Am I Corn or Kale?

I have no idea how to do this blog thing. I think it’s gonna take a while for either of us to get used to telling stories that are neither boring nor too revealing (my Brazilian friends don’t know about the blog yet, but in the event that they do develop an interest once I tell them about it, I better not say too much).
We might as well go ahead and admit that we’re not expert picture takers, both in terms of quality AND quantity. We’ll try to get better, I suppose.

Things we learned so far:

1) It is possible, yet not recommended, to make guacamole with rock-hard avocados. You may very well break wooden utensils in the process. Try mincing instead, and mix it with sour cream for an illusion of creaminess.

2) Mexico thinks Brazilians without visas are 2nd-class citizens. Instead of spending our 5-hour layover in Mexico City searching for authentic (albeit airport-y) Mexican food, my passport was taken away by Mexicana airlines employees and I was escorted to a room featuring: other 2nd-class citizens; bathrooms that did not encourage handwashing; bored airport security officers who played bootlegged DVDs on a large flat-screen TV (if you ever have a chance to watch “Amor y Frijoles”, do pass on it); and a nice, artsy mural that covered the walls, supposedly to give me and the other fellow non-American, -European foreigners a taste of Mexico without giving us the chance of leaving our holding tank.

3) If you can, go to the dentist more often than every couple of years (or not at all). On our second day in Brazil, I spent – no joke – 5 hours on a dentist chair playing catch up with my mouth. Sore back and numb mouth, we proceeded to a posh movie theater with equally uncomfortable chairs to watch “Avatar”. By the way;

4) “Avatar” was awesome. I know that’s probably old news to a good chunk of the world’s population, but we rest our case.

5) Don’t leave your sliding door open when it’s bound to storm.

6) Showers are tricky. It’s been 90-plus degrees in Sao Paulo since our arrival, and there’s been tropical torrential downpours every afternoon (last January was the rainiest month EVER in Sao Paulo, and many parts of the city have been almost perpetually flooded over the past 60 days). The humidity and oppressive heat have made showering more essential than ever. Tired as we were after 24 hours of traveling, we somehow missed the memo on the shower procedures around here (though my parents warned us that there is still a lot of work to be done before their new apartment is actually “finished”, that was not very apparent: the guest room they made available for us is way nicer than they had previously made it out to be! It is possible that they overlooked other parts of the house, as indicated by missing door handles, light fixtures, etc., but really, the apartment is awesome and we are very happy to be in a nice part of this huge city).
Here’s how it went: Marcelo turned on the water in the shower (there are four knobs so it is somewhat unclear which ones are the right ones in the first place); Norika, standing outside the shower, noticed water pouring from the broom closet. Upon further inspection it appeared that there was an open pipe hanging from the ceiling that seemed to have more water coming from it than the actual shower head. This would have been a good time to ask Marcelo’s parents what we were doing wrong, but instead we decided to take a quick shower and hope that the waterfall coming from the broom closet was not enough to actually flood the bathroom (there is a drain in the floor). Come to find out, the hot water in the apartment is not yet connected to the fixtures (hence the hanging pipe in the broom closet) and turning the “Q” knob only sends water into the broom closet and then onto the bathroom floor. Oops. So far this is the closest we’ve come to a “Meet the Parents” moment. Could have been much worse!

Other than that, we’ve been eating a lot. As expected, we’re averaging 4 to 5 meals a day, including tons of fruit, juices, sweets, and so on.

Oh, and Norika will soon be fluent in Portuguese 😉

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