Paolo's house

Yesterday I had lunch at my neighbor's house. Let me tell you a bit about Paolo:

- He's in his late 60s, but very youthful. He wore swim trunks to lunch yesterday.
- His home has 54 rooms, including eight bathrooms and a guest wing built into a turret.
- He makes designer handbags for a living and shows them at international fashion weeks.
- He is obsessed with Queen Elizabeth and got to meet her at a dinner in Buckingham palace (on Brasil's 500th anniversary [this confused me too, apparently the event celebrated the arrival of the Portuguese on the continent, not the actual date of independence], the country invited renowned artisans on a diplomatic/cultural tour of the world). Paolo also loves Whitney Houston.
- He was shot twice leaving his warehouse in Zona Norte five years ago, and after recuperating began to do all his designing from home. Three more of the 54 rooms are designated as purse workshops.
- He served us a traditional (and delicious) Brazilian meal with traditional Brazilian portions -- two HUGE scoops of rice with tomatoes, two tong-fuls of salad, and an enormous piece of chicken cooked in a red garlicky sauce. When Anna, who weighs maybe 100 pounds, cleaned her plate, Paolo asked her if she wanted more. When she refused, he asked "you did not like it?"
For sobremesa (dessert), we had a Brazilian pudding made from blended avocado, cream, and sugar. The avocados came from Paolo's backyard. After two cups of coffee to end the meal, I could barely move my stomach was so full. Luckily the great conversation (half in English, half in Portuguese) allowed us plenty of time to digest.

Arts and crafts

Took a ferry to one of Rio's 'burbs, Niteroi, Thursday to see their giant spaceship/contemporary art museum, designed by really cool architect Oscar Niemeyer. I'ma be real, the art inside was less than inspiring, but I spent the better part of an hour photographically exploring the exterior. (Now that I have that huge memory card, I can mindlessly take about 100 photographs of the same thing and not realize until they take 20 minutes to transfer to my computer.)

This piece was four blank pieces of notebook paper, framed and hung on the wall.

Niteroi also had some awesome beaches and this kid who works in a Thai restaurant and invited us back for free dinner next week. More pixx to come.

Guess who's coming to breakfast?

Came upstairs for coffee this morning and this lil' guy was noshing. Guess when your backyard's a patch of rainforest it's to be expected.

On fruits

Pop quiz: what food is this?


If you said 'tomato, duh' you are WRONG. As wrong as I was when I bought one last week and put it on my ham sandwich only to find out that it is in fact a persimmon (called caqui here). The inside is far more gushy, far less seedy, and very sweet. The tomato/persimmon mix-up was just the first lesson in my ongoing fruit education. During a given breakfast about 6-8 different kinds of fruit are presented in either solid, smoothie, or liquid form. I'm slowly developing an exotic-fruit palate. (Haven't had a banana in daaaaaays.)

I've learned that I really like goiaba (guava, yet another fruit the Milaca Supervalu doesn't / will never stock)
and that I really hate papaya (seriously spit it out the first time).

Carambola is deec, but involves waay too much work to find the worthwhile parts for eating.

Totally forgot until now you could cut it up into stars! Gonna be having too much fun at breakfast tomorrow.

Brazilians love sucos (juices) and the juice aisle of the supermarket can be incredibly overwhelming. I've made myself try both maracuja (passionfruit) and caju (cashew fruit? i know right?) but still love a good old carton of strawberry juice -- morango, in case you actually care about the italicized vocab lesson here.

Picked the grossest pic I could find



















Spending the summer at Camp Nectar


But my favorite Brazilian fruit is and forever will be

açaí, which, I'll be honest, is never this well-presented -- usually the sorbet that's synonymous with the fruit's name comes in a 300mL plastic cup. About R$2 and full of antioxidants. Perfeito.

Portuguese phrase of the day

tampao de ouvido: earplugs

Literally, tampons of the ear canal. That's what they call them.

Channeling TLC

Today I stood under this:
Tijuca National Park in Rio de Janeiro is the largest urban forest in the world; destroyed in the 19th century to create coffee farms, it was re-planted by a baller general named Manoel Archer (who sadly does not even have a Wikipedia page). Today I went with friends to the other side of town to do a lil' bit of hiking there. The going was a bit brutal at times -- it rained (hard) last night, making the ground incredibly slippery and every rock/vine foothold the muddiest. You can imagine my trepidation; remember how I'm the textbook opposite of coordinated/dexterous? Luckily though, among the five of us, we only had one fall -- poor Anna slid about 10 meters in a scene that could have been from a horror film (she was actually clawing at the earth to stop and later slowly rose out of the mud). She was a total trooper, though, and the at-times-utterly-terrifying hike also allowed us to see butterflies, monkeys, and scenic gems like these:


all without a single snake sighting!

Speaking of, happy St. Patrick's Day, y'all! I'm going to a pub crawl in Ipanema in the early afternoon to drink beers by the beach with one Irish girl, some Brits, and a Mexican. It all makes so much sense?

Too Much Light(ning)

Remember when I said that when it rains it pours in Argentina? Turns out it's true in Brazil too.

So I leave the house yesterday evening to walk to a church about 30 minutes down the road in my neighborhood of Santa Teresa. As I walk, faint overhead flashes and far-off rumbles of thunder begin to disquiet my evening stroll. As I look out over the [spectacular, unrelatedly] view of the city, I see dark clouds ploughing across the sky. Knowing some, but not quite enough, about how lighting/electricity works, I begin to feel sheer terror about walking next to metal tram tracks under sketchy power lines with an umbrella at one of the highest points in Rio de Janeiro. Having no idea how much farther I need to go, I stop under a tent where a woman dressed completely in white wearing a turban and a lot of jewelry sells some kind of banana-cakes to ask a young man directions to the street with the church. He tells me I'm only about five more minutes walk, and just as he finishes explaining how to get there, the sky opens up and it POURS. In the ensuing shitshow, I get completely drenched (even with my umbrella as a shield under the shelter), the turban woman's hot pan of banana-cakes gets knocked over, and about 6 passing motorbikes send huge waves of water up to splash everyone's faces. I move to a nearby bar to experience power outs 1 and 2 of the evening (5 total) before trying again to walk the last five minutes. My fear/the downpour are faaaaaaaaaaaaar too great, however, and I run back to the bar, where the owner invites me to "dry myself off" in the bathroom (aka pat down my head and exposed skin with paper towels, knowing that there's absolutely no point when I'm just going to have to go back out in it. I miss my car more than ever).

After 10 more minutes of watching the rua turn into a rio, I give up the goal of Mass (figuring God might understand) and look instead for a combi (Volkswagon van that's cheaper than a bus and functions as a large, multiperson, multistop taxi) to take me home. I don't have enough to pay him, however (I didn't take any money to church in fear of getting robbed on the walk), and get out promising to grab money from my house. Set on this goal, I run into the road through an enormous puddle of water and avoid by inches getting hit by a taxi with low visibility. The combi driver, perhaps taking pity on the drenched, frightened gringa, drives away without giving me an opportunity to pay.

Please watch this video to understand the magnitude of the rain -- it gets good at about 2:00, when the power goes out and the game gets delayed for 18 minutes while the field becomes a wading pool. So good.

Next time there's a storm, I'll try to take some pics/video from my house. Huge bolts of lightning are way more fun to watch epically illuminating Pao de Acucar and Cristo Redentor when one is safe and dry inside.