A little comic relief...

A couple of funny stories:
Swimwear:
So I figured if I am going to be in Brazil I have to buy a swimsuit here. However, the challenge was to find something that would actually be socially acceptable to wear in the US as well. Megan and Molly went with me and the lady that helped me didn't speak English of course...sooo after trying on several she noticed I kept going back to the racks and she look at me kind of asking what was wrong with the ones I tried on...and finally she just said "pequinha?" (meaning small haha) and I just started laughing and saying "Sim! Muito pequinha!" (Yes! Very Small!...as in...I am an Americana and I have too many tan lines to be abe to pull off your barely-there Brazilian swimwear!) So she kept throwing suits into the dressing room for me and finally found one that I could actually wear somewhere other than Rio haha. Good enough. "Que Legal!" (That's cool) she assured me....SUCCESS.

Doug:
Since I am on the topic of being scantily clad, allow me to tell you about an interesting middle-of-the-night moment a member of our group had. Doug, a thirty-something master teacher was trying to sleep in his second floor apartment on a Friday night in Copacabana when he heard some loud ramblings outside. Probably just a bar fight, right? WRONG. Rather, when he went to his window he was a little surprised (although I'm not sure why...it's Rio) to see a woman, completely naked standing in the middle of the street yelling a lot of crazy things. Actually, it's really not a laughing matter because she was obviousl on something, but in hindsight it is kind of funny because.....the next thing he knew some guy came out of one of the stores with a bucket of water and just threw it in order to try and snap her out of it. Yeah. That happened. Weird story I know, but things like that definitely don't happen everyday, and needless to say Doug had some trouble sleeping after that. haha.

Churros!:
So Dmitri and I have been trying since after dinner last Tuesday to find churros for dessert. If you don't know what a churro is you are really missing out. They are cylindrical pieces of TASTY dough fried and dipped in cinammon-sugar. The best one I have ever had was on the Santa Monica pier...but here you can get them with FILLING...either dolce de lece (like a caramel), chocolate (pronounced "show-ko-lah-tchee" in Rio>) or coconut. So clearly this is why we are dying to have one. We see the vendors on the streets everywhere we go and they are selling these (along with other amazing treats like corn in the husk, tapiocas of all sorts, kettle corn and guarana) but after dinner when we want it we can never find it! So D and I walked up and down the patterned sidewalks of Copacabana beach after our dinner the other night and of course there was only one vendor on the whole stinkin beach and he was selling CORN! Arghhhh. I think one day when I am pregnant churros will surely be what I crave. So we will continue our search to find a churro man at the time of night when he is really of essence. I will keep you posted on my (hopeful) successes.

Babies:
Well the streak of cute Brazilian baby/kid sightings continues. Sheesh. They are everywhere. One in particular today was waking hand-in-hand with who I am assuming was his dad....and he just kept staring as he walked so his dad stopped and kept saying something to him while I smiled at the little tot (and did everything in my power to resist the temptation to take him...hahaha) and then finally the kid just takes his hand and blows me a huge kiss. Uhhhhh, pretty much the most adorable thing I have ever seen.

HEXA!:
Well we had to wake up early to get ready and walk down to Ipanema to get a seat at place to watch the Brazil v. Portugal game. This is a huge rivalry, for obvious reasons. So we paid our cover charge to get into the restuarant which was utterly decked out in green, yellow, and soccer garb. There was a live band playing and surprisingly enough our waiter spoke a little Engligh and they had pretty standard American fare. But anyways in addition to the rowdy fans and good music perhaps the best part of this outing was that they passed out cards to everyone where you predicted 5 things about the game before it began and for everyone you got right they would give you a free chopp (draft beer.) And whaddya know part of the way through the first half Fabiano gets the first card of the game and I win! Yeah. I know my Brazilian soccer. What can I say.... :) Hexa!!!

Lapa:
So Rio nightlife is something everyone should experience in their life. In a part of the city known as Lapa you can find everything from samba (which we did last week), to jazz, to bossa nova, to baile funk (which we did this week.) I will spare the blog the details of nights out in Rio and if you are interested in hearing them just let me know. The music here is absolutely fantastic though and you can't help but enjoy yourself. Oh Brazil....

FIFA:
So we went to watch the US v. Ghana game at the FIFA Fan Fest venue on the beach. This is truely an experience because you get to watch soccer on a ginormous screen while laying in the sand and being surrounded by tons of other fans (really the only place you can go in Rio and find this many people speaking English.) So the tv station that is covering the World Cup in Rio comes over to us and the guy is being all excited in Portuguese and sits down next to us and interviews us. We know he is saying something about us being "bonita" and being "Americanas." So we threw out a few words we knew and then I just finished by chanting USA! USA! into the camera. So hopefully I will be on tv in Rio next week wearing my true colors! It's funny though we never know if people are making fun of us so we asked some guys in front of us who spoke English and Portuguese and he assured us that they weren't. There were an awful lot of Ghana fans who didn't look Ghanaian though.... Grrrrr. Good game boys. Oh and also, now we can't stop imitating the way that Portuguese-speakers say the name of our opponent....."Estados Unidos e Guuuuuuh-nuhhh"!


One last thing...I am sampling so many good desserts here in Brazil. I had no idea they were known for such amazing sweets. And my fridge officially smells of goiba...a delicious new fruit that I now love eating for breakfast.