Friday, June 12, 2009

Day Quatro: Bug bites, trash and graffiti

The strange bug bite on my leg is finally healing; its strange lines were beginning to worry me. The rain today kept us inside. Nothing much was done other than working on our stories for class, which can be read below. It’s late and I’m tired, as is everyone else here. Today we walked to find some lunch, in which we finally ended up at Yyamada since it was the only thing open on this Brasilian holiday celebrating the last supper. Yyamada is like the Brasilian Wal-Mart: always open and always packed and full of cheap prices, such as the rubber sandals I bought today for six American dollars. (Probably would have cost me at least 15 in the states.)

While we walked I decided I did not want to fool my readers, family and friends with all of these pictures and descriptions of green foliage and beauty. Brasil is full of natural wonders, it is also filled with trash. Graffiti covers every wall (not that I am against it, graffiti does change the feel of any city). Trash piles are on every block and last night when walking home from the funky bar and restaurant, sewer rats roamed the streets and two-foot deep sewage drains on the sides of streets. When dropping down from the sidewalk to the street one must take extreme caution to not fall in these, as the green, egg-smelling water and sewer rats may have you in for a surprise once your foot reaches the bottom.
All of the puddles here generally have strange smells. It rains every day, even if only for a few minutes, but even then the streets become filled with water making washing the feet back at the hotel first priority.
The bar and restaurant we went to last night, Favela, was the “coolest” bar I’ve been to. Everything looked like it was made out of recycled materials (I don’t personally have any photos as I don’t like to take my camera with me when we go out at night). The lamp shades were made of cotton sweat pants and the wall from old televisions with multi-colored lights behind them. The menus were made from different scraps of fabric as well as the wallpaper.

We met our professor there at 7:30 and even after he left around 10 or so, we ended up ordering round after round until about 2, which was just when the Brasilians were starting to party. We left as the band was starting to play and people were starting to dance, but we started our party far to early to keep up with them. By the end of the night between 12 people we managed to rack up a bill of R$707, which is about $350 in American dollars. At first glance the price looked bad, but everything is about half of what it is in reals (sounds like rios). To Brasilians, however, this is obviousely not their mind-set, so we look like rich Americans coming through blowing the place out. Today when I went to Yyamada the cashier asked me how many installments I would like to make since it was a purchase over one hundred reals. I couldn’t believe that a retail store would have this option as this would never be the case in the states.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hits