Semana de Saco Cheia

So keeping this blog up to date is getting harder, because there is almost always something more appealing than locking myself up in my room and writing. This is probably good, because it means I’m not bored much, but an extra hour a day to write would definitely be good.

Things have been settling down quite a bit here, but I still seem to find something to keep me occupied. Last week I made banana bread again, this time it was a lot better; I found whole wheat flour, and some nuts to put in it. My host mom fell in love with it, and told me that she needed to learn how to make it, and that she didn’t want to buy any normal bread anymore, just eat banana bread. Since then, she tells everyone how amazing of a cook I am. I hung out with Bia de Lucca on Friday, and she tried to teach me some of the nasal sounds that Portuguese language has, but I proved to be a poor student. I do not know how to make an L sound come out of my nose. Anyways, my efforts proved quite amusing.

Saturday, Renata, Vinicius and I went to Vinicius’ farms early morning. First we went to his ‘seringueira’ farm (rubber trees). There, we walked through the rubber forest, and I watched white rubber sap run down the trunks and drip into the rubber catching buckets. It’s quite similar to the maple trees in Canada, except you definitely don’t want to eat this sap… Vinicius pulled off a piece of dried up rubber sap, and it was way stronger than other elastic that I’ve ever seen. So I made a hair elastic out of it, and put my hair up. Tree Rubber is definitely better for the environment than petroleum or whatever based the synthetic stuff we use is too. After that, we went to his cow farm, and saddled up the horses. The saddles are a lot different than we use in North America, they are kind of a mix between English and Western saddles, and I was very happy that Vinicius strapped an extra blanket onto the seat, or else I would have been sitting on plain wood. Anyways, I won’t get into the horse stuff too much, to save those not horse savvy from boring comparisons. We trotted around the property, which is really big, and made all the cows get up to make sure there was nothing wrong with any of them. After a really long drought here, its rained a couple days, and things are starting to get green, but all the cows are kind of skinny cause the grass hasn’t been growing that well. Once we were done riding, we picked a bunch of mangos, with a really long pole and tried to catch them before they hit the ground. The farm was pretty much as I had imagined it, but a lot bigger. I really enjoyed getting out of the city and spending some time without traffic noises.

Termite Hill at the Farm

Vinicius and a Lake

Rubber sap on a rubber tree

my natural rubber rubber band

Cotton, which they feed to cows...

Typical view of the farm

Renata and I and horses

Urubu- in other words vulture

Pretty Camel Cow

That afternoon, a host cousin, Victoria, came from Sao Paulo, and her, Bia’s friend Ingrid, and I went out to the ‘Boate’. There was a band that played some old classic rock songs (in English) which was a nice change from all the Brazilian music that everyone but me knows the words to and sings along.

Pumpkin pie I made :)

Sunday night, I went out again with Ingrid, Victoria, and Bia de Lucca and Bia host sister. This time it was a samba band, so everyone was dancing samba, which is really cool to watch, but really hard to do. They tried to teach me, but I proved somewhat hopeless. Maybe I will learn one day, but its definitely going to be a challenge. I’m starting to get used to some of the cultural things about Brazilians, and I really like their way of partying. At barbeques, sometimes people bring guitars and sing, or play soccer. When samba music plays, everyone gets up and dances, even though not everyone can dance samba properly, most manage to follow along. The thing I like most though is how more or less everyone gets into the spirit of the party, and it doesn’t matter who you are, you can have a good time. After the band stopped, we went to the square and had sandwiches from a street vendor, who tries to copy Mcdonalds. I love how cheap food is here, I got a huge cheeseburger with veggies on it, for 5 reals, or $3 Canadian.

This week is called Semana de Saco Cheia, in English, directly translates to Full Bag Week. It is the equivalent of spring break, so I have no school all week J

Monday morning, I woke up early to go to what I thought was a cow auction. Renata said it was they sell cows. So, ignorantly, I assumed it was an auction, because I’d seen Vinicius watching a lot of them on TV, and I thought I’d heard them say that. However, when we got there, I didn’t see any place for an auction, so I was really confused. We walked around the place, then up to a place where a bunch of cows were getting chased up a chute, and getting sprayed with water to wash them. Then I realized that it wasn’t an auction, it was an abattoir, and Vinicius had brought some cows here the day before to be sold. When farmers here take their cows to the butchery, apparently they like to see what the cows look like as they are being taken apart and weighed. So, Vinicius and I put on white special clothes so that we could go into the butchering area, and toured around, seeing all the parts of the process from beginning to end. I won’t get into the literally bloody details of it, but It was actually really interesting to see how it’s all done. However, it was a little weird seeing the cows run up the building, then seeing the same cows, cut in half hanging, stamped and being weighed to be sold. The whole process from live cow to leaving the factory cow takes about 10 minutes, which I thought was really fast. As much as it was interesting, I was happy to leave there, and come back to my city for lunch. I was also happy that we didn’t eat beef for lunch, because I don’t know if I would have been able to that soon. We did have it for dinner though, and I am happy that experience didn’t turn me off eating meat. I also had barbequed chicken hearts with dinner, which after deciding not to think about what they were, turned out to be quite enjoyable.

Cows waiting

Tuesday, I made thanksgiving lunch, Canadian Style. Here, lunch is the big meal, so I didn’t think it would be right to make a huge feast for dinner, cause no one would eat very much. It was a lot of work, but somewhat surprisingly, everything turned out yummy. I made 3 stuffed roast chickens, because I couldn’t find a turkey, Yam + Carrot Casserole, Garlic peas, literally enough mashed potatoes to feed an army, and lots of extra stuffing. For dessert, 4 pumpkin pies J. When I started planning to make thanksgiving dinner here, I thought that I’d be making food for 8 people or so, but because Brazilians like to invite friends and more friends, it turned out having about 20 people there. However, It’s a good thing that there were lots of people, cause I always end up making way too much food, and there was about half of everything leftover anyways. Everyone seemed to enjoy Canadian thanksgiving, but they missed having rice, because every lunch has rice here. Then, we ate the pumpkin pie, with whipped cream… and I think it was the best pumpkin pie I ever tasted, maybe because I had been craving it for so long, or maybe because cooking the pumpkin, pureeing it by hand, and making the pies took so long.

Renata's Sister and with one of the chickens

The meal

Family and Friends

Renata enjoying pumpkin pies!

After lunch, I played soccer with a host cousin (Junior). He is about 10 times better than me at soccer, but has only 8. He tried to teach me some fakes and things, which was really fun. He`s really good at teaching me things, and he likes to explain things, its nice cause he doesn’t care if he has to try 3 different ways of saying it to get me to understand.

Junior- my soccer coach

Wednesday, I learned a new game, which resembles cricket quite a bit. It involves 4 people, a tennis ball, two pop bottles with some water in them, and two pieces of wood. It’s hard to describe, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s usually played in the street, preferably one with little traffic.

Playing 'Bet'

Last night, I found a new sport that I love! Capoeira, as Wikipedia describes it is :

an Afro-Brazilian art form that combines elements of martial arts, music, and dance. It was created in Brazil by African slaves by mixing the many fighting styles from many of their tribes, sometime after the sixteenth century

If you look it up on youtube, you`ll see some good examples of video.

Anyways, the class starts with everyone running in a circle together, then stretching, and ab excercises. Then you do some basic moves, and after that, a couple people start playing instruments, tambourines and drums, and everyone and sings and claps in a circle, while two people `fight/play’ capoeira. It’s really fun to watch, and I picked up on some of the basics in the first class. It wasn’t too hard to understand the class, because mostly you just learn by example, and copy what other people do anyways. The class has people at every different level, so I didn’t even feel too out of place being there for the first time. I’m really excited to go again, but I have to wait until next Tuesday.

Anyways, Brazil is treating me really well, and I thoroughly enjoyed this last week off school, but won’t mind having school next week again.