade — an improvised one!
And when we went down to the beach just before midnight, there were at least two million people all dressed in white. There is a tradition here that you have to dress in white on New Year’s Eve for good luck.
When the hour struck, two million people busted open bottles of champagne and exploded off fireworks all at once. (Actually it all happened over the course of about two minutes, because nobody’s clocks were the same.) Cassio aimed his glass champagne cannon right at me, and I took the full blow of it. My white t-shirt was suddenly tie-die!
After we had each drank at least a full bottle (though for the “children” it was non-alcoholic), we all ran over to the ocean for another local custom: everyone had to step in the water and jump seven waves, making a wish with each one. After the seventh, you must run backwards until you’re far from the water, without letting the eight wave touch you. (What happens if the eight wave touches you? Do you die in a fiery ball of flames? I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t risk it…)
After this was completed, we went back to Tio Claudio’s apartment to feast. There is another tradition that you must first eat a plate of seven different grains (rice, lentils, etc.), and only after that can you eat whatever you want. Zi explained this to me in Portuguese, but when she mentioned “sete grãos” (seven grains), I thought she said “sete graus”, (seven degrees) which I took to mean seven courses. You can eat whatever you want after you finish seven courses! Fortunately Iza explained it all to me in English before I erred.
It wasn’t until around 1:45am that we headed back to Iza’s apartment, all of us weighing about 10 pounds heavier.

Obviously, the next day we didn’t get up until around noon, and then we relaxed and digested for most of the day. In the afternoon, Iza, Cintia, Pamela (Iza’s cousin), and I drove 2.5 hours to Guarujá, so we could turn in our tickets for the Ivete Sangalo concert that would take place there on Saturday! (Ivete is sort of like Madonna here in Brazil, at least in terms of popularity). We also had to pick up some bright green shirts which we’d need to get in to the concert — they’re sort of like big, really green tickets. Our task took 10 minutes, and then we drove 2.5 hours back home, excited for the concert.

Today we got up early as planned (9am??) we drove 2.5 hours into the country to a river in the mountains where we could go swimming. We had been aiming for a waterfall a little farther away, but the bridge was broken so we just stopped here.
There were already lots of people swimming in the river, even though it was slightly freezing. Cintia and Zi ordered some drinks and sat at a table while Cassio, Iza, and I got in the water and started swimming/walking/climbing up the river. The water was really strong in some places, and we sat down between rocks so we could feel the current. We eventually got to a big bowl of water where you could actually swim, and we saw people diving in or bombing down the rapids in an inner tube, so we stopped there and swam for a while.
We were too lazy to swim/climb back down the river to get back where we started, so we hiked on the muddy road to where Zi and Cintia were, and there we ate fried fish and drank guaraná soda.
On our way home, we stopped at a beach for ice cream, and then later we stopped at a little restaurant that was basically a canopy perched on a cliff, and ate tapioca.
When we got back to the apartment Iza and I went swimming in the ocean for a while, and later on when it got dark we hung out with two of her friends. It turned out that all of us could play guitar, so we made music on the beach until about 1am before everyone finally went to bed.

Christmas Eve. We woke up to the hottest day so far during my trip. After breakfast we went into town to go Christmas shopping, and we walked down the street where my dad bought his Brazilian guitar 30 years ago.
Later some of Iza’s friends from swimming came over, and we had a huge lunch of turkey, Brazilian rice, and salad. I had three helpings of this because I was advised that we wouldn’t be eating again until after midnight.
In the evening, we went to Iza’s aunt’s house for about half an hour to say hi to everyone and… to eat food. Then, we went to her grandmother’s house for more food and the gift exchange. I also got to meet all of her dad’s family there, which was cool. We all waited in the kitchen until midnight, then blew open the champagne and dug into the food when the hour struck.
After a lot of consumption, we went back to her aunt’s house for — you’ll never guess — MORE FOOD! It was incredible how much I ate that night. I think I’ve never consumed so much food within 24 hours ever in my life… but it sure tasted good!!
When we eventually returned to the apartment, we opened more presents and sat around talking for a while. We also ate some chocolates. It wasn’t until 4am that everybody was finally in bed!

On Christmas Day, I think I need not mention that we all woke up pretty late. We had a relaxing day, and we went out to lunch at a churrascoria (a Brazilian BBQ restaurant) with Clovis’s family. At restaurants like this, you have a little spinner thing on your table, and if you set the spinner to “green”, a constant stream of waiters will be coming by with hunks of meat on a stick, and you cut off however much you want. If, however, you set the spinner to “red”, it means you can’t possibly stuff yourself anymore, and the meat will pass you by.
Afterwards we went to Zi’s family’s house again and had more food, and just hung around for a while. I had a long conversation with one of Iza’s uncles in Portuguese, until he tried to argue politics with me, which I was simply unable to do. It’s hard enough in any language… let alone one I started learning 10 months ago.
When we got home we went around the apartment a little bit to visit some friends, then just relaxed for the rest of the evening so that we could get ready for the next day: the beach.

Me with my Secret Buddy, Iza’s avó

Some of the cousins: Eamon, Iza, The Dude, Cintia, Pamela, Leticia

Iza’s uncle teaching me the polite way to eat farofa

“The bird bites!!”

Viva!!

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