Andy Barr's Blog

So this morning, I got to Rio de Janeiro at 6:30 am after leaving from São Paulo at midnight.

The first two things I saw here that I thought would represent Rio de Janeiro were two policemen with huge machine guns at one of the roadside bus stops, and a dude with shaved legs and booty shorts outside the bus-station. hahaha so far though, the city has been different.

I got to the Rodoviaria and Marily and her husband were there waiting for me with a sign that had my name on it. I felt really bad because my bus driver took a 40 minute break instead of the planned 20 so we ended up arriving late.

In my tired state I some how managed though to speak a little Portuguese with them and we were off to the house. Instantly I was impressed with how beautiful Rio de Janeiro was. Unlike São Paulo where all you can see from the city is endless buildings, Rio is surrounded by all these dramatic hills and there was a really cool fog in the morning.

We get to the house and then it is time for shopping. Marily and I head out to the feira (open air market) just as it was starting and bought a TON of fruit, including figs, pinha, watermelon, and tangerines. We then head back to the house, have a little breakfast, and then I decided it would be best to take a little nap.

40 minutes later, I am up again, and Felipe, George, and Felipe´s girlfriend are wanting to head to the beach. That was perfect for me, so I got on my swimsuit and in 5 minutes we were off to Copacabana. Even the road to get to Copacabana was really neat, passing under some of the morros (hills) in these really cool tunnels. We get there and park easily and make our way to the beach with our umbrella, Frisbee, and one towel. Copacabana wasn’t really crowded but we decided to go to Ipanema so we walked over there. We got a good spot since it was also not very crowded (it is winter here!) and set up the umbrella. The sun was hot against your back, but not like an intense summer heat in Washington.

The sand was cool to the touch and I knew that the water would be freezing cold. Well, it was but it was very nice. like it felt ice cold but as soon as you got in it was nice. The waves were nice and big and the current surprisingly strong. I stayed in the water for a little, climbed on the big rock next to the beach. All in all, it was a very nice relaxing time.

There were many beautiful people on the beach, many wearing scandalously small bikinis. Unfortunately, there were also some very big woman on the beach who were also wearing very small bikinis. We then grabbed some cuzcuz, a tapioca-like thing with coconut and sweetened condensed milk, and headed home. We passed the big Maracanã stadium, the biggest soccer stadium in the world. At times it has held well over 100,000 people. As we were looking at it, our car gets pulled over by the cops. This was my first time being in a car that got pulled over in Brazil so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I certainly was surprised when two cops, one carrying a pistol and the other with a machine gun, walk up to the driver door, guns drawn, to talk to Felipe! As soon as they see him in his little tiny Speedo, they lowered their guns and gave him a warning for forgetting to turn signal. I didn’t realize forgetting to signal was such a big deal in Brazil! Anyways, after that we came home, ate a nice lunch of rice, beans, and farofa, and now I am here writing this email.

Ok so the majority of the days this week in São Paulo were pretty low key. I would go exploring in the morning, run some errands in the day, and then take it easy at night.

I finally learned how to use the metro so that helped me expand my radius big time. I also finally learned how to pronounce “anhangabaú” (ahn-yan-gah-bah-ooo) which is the name of the station so that helped a lot. So I spent a lot of time “zanzando” (wandering) about the city and it was pretty cool.

For instance, one day I got to this section of the city near the Parque das Aguas Brancas (White Water Park) and there were all these really cool Western stores. Yes like American Western stores with cowboy stuff. I went into one and was looking at a serious horse whip. A really attractive woman came up to me and asked if I needed any help. I told her I was looking for things to help with my piano students and that the horse whip would be perfect! She made such a funny face it was hilarious.

I also got to visit the Memorial da America Latina. Like every other cool public monument, it was all done by Oscar Niemayer. It wasn’t just one building but rather a bunch of buildings.

I spent a lot of time at the library. They had this cool book about the history of all the different Brazilian first and last names. Then I went to this cultural center that had things from all over Latin America. It was a really cool place and was a very nice thing for the Brazilian government to create.

I also got the chance to explore thoroughly the Avenida Paulista and Faria Lima. Those are the two most famous streets in São Paulo. Both of them are super-modern, full of really cool skyscrapers. I ran all the way up and down Paulista for a morning workout and explored Faria Lima at a more leisurely pace. I went inside the Shopping Iguatemi at Paulista and man was I surprised. It had all the most expensive American stores and other very original, but expensive, Brazilian brands.

I also had the chance to explore the famous Liberdade bairro in São Paulo. That is the famous Japanese district. I went around, had some Japanese deserts, talked with some people, and then visited the Museum of Japanese Immigration. That was one of my favorite that I have been to so far. It was less than 5 reais and was super interesting. I stayed there for a long time and had a great time talking with two Japanese guys for a while.

I also had a chance to visit the Palacio Ipiranga, where the famous Dom Pedro lived I believe. It was a humongous palace full of interesting artifacts from colonial Brazil.

I have been surprisingly resilient to stomach pains. I went to a buteco (cheap restaurant/cantina) one night and ordered a really cheap and questionable feijoada. The place looked decent enough but after I ordered all these unique people came in, including a group of very obvious trannies. Of course, like two sat at my table and started talking to me, and since my food hadn´t arrived yet, I didn´t mind. They were really funny and gave me hair advice as my food arrived and stayed at my table as I ate.

I also went to do Videoke (karaoke) one night with Ricardo, Rodrigo, Priscilla, and Rodrigo and Ricardo’s dates. As weird as I thought it would be, it was surprisingly fun. The skill level of the singing (except for Ricardo and Priscilla) was generally pretty low which I think made it fun. My first song was Red Hot Chilli Pepper´s “Under the Bridge”, which everyone liked because I would pronounce things right hahaha. Actually the best English pronounciation I heard from Brazilians was at the Karaoke, and some, you couldn’t even tell they were foreigners until there was an uncommon word that would get pronounced funny. I got to disco it up with “I was made for loving you” by KISS which many of the older people there liked, and then I finished off with “Holiday” by Green Day.

On my last day, I finally got a chance to get to the famed Mercado Municipal of São Paulo. Oh my goodness, there were so many interesting and tasty-looking foods. Handcrafted pastas, sausages, all sorts of snacks, literally everything that you could think of. I made sure to get a mortadella sandwich, ordering one topped with sun-dried tomatoes for 10 reais ($5.50). I wanted to explore everything so I kept that for later. I also saw that the Pastel de Bacalhau (fish pastel) was really popular so I decided to try one. I thought they were a little expensive at 9 reais but I wanted to try it anyway. Well, it comes and it is at least two and a half times larger than I expected, and since that is the kind of thing you eat hot, I ate that and saved the sandwich for later.

I then went around looking for some exotic fruits from the jungle. I found tons of really interesting things like Jacá, graviola, a few kinds of caqui (persimmons), sapoti, and many things I don’t remember the name of. I ended up buying a tamarilho, mini-caqui, noni, and jatobá to try. The tamarilho was like a really sour tomato that was also slightly sweet. The mini caquis were just like normal caqui. The noni tasted and felt like I was eating a piece of wood. And the jatobám, after struggling to get it open, was a really smelly but tasty powder. It was all a bunch of fun but unfortunately ended in a crippling stomach-ache.

From there, I slowly made my way back to Republica on foot, asking people for directions and getting back in about an hour and a half. I passed through the crazy 25 de Março, which I had seen before, but on a Friday it was at least 3 times more crazy. I snapped a few pictures when I was standing near police. I don’t think I have ever seen so many people in a place at once. It was really incredible. From there, I passed the woman who I had been going to for espetinhos (meat on a stick) every day, and she had bought me some liquid pepper extract! That was some of the hottest stuff i have ever tasted and I knew my dad would love it so I am bringing it back for him.

a bunch of fruit I bought for less than 5 dollars

a crack house that the police raided with machine guns! (happened before I got there)

Part of the Memorial da America Latina

I got picked up around 1 by Ricardo, got situated here, chatted with Priscilla and Peterson, and then I went to a church event on education. After that, I got home, had some coixinha, and then got to bed. I quickly learned that some of the words I learned while with the college guys in Brasilia had no place in polite Portuguese and actually were kind of very bad words. But, luckily I now know which words not to repeat and won’t make the same mistakes again. I was also very happy to hear that my Portuguese had gotten much better.

Saturday morning, we went to Corál, the open market in Brasilia, with Valeria and Marco. It was one of the coolest things I had seen in Brasil. Just tons of all these exotic jungle fruits everywhere. For example, Jaca is a humongous fruit that is literally a few feet long and probably weighs well over 20 pounds. If there was something that Ramses and I didn’t know about, she would buy and we would eat it later. So, if you could imagine, there were quite a lot of fruits we tried, including jaboticaba and carambola.

We also tried this corn dessert, whose name I have forgotten. It was like a puree of corn and milk, topped with cinnamon. I definitely want to learn to make that. Anyways, afterward, we stopped to buy my ticket, and then it was lunch time. Ramses and I learned how to make Valeria’s famous farofa and i will be definitely making much of it when I return to the US.

After that, we went back to Ramses’ place for a few hours, played Frisbee, said bye to the friends I had made, hurt my knee bad from tackling Ramses, and then we were picked up to go back to Valeria and Marco’s place. They had ordered a pizza (even though Ramses and I were by no means hungry) but it was really really delayed. Eventually Valeria just gave me food, and when the pizza-man came, Marco sent him away and told him to take back his pizza. He said if Brazilian people did not stand up to those kind of delays, they would never end, so the pizza-man was sent back with his delivery undelivered. Anyways, we then had to haul to the bus station and I made it there, got on and then was off on my 13 hour bus trip to São Paulo.

Well, Friday is the day the lab goes to a “special” place so we went to something like a surf restaurant. Really good burgers and I had some good fruit juices (including Cacau again).

While we were there, Ramses tried out word in Portuguese that is not really that strong in English (at least in the expression he was trying to translate) but strong enough in Portuguese that it made everyone at the table and all the girls at the table next to us look over uncomfortably. From that experience I now know that under no circumstances should I use a certain word that starts with b in Portuguese! hahaha

After that, it was back to the lab for more work and then StarCraft. I ditched the game a little early to watch a few dance lessons on Youtube and then it was off to Caribeño to do some dancing. Ramses and Enrique (who everyone calls Gaguinho even though he doesn’t have Gago (stutter)) stayed behind in the lab to StarCraft. I went out with Ramses’ friend Aline and her brother. Luckily, my dancing skills had improved a lot and I was on fire with the merengue, forró, and salsa! It was very good. I met a lot of girls and had a lot of fun.

Well, we didn’t get diarrhea! So we went back to the churrasco place again. It was just as good the second time around.

After that, it was back to the lab, study a few hours, then starcraft till like 10 pm.

I remember Wednesday being a day we got up late because we stayed up late the night before, hanging out with one of Ramses’ lady friends, Andreas (the German guy in the apartment), and Charlie (the French Guianen).

Well, we got picked up to go straight to lunch and decided to try out a cheap churrasqueria. Like really cheap. It was only 10 reais (5 dollars). For that reason, we were convinced we may have been eating dog or something that wasn’t really picanha (the best meat). Luckily, it tasted really good and even the Coracão de Frango (chicken hearts) were all good. Even the deserts were great, and I got to try out this very cinnamoned milk. Anyways, we were praying we did not get diarrhea and if not, we had found the deal of the century.

Well, it turned out that Ramses and I had forgot about a dinner arrangement we had made with Marco and Valeria. So we went over there, had a good dinner, and then spent some time listening to music with Marco.

Tuesday I went out with the lovely Fernanda and her cousin and sister. Fernanda is a much older girl I met while dancing Forró. We got along very well and hopefully she will come visit us in the US someday (or more likely I will go again to Brasil).

We all went to a park with a lot of pools and hot springs. We didnt go swimming though, and mostly just walked through the forest. It was super cool. I even got to see some monkeys in the trees!

Anyways, we then went to the center, had some lunch (I tried Moqueca from Bahia), went to a shopping, and then I got back to Ramses’ place. After a few hours it was back to StarCraft once again.

After lunch, I got dropped off in the center of the city and got to see all the cool government buildings. Any important building in the city was designed by Oscar Niemayer, the very famous Brazilian architect who designed the Olho in Curitiba and the Memorial da America Latina in São Paulo. All the architecture was really cool and it really lived up to it being the city of the future.

From the Tres Poderes Praza (where the three branches of the government are located), I continued down the main road, seeing the huge cathedral (unfortunately closed for renovation) and all the government ministries. I got all the way to the end of their and ended up near the Rodoviaria (bus center) and a shopping. I went in the shopping for a little bit but wasn’t really in the mood for buying anything, so I decided to go back to the Rodoviaria. The Rodoviaria in Brasilia was a crazy place, packed with tons of people running to dozens of different buses. I tried to buy a Pastel at a little store their but as I pulled out my 2 reais to pay, like 4 dudes where next to me asking me to buy them a Pastel too. I had to tell them kind of harshly to go away and instead of buying myself a pastel I just left. But, it was all good because on the other floor, I got to try the juice of the Cacau fruit (yes the one that we get chocolate from!). It was a sweet white juice with a very unique taste that isn’t anything like chocolate. Anyways, I decided it was time to go back since it was getting dark, found my bus among the dozens of buses, each of which had lines of at least 80-100 people waiting to get on. Well, after that it was StarCraft and then Subway.