Well, the first thing I learned is that it's official - it is COMPLETELY impossible to travel easily in this country.
Arthur and I wanted to try to get the earliest bus possible after classes Thursday late-afternoon, in order to hopefully get to Pamela's early enough to go out Thursday night. I had class until later (2:30), so I booked it home, threw stuff in a backpack and got down to the corner, to wait for Arthur. Arthur's friend Rafael had offered to give us a ride to the bus station, and said he'd be ready to go whenever we were. So I hauled ass and got myself ready by about 3:15.... and Rafael and Arthur got there by 5:30.
Lesson 1 - the double-edged sword of Brazilians doing you favors: they'll do it... but they'll do it in "Brazilian Time" (ie. whenever they damn well feel like it).
Ok, so we get to the bus station at 6ish... 6 hour bus ride and we'll be there by midnight. Not too bad, right?
Wrong.
Well, Arthur neglected to mention that Pamela doesn't actually live in the city of Sao Paulo - she actually lives another 1.5-hour bus ride South, in a town called Americana (woo!). Greeeeat.
So we get to the bus station in Sao Paulo at around 1am, and Arthur assures me that Pamela had assured him that buses run from Sao Paulo to Americana all night.
Wrong.
"I'm sorry, the next bus isn't until 4:30am."
Daniel gives Arthur a look signifying something along the lines of 'I'm going to eat your first born child'
Fortunately, Arthur's able to get ahold of another friend who lives in the actual city, and she agrees to take pity on us and put us up for the night. Of course the metro was also closed until the morning, so we took a cab to our savior's apartment and crashed for the night.
In the morning we got ourselves (via metro) back to the bus station and to Americana by about noon. Finally.
Pamela and Nina (her German roommate) were awesome enough to have cooked a HUGE lunch to welcome us, so that entertained us for a good couple hours, and then we set about wasting time until night fell. I actually had a paper for my International Relations class due on Thursday (yesterday), so I tried to get some work done on that... but mostly just enjoyed the uniqueness of having reliable, fast wireless internet.
That night, Arthur, Pamela and I met up with a couple of Pamela's friends, Tammy and Leo, and headed to some delightfully euro-trashy club called something ridiculous like "Ziff". Everyone had fun until the whee hours of the morning. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I'll have to try to get pictures from Arthur.
Saturday morning (probably early afternoon, actually), we headed off from Pamela's apartment to her parents' house in... some other suburban city that's something like Vinhede (something related to "vinho" - wine). We dropped our stuff off, took quick showers and then got in the car with her parents on our way to the city of Sao Paulo to Pamela's grandmother's house. (Bringing 3 unknown friends of your daughter to your mom's house: brave) Grandma & grandpa treated us (and what seemed to be practically the entire extended family) to a fantastic (and huge, once again) lunch. Daniel has difficulty standing afterwards, much less making polite conversation.
We head back to Wine-town to Pamela's parents' house (where we'd spend the rest of the long weekend) and have some nice down time (everyone else naps and I have to work on this paper. Lame.). We had planned on going out again this night, but no one was feeling quite up to it. So instead we (Arthur, me, Leo, Pamela & her parents) hung out at home and ate fondue (ugh... more eating) and drank wine and chatted for several hours. Pamela's parents are great and made us feel very welcome. We spent a lot of the weekend talking about languages - differences between Portuguese, German and English; observations on each others' respective native languages or on our own. I spent about 45 minutes trying to figure out how to define "cheesy" to Pamela and her parents... it's a surprisingly difficult word to explain!
Sunday, a friend of Pamela's was having a churrasca (Brazilian barbecue), so, once again: big lunch. We hung out and got to see how fun happens in the Brazilian countryside. Basically: roast meat, drink beer, eat meat, play cards, drink beer, eat meat. Sound familiar? I spent a good half hour trying to understand the card game they all were (very animatedly) playing... to no avail. So instead, we started doing acrobatics on the "soccer field" (see pictures). When all else fails: start climbing on each other.
Sunday evening we met up with some more of Pamela's friends at... wait for it... TGI Friday's. I'm not joking. It was almost painful. Overly-enthusiastic waiters with as many stupid pins as they could attach to their stupid suspenders over their stupid red-and-white-striped shirts... and everything. The menu was even designed as "Take a road trip around America!" I was tempted to try their interpretation of a Philly Cheesesteak, but I (thankfully) resisted.
We had enough fun at TGI Fridays (which was even located in a very American-style mall), so decided to head back to the parents' house. Once back in the general area, we all agreed it was too early to go to bed, so instead headed uphill to a really high point in the neighborhood which had a great view and commenced a lively game of King's Cup - a game which I will not describe here.
We had planned to spend the entirety of monday in the actual city of Sao Paulo, but by the time everyone got up and breakfasted and showered, it was well into the early afternoon. We got to Sao Paulo, had some ice cream, wandered around, and then made our way over to an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant to meet up with a bunch more of Pamela and Arthurs' friends. I ate an absurd amount of sushi... for US$15! Man I love this country. By the time we left the restaurant it was about midnight (we ate dinner for a solid 3.5 hours!), so we head straight over to a club where Leo was meeting us (he had gone to have dinner with his family). After waiting in line there for about an hour and a half, we all decided that we didn't actually have that much interest in being there... so we ventured off to some other bar which had a live band playing Bahian-style Carnaval music - all very cheesy (!) but a lot of fun. Home by about 6:00am.
Tuesday, Pamela's mom decided to make us feijoada (THE traditional Brazilian meal: beans with meat, collared greens, friend manioc flour and orange), which was delicious. I spent most of the rest of the day working on my paper, with random Brazilians coming in to look over my shoulder and correct my horrible Portuguese. By this time in the long weekend, Arthur had generously spread the ugly cold he had brought with him to EVERYONE else (thank you SO much for the headache I still have, Arthur), so we were all pretty much a big ball of excitement and activity. Arthur and I decided we'd just take an overnight bus back (straight to Rio, no stop in the city of Sao Paulo this time)... which turned out to be a horrible idea. I got back to my apartment in Rio at about 8:00am on Wednesday feeling like I'd had about a 30 minute nap's worth of sleep. Well, suffice to say I only made it out of the apartment once all day: to go buy a toothbrush to replace the one I'd forgotten at Pamela's apartment.
And that was that! Finally got the paper done ("gave up" may be the more appropriate verb) and got a good amount of sleep Wednesday night... not that it helped, 'cause I still feel terrible!
It was really nice getting to hang out in a Brazilian home for a weekend. Other than where I live, I'd never been in a Brazilian family's home before, and it was very warm and welcoming and relaxing. So thank you very much, Pamela & your parents!
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| Sao Paulo (well, the suburbs at least) |
My pictures from the weekend are pretty selective - as far as when I remembered to bring my camera along. I'll try to get ahold of Arthur's pictures sometime in the near future!
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