Minha Vida no Brasil: 1 week down,

Since I last wrote, I’ve been learning Brazilian cooking each day. Irani, the maid, is teaching me. She also speaks no English, but we get by with the words I know, and lots of charades and sign language. Monday, I learned how to make a chicken torte, with beans and rice of course, and a cooked veggie salad. Tuesday, I learned how to make a beef roll thing with ham and cheese inside, with beans and rice again, and a salad. Today we made a fishy and vegetable layered kind of casserole thing, it was really good, a nice change from beef and pork too. Monday, other than making lunch was uneventful. Yesterday, after making lunch, I went with Renata to pick up my cards for the clubs so that I can go there now when I want. Then we went to Renata’s parents place, and I stayed there all afternoon. I showed her parents and her sister photos from Canada. They were all very amazed how beautiful my area is. After that I made a quiche with Renata’s sister, and I learned that I am not great at making pastry unfortunately. But it would have helped if we had had a scale to measure things instead of just guessing.

After that, we went for a walk with Renata’s sister and her husband and her mother. Then, we hurried home to get ready for the Rotary meeting. When we got to the meeting, I was introduced to some people, and then the meeting started. The first thing I had to do was present the banner from my host club to their club, and it was somewhat awkward, because the club president didn’t say anything, he just shook my hand. After that, the youth exchange person introduced me some, and about 50 men were looking at me curiously. Then they proceeded to talk about traffic problems in Brazil (I think anyways), I could only understand bits and pieces of it, and then a couple other people talked, and I could understand nothing. When the meeting was finally over, we went and had dinner. There was rice (no surprise), salad, lamb, and a whole stuffed roast pig, tail, ears and nose still intact. The roast pig wasn’t great, but the salad was good. The meeting was pretty boring, but I think that if I could have understood more that it might have been interesting

Today after the yummy fish casserole lunch, Yan called, and we went to have acai. It’s like a smoothie of acai fruit, with granola nuts and milk powder on top. Its super good, I could eat it every day. Then we walked around the city and for the first time I didn’t feel lost when we were walking, maybe one day I will know my way around. As we were eating acai, a parade thing of cars with speakers on them playing political advertising songs and covered in flags and other election things drove by. There were like 30 cars at least driving with huge flags, and 3 or 4 with speakers. There is going to be an election at the beginning of October, and there has been a lot of talk, and I realized that all the cars I’ve heard playing music everywhere are playing songs about the president they want elected. There are also signs on buildings everywhere and billboards about the election. I tried to ask what the government is structured like here, but I didn’t understand the answer, so maybe I will Google it. Yan also taught me ‘fusca azul’ which is the equivalent of punch buggy. It has to be blue, because there are so many VW beetles here. The old ones are really cheap, and I wish that I could buy one and bring it back with me.

When I got back from that, I went to a meeting with Casali, the rotary person for youth exchange, and the outbound students from here. I found out that Lisa, the girl here from Germany is leaving tomorrow, because she misses her family too much I think. Casali told the outbounds to take me for ice cream and get to know me, so that I’m not lonely, a nice gesture, but it won’t help me not gain weight.

Renata and I went for a walk after that, I finally figured out what the numbers written on the sidewalk where we walk mean, and I figured out that one lap is 1.2 km, and we walk 4 or more each night. After that, we went for dinner, and had like shepherd’s pie thing, except with lots of cheese, and shredded steak instead of ground beef.

Acai with Yan