Adventure back in Salvador, the 9th through the 17th

Starting with this post, I think I’ll start cutting the length more. It takes too much work to describe every little thing, plus you probably don’t care anyway. I’ll detail the best stuff, and the rest lives in my memory only.
Monday, 02-09-2009, was basically my first uneventful day. I cleaned, learned how to cook some dishes with Ana, and hung out doing crossword puzzles in Portuguese and watching Two and a Half Men with Mariana. I’m actually getting much better at the puzzles (called quebra-cabeças). My problem is not forming clear ideas in the language, it’s just that I have almost no vocabulary to work with. A year of studying would do me a LOT of good and I can probably be to a highly conversational level within one year if I want. [This is a note to myself as well as an observation for you readers. I need to see my motivation when I read over this the next time.] Nanda went to work in the morning, and in the evening, we went to her classes. Her friends all gave her a load of grief for “dragging me along” to something boring like college, but I of course found it interesting. Especially her first professor, Senhor Bernardo. This guy is a trial attorney, and a damn good one from what I hear, as well as a professor. His gaze shows how much he knows and how keen his wit is, but his expressions, animation and delivery of speech says that he’s a high school freshman in theater class! He’s extremely funny and had me riveted, even in a boring subject in a language I don’t speak. So that was fun. The next class was numbingly droll, but a unique experience anyway. I met Nanda’s classmate, Wagner, who is a charming goofy guy with a lisp and a great laugh, and we screwed around in class quite a bit. I felt sheepish, but they didn’t care. Afterward, we visited a bit, all went our ways, and Nanda and I went home to relax and sleep.
Tuesday, the Tenth, another uneventful day. Nanda worked, I wrote, finished the book “Fight Club,” which is as utterly enlightening as it is gruesome, I highly suggest you read it if you want a twisted but accurate look into the manic male mind, and hung out some more. Nanda’s boss, who is also her cousin Tila, was really riding her, so I laid low. I ran some work errands with her, then we attended class again, only these ones were different. We ate temaki afterward (gigantic sushi cones), then drove around and visited a bit. Then bedtime.
Wednesday, February 11th, I spent the morning fixing Nanda’s laptop, which is an ancient piece, but still has some years left in it. With little success, I worked out and ran around town with Mariana and Gisa doing various things and having lunch at Nanda’s dad’s house. That evening, while Nanã was at school, Murillo and I went to see the Benjamin Button movie. I’m a huge fan, and it was interesting to watch since it had Portuguese subtitles and the audience commentary was all in another language. I believe I was the only English-speaking native in the theater. We had intended to make an 8:20 showing, but Murillo is kind of a space cadet and he got us all turned around and lost. So we made a later showing at a mall next door. Afterward, Murillo and I had a reflective discussion about age and how age is a state of mind only. The actors in that movie made a great point of that, so Muro and I rapped for a while. Then he took me home and went to his place to get up early. Poor guy has class every day at 7:00 in the morning.
Thursday, February 12th. To offset the lack of activity from the day before, I had a super long day Thursday. After waking up quite early to walk to a corner store and buy that-morning-fresh mango and eat it, Nanda and I cleaned up and drove all over the place for her job. I was her chauffeur that day, so I got to butt heads (but not bumpers) with the stubborn maniacs on the road here. After two successful errands, Nanda told me to wait for her while she ran inside to deliver a Process Suit. She said if anybody needed me to move, I should just circle the block and come back to the same spot. Assuming this was easy, I moved when a huge truck behind me needed the road space to drive through. Nanda didn’t really explain that the downtown legal district is like a bowl of Angel Hair pasta with one-way roads and freeway onramps and stuff. So, following her advice to circle the block, I ended up driving way south on the freeway and having to double back and BS my way through traffic to get roughly to the same spot. All the street names sound the same to me, so I didn’t know exactly where to go to find her. And, of course she had her cell phone but I had none. So, I parked illegally and bought a phone card, then called her cell phone from memory. Thankfully, Bruna happened to be at the same Forum we were, so she and Nanda vectored their way over to me and got me un-lost. Whew. What a fiasco. After another two hours in the car, during which I had to do the same routine again (wait idling, move if someone comes, circle the block) a few times, successfully, we went to meet Nanda’s boss and cousin, Chila. Chila’s newborn baby daughter is named Manuela, so we all cooed over her for a while and I borrowed formal clothes from Chila’s husband for a dance we were planning to attend that night. We killed some time, then got dressed up (Nanda was very posh in her black dress with sparkly silver sandals) and picked up her friend Dalila and her boyfriend Nelio to go. The graduates of law schools here traditionally throw a massive celebratory party. Each graduate can invite up to 100 people, and there were 18 graduates at this party! It was thrown in an old water park (which closed down since nobody wants to pay for water activities when the ocean is a 20-minute drive away for free), so there were slides all over the place and the bandstand was at the deep end of a giant, empty wave pool. It was freakin’ sweet. Everything was free, to the guests anyway, and the food was banquet quality. Desserts, fried shrimp-and-cheese balls, quiche, smoked cheeses and deli meat, uhhh, cake, ice cream, fried hummus balls, all kinds of stuff. Oh, and every single corner within the place had a loaded wet bar with top-shelf booze and specialty shots. Everybody was drinking flaming shots, Stunned Mollets, Mai Thai Bingos (a MaiTai in a festively carved coconut), and caipirinhas. Since I didn’t have to drive, I indulged myself quite a bit. Then we danced for about two hours to a very famous and popular Bahia band called Via Circular and yakked for a while after that while we waited for our ride. Fernanda works with this character named Gustavo, who was busy hitting on a floozy from the office, so we had to wait a while for him to seal the deal and give us a ride. Gustavo drove us home, along with his new lady friend, Fabiana, and we drifted off at about 3:00 in the morning.
Luckily, there was no work for Nanda the next day, so she slept in a lot and I was up writing for a while in the morning. After lunch at Eduardo’s, Renata came over and we had a musical afternoon. Rena doesn’t play guitar, but loves to sit with it in her hands as a good prop, so I taught her some chords. She’s a great singer, so we sang some tunes together, then she and Nanda cracked me up by singing together. Later, we all split up and Nanda and I went to swim at her aunt’s apartments. Each coastline apartment building has a trolley directly from the Rec Room right down to the ocean, so we had a private little pier and cabana to ourselves. I have some pictures somewhere, I’ll try to post them. After watching the sun set on the ocean (something I’ll miss intensely when I go back to Reno), we made our way to a large outdoor amphitheater to buy tickets and watch a band/guy called Manu Chao. Apparently, he’s very famous here. He speaks Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and English, so I thought he’d be really great. However, I think he must be an idiot in all five languages. I’m not a fan at all of his music, although the show was really high energy and the trumpet player was great. We coincidentally met Milena’s boyfriend Artur there (I thought his name was Arto up until that night) and hung out with him for a while. After fighting our way out of the crowd and back to Nanda’s car, we decided that more live music was in order and met up at a place with a decent Beatles cover band with Bruna. Also there was Gigi, one of the girls that I originally met in Reno in the winter of 2006 with Fernanda, and her boyfriend Vicente (AKA Tio Vi), who is a riot. The band was decent, and it was nice to know the music that was being played for a change. Bruna arrived with her current “paquerinha,” or potential boyfriend, Edu, who is also very cool. He’s a doctor on Morro de São Paulo. When we were there, her most recent boyfriend before Edu, an idiot “bro” named, stupidly, Ubu, was also there, which incited Bruna and the rest of us to take tequila shots. Apparently, the most socially awkward situation is to be at a place with a current and a former boy or girlfriend. It’s better to be flatulent and obscene or to wet one’s pants than it is to have two lovers present at the same time. They even have a name for such an event, but I forget the name. Hours passed there while we hung out, and Edu knew the band so I was offered the chance to rock out with them. However, since I despise jam bands and much prefer well-rehearsed music, I politely declined and said I was enjoying them play as is. Finally, we went home and slept.
Saturday the fourteenth. We got up early and drove to the Villas to stay at the beach for two days at the house of the twins, Abdul, and Abdul’s son Tadeu. All three families have adjacent houses, which is totally sweet. Block parties are plentiful. I forgot entirely that it was Valentine’s Day since nobody celebrates it in Brazil, so I’m sorry in advance for all the special people in my life that I neglected to contact. The love is still there, of course. The whole afternoon, we partied at the twins’ friends house with a pool, live music, acarajé, and cocktails. For the first time on the trip, I went overboard on the booze and ended up passing out by the pool for a couple hours. Whoops. Still, we had lots of fun. That night, we went to the Three House block and I met Milena and Renata’s parents and younger sister, plus some other family friends and Nanda’s cousin’s son (and her godson), Caulí. He and I are goooood buddies now. He’s five, and his energy could power the state of Florida overnight if he had plugs in him. Then early to sleep.
Next day, we got up early and walked the two blocks to the sea and started swimming at high tide. I met Nanda’s uncle Tadeu at that point. He’s been deemed legally nuts by the state and is now a ward of his parents. He’s not stark-raving or anything, he just did a lot of LSD in the seventies and is basically a stoner and a musician. He plays guitar like Eddie Van Halen! Super good, real amazing bravado stuff like Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Joe Satriani, Santana, and speed metal. He hates Brazilian music because it’s all about dancing and is usually pretty mediocre and simple music except for the percussion. So, Nanda took her shift getting beat up by Caulí while I struggled to listen to Tio Tadeu. Even though he knew I couldn’t fully understand him, he didn’t care and just talked at normal speed about his love of music and pit bulls. He’s a big fat guy with crazy hair and crazier eyes, and he and I have a very good understanding. The simple life is the way to go. For a few hours, we roughhoused with Caulí in the surf until low tide came, then we used the snorkeling gear and looked around at the colorful fish and urchins in the tide pools there. We saw a bunch of jellyfish floating right near us, so it was prudent to get out. After cleaning up, Nanda, Renata and I went to meet Gigi, Vicente, Bruna and Lara (another one of the girls that originally went to Reno in 2006) at a crepe restaurant for dinner. Renata’s new interest, Gabriel, met us there after a little while. I wasn’t impressed, but who cares. We ate some really delicious food followed by the tastiest dessert I think I’ve ever eaten. Then, back to the houses to sleep.
Tio Tadeu had some stuff to do the next day, so he tagged along with us when Nanda and I left to get her work errands done. She got stuck in an office for about an hour, so he and I stood outside talking. Or rather, him talking a lot, me talking almost none at all but trying frantically to keep up. He’s nuts, but really funny. We made it to Eduardo’s for a delicious lunch a la Julia, then he rocked out on the guitar for me for a while. Then back to Lauro de Freitas, then home to nap. It was Bruna’s birthday that night, so we went to a party at her dad’s pizzeria. Ross and Ian were there along with four English friends of theirs and twenty of Bruna’s guests. Everything was delicious and free, even the plate of brigadeiro candy for dessert. Midway through dinner, it rained like a monsoon in Thailand so we relocated indoors. For Bruna’s birthday present, I gave her a photo of me in my suit with the caption on the back, “now you can tell all your friends that you’re friends with James Bond.”
Feb 17th. Tuesday mornings, Nanda has class, so I woke up and tried some catch-up on my blog posts. See how well it works? Then off to Shopping Barra, again, to buy myself a sunga (like short shorts for men, very handy and great for tan lines) with Murillo. Nanda had stuff to do all day for school and work, so he and I rented two guy movies, Hitman and Shoot ‘Em Up, and drank beer in our underwear for hours. Sweeet. Then, his mom and stepdad, Agenor, returned from a wild night on the town all dressed up. She was a bit tossed, so we had fun speaking Spanish together. She’s learning and has almost nobody with whom she can speak it, so we trudged through a conversation about children and morality. Interesting subject matter for two drunk people in a non-native language. Then, Nanda picked me up and we drove back home to watch some Futurama and crash.