day 3 - rio de janeiro

additional ethnographic observations:
5) brazillian people do not sleep.
6) brazillian people do not care so much about noise.
7) brazillian people are not strict on time.
8) brazillian people eat really late, if at all. (is this what gisele bundchen does?)

kavitha and i found this out in somewhat of the hard way yesterday. after spending the morning at corcovado mountain and eating our stolen sandwiches, we came back to the hostel, showered, and waited an hour and a half for my friend camilla to show up.

when she did, we took a really lengthy bus to centro for a free bossa nova concert in a square (similar to a free concert in nathan phillips square in toronto). i don~t think we saw one non-brazillian there, but we DID see one asian! WOOOOT! i think the asian count is up to around 6 now. sweet. brown people count = 0. (except for the one that may have been at the GOL airport counter. but he was more west indian.)

anyway, the concert was fun, we met up with camilla~s friends, who at this moment i can~t remember the names of, but they were all musicians and in a bossa nova/samba band together. and, they were selling beers at the concert (skol and antarctic brand, the latter of which had penguins as their logo)

afterwards, we went to a bar in centro, and wandered through some back alleyways of the buildings which were really neat - they were very historic and all of the alleys were filled with tables and tables of people drinking and eating. definitely not something we would have done if camilla wasn~t around. kavitha and i were itching to take our cameras out to take pictures, but didn~t want to be mugged. DOH!

after that, we met up with a couple of camilla~s friends at a little patio/restaurant/bar, and learned a couple of important phrases:

a) CHOPP! (with pointed finger into the sky) - the short form for ordering a beer.
b) BOLHA! - bullshit! said in an endearing fashion.

her friends were quite a hoot, even though kavitha and i were kind of lost/out of it for about half of the time between the multiple conversations and yelling and photo taking and chopp drinking and us being ravenous.

on a very unrelated note - the day we got to sao paulo, there was a 5.0 richter scale earthquake, the first since 1948. and the day we got to rio there were some intense waves (which the brazillians called a tsunami) that were 4-5m high (that didn~t sound so high to me). apparently we are bad luck to this country! oy.

after that bar, we walked over to lapa, the big party area of rio. we had dinner at cafe guanabara, which included this GYNORMOUS appetizer of what appeared to be brazillian tater tots, carne seca (dried meat?), and what appeared to be deep fried couscous. it was yummy, albeit a bit heavy. and a pizza, which i unfortunately was unable to partake in due to the cheese factor, but kavitha said was good (accompanied by a thumb up). in the restaurant, there were lots of backless shirts, and odd couples (i.e. really young women in their teens and old men about 40, 50 years of age) and people wearing costumes (harry potter, batman, wonder woman, minnie mouse, a bee). very curious scene. on the street there were people doing capoeira (a brazillian martial art that is somewhat like dancing).

and, after that, (by this time, it was about 1AM) we were pooped, but the brazillians insisted on continuing the evening. our feet were exhausted too (even ballet slippers and flip flops lose their comfort over 8 hours). we went briefly to a bar/club called the hole of the mouse (?) and left because it was too crazy. and then after that, everyone wanted to go to a snooker bar, and me and kavitha were ready to posse out. when we did, we had to get a cab to go home, and kavitha was not feeling so hot! (ps. on a thomas parental note, kavitha is now feeling much better after getting some rest) it took us about 10 minutes to inch out of lapa (of course, there were people outside the window that were like ^CHINA!^ and slanting their eyes upwards. i love travelling. :S

we finally got home, hit the hay, but in the middle of the night our roommates came back, and turned on all the lights. then two people were having a conversation. and then one new guy was snorey mcsnorerson! all 7 of us wanted to asphyxiate him with a pillow. :@

so needless to say, we woke up this morning, and are going to hit the beach. later on today, we will head to the favelas with camilla and her boyfriend~s NGO group. should be interesting! until then!!