Excess Baggage
13 July 2005 (Wednesday) – Recife, Brazil
I originally thought that I would send some stuff, mainly my beach gear and summer wear, back home from Fortaleza as from that place onwards, my clothing needs would be very different. But with the excessive shopping done at the Vifenne Art exhibition of world crafts the other day, I would have to post my things back from Recife. I spent the entire morning emptying out my bag and sorting through the rubble to decide which items got to go home now.
Katharina was amazed at what I was carrying. “Why do you have a Chinese dictionary in your backpack?”, she asked. “Just in case someone asks me for their name in Chinese and it will be very embarrassing for me, as most of the time, I do not know how to write the words…”.
I told her I was carrying 4 books as well. “You are carrying FOUR books?? Why???” “To read, of course! I come all the way to South America because it is a nice place to read books!” I had just finished Umberto Eco yesterday, so bye-bye to that.
At the start of my trip, I had 30 pairs of chopsticks from Thailand… to give them as souvenirs to my hosts. So far, I had offloaded 5 and I gave Katha 1 pair. Yes, now my backpack feels so much lighter.
We headed to Mercado São Jose on the way to the post office, as she wanted to show me the ‘real’ market that the locals go to. Bad bad idea to go to yet another market. I, who had been swearing, “No more shopping, no more shopping…” ended up buying two items there because I was sending home some stuff today, anyway. Oh meu deus!!
At the post office, the entire state of Pernambuco had apparently run out of stock of the largest postal box. They gave us a box that looked only enough for half of my stuff, but somehow or other, we managed to s-q-u-e-e-z-e nearly everything in there. Wooo… really expensive day today. No more shopping, I swear!!!
Tags: 03) The Land of the Spirits, Recife
swesn