Adventures of a Gringa

Bye Bye Bush Party

It's Obama week here at Rio Gringa.

I'm hosting a party tonight at Shenanigan's in Ipanema to celebrate the end of the Bush era and the glorious beginning of the Obama years. Well, it's not really so much a party as I'm inviting my friends to the bar to help me enjoy this wonderful moment with lots of booze. Since I haven't had a Rio meet & greet yet, this is your chance to come out and say hi.* I'd love to meet some of my Carioca readers, but I can't guarantee I'll be sober. For full details, see the invite.

*Stalkers and Republicans not welcome

New Year's Eve

Eli and I spent the past two New Year's Eves on the beach in Copacabana, where we drank beer and watched the fireworks along with friends, family, and around a million other people. It was cool the first time, not quite as fun the second time, and this year we both decided to stay away from the beach.

So this year we had a very low-key, old peoplesque but totally relaxing New Year's at home, where we watched the frightfully corny Globo "Show da Virada," made up of pre-taped and Eliseu claims, dubbed musical acts. Then we watched not one but three sets of fireworks from our window: the main set in Copa, one in Flamengo, and another in Niteroi. We didn't know if we would be able to see them or not, so the moment they appeared on the horizon in all directions, I couldn't have been happier.

We watched the fireworks, snapped pictures, and broke out a bottle of champagne. We watched perplexed as all the buses on the highway pulled over when the clock struck twelve, some right in the middle of the road, which then proceeded to impede traffic for nearly an hour.

Just as the fireworks ended in Copa, a short but lovely little set of fireworks went off right in front of us over the water, so we sipped champagne and watched them, as the clouds of smoke from the Copa fireworks slowly blew in.

After that, we stayed up late watching the New York ball drop countdown on CNN, and then slow danced to "New York, New York" in our living room.

 

finishing the feriadao in style

So to celebrate the end of the long holiday weekend, last night Eli and I took the NY boys to a fun club in Leblon, which is actually a sushi restaurant/lounge before it turns into an actual nightclub. With open caipirinhas until midnight. I took it easy, and ate sushi, knowing to pace myself, but the boys were gone within about an hour. They were highly entertaining. Then our actor friend came with one of his friends and we all hung out eating and drinking and it was so much fun, aside from the fact that I kind of felt odd being the only girl.

Later, the club part started, and it got incredibly crowded. We got smushed in a corner along with about eight prostitutes, one of which Eli got into a shouting match with for shoving people around and telling people they couldn't come into their "space" since they'd rented a table (they hadn't). They were really really obnoxious prostitutes. We danced the night away, enduring the smoke (why Rio hasn't caught up with the rest of the world in banning smoking in clubs is beyond me), waited on an interminable line to pay, and then the lady wound up not charging me because she had the IQ of a crustacean. Yipee!

Today I woke up at a ridiculous hour with my lungs feeling like they'd been replaced by chimneys and hustled out to go running on the beach in Ipanema. I saw not one but two people I knew, one a business acquaintance and the other the American that robbed us. Neither of them saw me since I was "running" (walking very fast because I'm lame) but I got incredibly annoyed seeing the second person. Also, today there were an insane number of ghetto fabulous black American men on the beach. Ironically, some white American tourists spoke my thoughts out loud after I'd passed the sixth group of Yubbies (young urban black guys): "Oh my god! Is there like a convention or something??! I don't know but we can't exactly ASK can we? Umm..is there an Urban festival? Fubu convention?" I have noticed an increase in the number of Yubbies in Rio, so maybe it's just a spring break phenomenon.

Tomorrow I go back to work. Woot.

an oofy weekend

You know when you do something totally against your better judgment even though your better judgment is shouting loud and clear to listen to it but in the name of fun you ignore it anyway? That was last night.

Today is a holiday. See my other blog to find out why. Also, Wednesday is a Rio holiday, so it's kind of a five-day weekend, although I have one class to teach tomorrow because some people are working Tuesday.

So on Saturday night we had a dork night, which I am so OK with: we went out to dinner and then wandered around the bookstore at the mall, which, of course, didn't stand a chance against two nerds: I wound up with three magazines and Eli with an Italian grammar book (he is determined to learn). Then we came home and lay around reading our stuff and then magically one of my favorite movies of all time came on Telecine, "L'Albergue Espanhole," The Spanish Hostel. It's about a bunch of Europeans studying abroad in Barcelona and how awesome it is to live abroad. If you haven't seen it, GO RENT IT NOW. It makes me simultaneously giddy to be living abroad and sick with saudades for Barcelona.

Yesterday, we met up with one of my good friend's from home boyfriend and his friend in Ipanema, and we took them to the pizza rodizio because that's where we take every gringo who comes to Rio, and the restaurant people so love us. The boys loved it too. And I loved the boys because they brought me not one but two jars of peanut butter.

Then we took them back to Botafogo before we went out, and we went to the hostel where Eli and the boys bonded via ping pong and fusball. I always thought that sports bonding was unique to my largely male extended family but I think it is actually all of mankind.

So then, along with a huge group of hostel people, all of us went to the favela funk party. I had started to feel the beginning of a sinus headache at the hostel, which got progressively worse as the night went on. When we got there, the lines were down the block. Being part of a huge group of gringos, they let us in a side door, and in we went to the inferno that is holiday weekend crowds. I've been there twice and I've never seen it so crowded -- it was the biggest fire code violation in the world. We pushed our way to the top floor, which was also crowded, and the whole VIP space was a mess and it took the gringo wranglers a while to get the gringo groups into the right spot. By then, my head was exploding AND I was getting claustrophobic. And annoyed--who lets a novela star in one night and then twelve year-olds the next into a nightclub? Castelo, apparently. I tried to stick it out, if anything, to see the glee of the two New Yorkers we'd brought, but I couldn't take it. We went outside and figured out a very smart and cheap way to get home and off we went and I took twice the dose of sinus medication and passed out in two seconds.

Today Eli has off from work, as do I, and so far all we've managed to do is get out of bed. Plus the weather is icky.  Here's hoping to getting our butts out of the house.

oh my goodness.

This weekend isn't technically a holiday weekend. That's next weekend. But it might as well have been.

Friday, Eli and I spent the day tourist-ing together (separate post on that later), and then at night my friends who got into town yesterday came over. They're studying abroad in Sao Paulo, but are my friends from college. Their program is the same one I used when I studied abroad, except theirs is apparently much better in SP because they took them here, are paying for them to see the sights, and gave them each a lot of cash for meals. And they're staying a block from the beach. LUCKY.

Anyhow, my two friends, one of which I've seen a bunch of times since she's been studying here since July, came with my other friend who I haven't seen since I graduated, who is my favorite Cuban on the planet, also from my college. They came with two friends, a Dominican who just happened to go to the private school in the town where I grew up, and a very sweet Venezuelan dude. I felt right at home, back to the days of being the wannabe Latina, surrounded by Spanglish and salsa. Later, the two French hostel guys came. We made tons of caipirinhas and it was so much fun even before we went out. It made me really miss my friends from home (the other ones), and being in college, and studying abroad. So much fun.

Then we went to Lapa, and when we tried to get on the bus, the bus driver tried to pull away because it was probably the end of his shift and he didn't want to wait for the long line of people to get on, and Eliseu got into a huge fight with him for being such an asshole. Then the driver proceeded to go about 100 miles per hour so we got there pretty fast. Then we took everyone to the infamous Latin club, where everyone got drunker and we all danced the night away to salsa and merengue and reggaeton and oh it was so good pretending to be back in the Caribbean. Later, some more gringos from their program came to the club, and one of them, a beautiful black girl, made out with a really unattractive butch woman the entire night. It was a sight to see. Eli was kind of drunk and kept doing this hilarious African dance move(to salsa music) and I couldn't stop laughing.

Later, we all took a van back, where my Cuban friend lived up to her Cuban-ness and it was a very loud, hilarious, music-filled ride home.

It was just a great night. I really love having my friends here, I can't even tell you.

Up next: me and Eli's Centro Adventure and Rio Gringa's wrath against cell phone communications in Brazil.

Feliz Pascoa goyim

Happy Easter, my lovely goyim and Brazilians. I hope you all have not ingested as much chocolate as I already have this holiday weekend.

Thanks to Zona Sul for yet another round of terrifying holiday figures.

On a completely random sidenote, on this holiday I am extremely grateful for:

• not having dengue
• cable TV
• not getting sucked into working for the US government, which for a time was a definite possibility, and I thank God this didn't happen every time I watch CNN

Holiday: Day of Black Consciousness

Today was a holiday so I didn't have to work. Why? It is Black Consciousness Day. It is meant to serve as a reminder for resistance to slavery and the integration of black Brazilians into society after the end of slavery. The day coincides with the death of Zumbi dos Palmares, who died on November 20, 1695. Zumbi was one of the leaders of the quilombos (the maroon communities) in Brazil during the years of slavery. He fought against the Portuguese to maintain the community and its residents and to protect them from being forced back into slavery. There is a pretty terrible movie about him made in the 80s, called "Quilombo" which I actually watched in my Caribbean Anthropology class (because Brazil is in the Caribbean, obviously). It's an important holiday, with special events and parades, though I'm not sure it's taken seriously enough. It's like Martin Luther King, Jr Day in the US -- lots of people still go to work, and some even refuse to celebrate it.

News of today:

Remember the whale that swam up the river in Para? Sadly, it was found dead today. Click here for the slightly unsavory picture.

Police in Brasilia today were caught off guard when a messenger handed in a folder containing US$6,000 that he had found in a bank's ATM booth. What a nice guy.

Nice little story about Gabriel Garcia Marquez from BBC, here.

Me news:
Last night I met Eliseu at his job and then we went with a bunch of people to Lapa, where we wandered around and drank. I wasn't having a great time because my joints were hurting from dance and as much as I like meeting new people from different places (Chile and New Zealand and Australia, people from Eli's hostel), I just felt really tired of meeting people who are here for so little time. People who travel may be in the same physical space as someone living in a place, but they exist on a completely different plane and see and feel completely differently.

But then luckily today I went out with two girls, one who I met at the ballet NGO, and we went around Botafogo and then went to Parque Lage, and it was so fun and I'm so glad to have some gringa friends finally! They both went to school in Canada but are both Latinas which is great! The weird thing: one of them is from Colombia and we have friends in common from GW...what a tiny world.

We went to a part of the park that I hadn't been before, a gorgeous waterfall and a look-out over the lagoon. We saw the same guy who was there when me and my GW friend were there, who helped us find our way and told us the same exact story as last time, about visiting the US and dating the daughter of the president of Penn State and what hotel he stayed at in NY and where the hotel was and how many days he was there. Funny character.

Then we went back to Botafogo and I showed them around the apartment. I was talking to the girl who I met at the ballet, who has taken the initative to take ballet classes here. It made me feel jealous, but also just sad and disappointed in myself. I had the chance to do that too, and gave up. I got lazy. And then I started working so much so that I don't really have time to do it. It really got me thinking about the vast difference between my life as I know it and as I imagine it, and also made me realize how I've put the things I love on the back burner in exchange for making money. And dance itself is rapidly becoming something that could fade out of my life. It makes me convinced that my new Plan needs to happen, to make sure that life as I know it gets a lot closer to life as I imagine it.