-I've begun weekly Portuguese lessons. It's time to bite the bullet. My teacher is Dani's good friend Tati. She tortures me for an hour in 100% Portuguese and then I return the favor with an hour of nothing but the King's.
-Many hours of the day I wish I was back home with my friends, except for Friday or Saturday nights when we're going out. That's when I wish my friends could be here with me. Sampa's nightlife has probably ruined me for the US's.
-The lady and I hit a Brazilian churrascaria this week for the first time since arriving. We flipped our cards to green and consumed as much meat as we could. One of the delicacies here is chicken hearts. They come about 50 on a skewer. I gave the gaucho the thumbs up and he slid five onto my plate.
-Forget taking a class, or Rosetta Stone or flashcards or any of that crap, I haven't experienced anything as intensive or exhaustive as a one-hour conversation with a native speaker in their language. Every single sentence is a hurdle. By the time it's over, both of us are relieved.
-Dani and her friend Adriana and me went out last weekend to Rua Augusta. We walked the streets looking for a home for the night. A lot of the clubs, including the one we decided on, offer a deal at the door where you pay R $30 (US $13.46) for entrance only or you can pay R $60 (US $26.93) upfront for that amount of drinks. Reluctantly, we took option B figuring a watered-down night was ahead of us.
-I've started running some afternoons from our apartment down to Ibirapuera Park. It's Sampa's closest equivalent to NY's Central Park. On sunny days, it's ridiculously crowded, filled with the city's genetically-gifted top five percent. The girls are lovely and smiling. The guys will make you never want to take your shirt off again.
-Dani and I witnessed a motorcycle wreck. A guy in an intersection was trying both to avoid oncoming traffic and come to a stop. His front tire swiveled and he went down. Luckily, he didn't look hurt. Locals swarmed him, offering a helping hand.
-From teaching English to Tati, I now realize how difficult the difference is between twelve and twenty, or thirteen and thirty, etc. Likewise, it was a big struggle for her to pronounce chocolate with two syllables instead of three. When I told her that the English word for batatas fritas is French Fries, she looked both confused and like she pitied me. "But why?" she asked. I said I didn't know.
-Nothing makes me as aware that an animal gave its life than seeing its heart on a plate in front of me. Buying and consuming a whole roasted chicken ironically feels less personal than eating its chewing-gum-wad-sized heart. Chicken hearts taste nice, but have a texture that feels exactly like how you might imagine a heart in your mouth feeling. Five little birds gave their lives for my plate. Three did so in vain.
-This city is packed with motorcycles. They weave between traffic whether its stopped or flying. Everyone is separated by inches. I'm sure I'll witness more wrecks in the future. Paulistas have no room, patience or respect for bicyclists. Even when I'm really missing home, I think about this fact and am happy.
-Option B, for the record, is definitely not watered-down.
-Related to nothing, but isn't it weird when you see on Facebook that someone just had a kid and you had no idea they were even pregnant?
-In Ibirapuera Park, crowds gather around a handful of courts where pickup basketball and soccer games are waged. Players who are able to get minutes take them very seriously. The basketball games are dismissible. I'm fairly certain my Blairs Middle School team could have taken the average crew here. Missed layups and silly passes galore. The soccer players, though, are on a completely different level. They are surgeons with the ball. I bet many of them could easily play college ball in the States.
-The club on Augusta had three levels. The top floor had pool tables and other board games. The main level had couches. They were playing stuff like the Postal Service and Radiohead's "2 + 2 = 5." The basement level was packed wall-to-wall with bodies. A DJ pumped out Beatles and Rolling Stones songs at a deafening volume. Colored lights on the low ceiling above made the room look endless. "Help" comes on and these kids scream like they're at the Ed Sullivan Show. They sure are convincing. The energy is undeniable.
Come to Brazil and go out with us.
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