Amazonian Soups

Yesterday we made plans with Prof Mello (the Brazilian guy who also thinks Brazil is the most backward place in the world) to go to eat at a restaurant by a place called Santa Teresa. Supposedly this is very close to three different favellas. He said that we might be able to go see them. We were instructed not to bring anything with us when we went there. Just the bare minimum, no bags, whatever I can fit in my pocket. It is about an hour walk from downtown. This is very exciting. I will keep you posted on how it went come Tuesday's blog entry.

For dinner I warmed up a frozen block of leftover beans under the aegis of Doña Teresa. We chatted a little in very crude Portuguese and I learned she was going to a Gospel meeting thing that night. Upon learning this I had her listen to a couple gospel tunes I had to sing in high school Lincoln Park Singers choir. Pretty fun stuff, she seemed to like it, it's nice to connect in different languages. She has a very good voice and is always whistling a cool tune.

Following my rather large amount of food-coma inducing feijoada (the national dish of Brazil-pork&black bean stew served with rice), we went out to eat at the kilo shop and the most I could bring my self to have was a Guaraná soft drink- very popular here. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guarana )

Immediately following dinner Dan and I went shopping to try to find a soccer ball for the beach. The cheapest thing we could get was for 40 reais (~ $24). Instead, daunted by the soccer ball task, we found a mall which had about 7 different hair salons all very close to each other.
Dan, Richard and I will go back today and get our hair cuts, Brazilian style.
Richards seems very eager to do this... :-) ( I suspect he wants to look nice for the birthday party we are invited to tonight; he might have a crush on Paula, a depressed Brazilian anglophone who's only desire is to go back to the states because she hates it here. She's a funny one...)

I hung out with Ana Luisa for the first time again. She's aight. Kind of a bourgeois version of a Brazilian though. She says that she lived in Dubai for a year when she was 16. Her mom was doing some research there for oil production or something like this. I don't reall believe her though. Plus when I met her she said she was 27 and yesterday she said she's only 26. But after all, as prof mello said (with his funny Brazilian accent) "in Rio everyone is 29! It's insulting if you say you are 21!" another funny thing he said was "in Brazil, noone goes to prison" (sorry, I'm not at liberty to include the context).
So I guess age doesn't matter at all here but still, she's maybe a little close-minded. It's just an impression I get. I might be totally off... Anyway, not the best night out, I don't think I will see her again.

In anycase, I'm looking forward to this weekend at the beach!