Um Mês

While my plans for next semester aren’t exactly finalized, my current flight home leaves one month from today (!). More than 4 months have already flown by, and it’s not really going to be possible to fit in everything I still want to do and see in this city/country. But feeling like my time is limited has been a big motivator to go out and do things, so here’s some of what I’ve been up to the past couple weeks:

Niterói: I finally took the ferry across the bay to Niterói, although it wasn’t the most exciting place in the world, just a smaller and quieter version of Rio as far as I could tell. The highlight was definitely the Museu de Arte Contemporânea designed by Oscar Niemeyer, which is basically a flying saucer:

It was one of the record-breaking hot days, but we still managed to do lots of walking around the beaches and the city. We also stumbled upon the campus of UFF, the Universidade Federal Fluminense, where I almost studied abroad. It had a nice view of Rio, but I’m glad I ended up on the other side of the bay.

Teatro: I can’t resist anything that only costs 1 real (pronounced: hey-ow’; plural: reais; currently = $0.58) and last weekend that included a play, Além do Arco-Íris (or Over the Rainbow). It wasn’t hard to get the gist of things, even if I didn’t always know what was funny when the rest of the audience started laughing. The play itself was an almost-one-woman show, although (*spoiler alert*) at the end you find out that the almost-only character is actually dead – it was a little hard not to laugh at that point.

Feijoada: My friend Kathy’s birthday was last week, and that could only mean one thing: vegan food! We went out for feijoada, one of Brazil’s main pratos típicos; it’s bean stew (with fake meat in our case) served with rice, collard greens, farofa/cassava flour, an orange, a caipirinha, etc. It’s eaten on Saturdays, and afterwards everyone is supposed to be so stuffed that they just lie around for the rest of the day, although I still managed to find room for the vegan brownies we had made for dessert.

Feira de São Cristóvão: I spent Saturday night at the Feira Nordestina, which I probably would have enjoyed more if my stomach wasn’t having issues from all the food earlier that day. It definitely captured the northeastern vibe, even if it wasn’t as cheap. I have some new forró skills from a dance class last week, but didn’t really try them out; the American songs (like “Halo”) with Portuguese lyrics were really amusing though. My favorite part was probably that there were a couple of old guys singing an improvised song to the same tune that a couple of old guys sang to Louisa and me in Olinda on our trip. Then on the bus ride back we took a little detour to the end of the line, where the bus driver saw us and asked “Alguém pegou o ônibus na direção errada?”, or “Did someone get the bus in the wrong direction?” The answer was obviously yes, but then he took us back to Copa so it all worked out fine.

Praia: Goes without saying, but look how crowded it was (even late in the day)!

Sidenote: Futebol is being banned from the beaches during the day starting in a couple of weeks because of the huge summer crowds. Brazilians seem pretty attached to futebol though, so it should be interesting to see how enforcing that rule goes.

The other good thing about not having much more time here is that I’m also appreciating the little things a lot more, like drinking água de coco by the beach or running into my porteiro at the bar around the corner or getting cheese ice cream after a movie. Basically, I’m already seriously dreading the inevitable reverse culture shock that’s headed my way.