The Tao of Me

Ketchup. On pizza. They put mustard on the sausage pizza. Seriously. There are so many reminders in every little way that things are different here. I don’t think Brazil is a place you can enjoy if you’re looking at it with the expectation of finding it similar to America. It is not. Reminders small and huge are everywhere, including the food. They eat ketchup and mustard on pizza, and my friend’s daughter loves fried cinnamon bananas with mayonnaise on top, but they looked at me like I had crossed a serious line into gross-ness when I put sliced pears on the same plate with scrambled eggs for breakfast. Go figure.

We spent the first weekend in Rio de Janeiro on Copacabana beach. Right smack in the middle of the most typically tourist spot in all of Brazil. Actually, it was a very good place to start and with limited time to experience the city it gave us a good jumping-off place to get our feet wet in the whole experience. Even my friends who live there had never spent much time in Rio except to fly in and out, so it worked well for us.

I highly recommend getting to know Brazil with a native Brazilian friend. My 5 months of Portuguese classes had helped quite a lot, but to have a native speaker, and native Brazilian with us opened doors for us that we never would have even known were there. Besides all of that, she and her daughter are now people I am lucky enough to have as real friends.

We decided to take a guided bus tour that spent the day taking us to all the hot spots of the city. This definitely had it’s drawbacks, like the screaming-into-the-microphone tour guide that gave every detail in 4 different languages. I don’t think she actually spoke any English, Spanish or French, and her accent was so strong that I couldn’t tell much of a difference between them, but she was very enthusiastic about it anyway.

The good part was that we now have a semi-familiar grasp of what the city has to offer that we wouldn’t have gotten on our own. Now when I go back we’ll know where to go and what to see, and how not to do it.

Spots on the tour: The lagoa (drive by), Maracana (5 minutes parked outside), the Sambadrome (with costumes!), Sao Sabastiao Cathedral, Sugarloaf mountain (with monkeys!), and Christo Redentor. Of all of it, I was most impressed with the statue. I have seen pictures and known about that statue all my life, but never thought I might actually see it. To be standing there looking up the nose of this icon was one of those moments when I had to stretch out my arms and smile at where life had taken me. That I got to share it with people I care so much about made it even better than I could have hoped for.

Our tour was supposed to have us back at the hotel by 5pm, and we had theater tickets for 8pm. Has anyone ever told you about Brazilian time? Well, Brazilian time does not take stock in such annoying things as schedules. We were “on our way” to the hotel for 2 hours. We stopped at just about every street corner and cafe along the way to drop people off, including doubling back almost 10 miles because they forgot someone, and finally got back to our own hotel at 7:10pm. 50 minutes to get cleaned up, changed into girl clothes, get a cab and get to the theater downtown. Somehow, thanks to the insane lack of traffic rules and some driving on the sidewalk (really) we actually made it on time.

If you have a chance to see a show at the Municipal Theater, do! We saw a fun, and incredibly well performed modern dance show. The theater itself was beautiful, and the restoration work they are still doing looks fantastic.

To cap off the night, our cab on the way back got a flat tire. What is it the guide books say? Don’t walk around Rio at night? Especially Copacabana? Especially dressed up? Pshaw. We laugh at your silly notions.

We were fine, except for the 3 very large, raw blisters on my toes from my very sexy girl-shoes.

A wonderful day.