New Years in Coronel Fabriciano

left to right

my teachers in Rio (Vera & Fernando), coconut tree at the orphanage, me in front of a banana tree, the people I stayed with for New Years.

I had an invitation from a lady that I had met at a wedding a couple of weeks ago in a smaller town called Vicosa. I had met her son and his wife at an engagement party of a friend a few months back. She thought I was a pretty cool guy and invited me for New Years eve which is called Reveillon and New Years.

The bus trip from Sao Paulo to Col. Fabriciano was supposed to be 12 hours but turned into 15. There was some kind of issue with the toilet and it stunk to high heaven. They stopped off at some place and had it replaced. For me it was worth the extra time to get that smell out of the bus.

In Sao Paulo it had been pretty cool but when I got to Col. Fabriciano it was pretty hot. It ended up raining a lot over the next few days. I am so tired of rain right now. I can understand when they talk about the rainy season.

We spent New Years Eve at their church and then went to a country club for the rest of the time. Church ended around 11 30 and finished the time until midnight at the country club.

The guy that I had met at the engagement party was so nice and made me feel welcome. The whole family was great. No one spoke English but Jonathas and his wife Renate did their best to help explain by using words I knew and using body language.

They had some mango trees at the house but they were smaller and called mangitos. They are sweeter than regular mangos. Mangos are my favorite fruit so I was in hog heaven or mango heaven I guess.

His dads side of the family had a churrasca (barbecue) at one of the uncles farms where he has an orphanage for about 20 kids. They had banana trees, mangos, passion fruit and some kind of fruit that Indians put on as war paint.

We went to church that night and it was good too. The next day I left back for Belo Horizonte to get my bags and then go to Rio for a few more weeks. The trip to Belo was supposed to be 4 hours but it was close to 6 and a half or 7 hours. The traffic was really bad. I thing for a few reasons. A lot of people were coming home from the holidays, it was raining and the roads were bad because of so much rain that mud was on the roads and had slid down.

Now I am in Rio and going to Florianopolis tomorrow for another 14 hour bus ride (I hope its not longer) which is south. They have a lot of beautiful beaches and a lot of pretty girls. It~s a place that I wanted to visit before I left. After Floripa I will go to Porto Alegre and then to Curitiba and then to Foz do Iguacu which is a huge waterfall place and bigger than Niagara Falls. After that I~ll be back to Rio for a few days.

Christmas in Sao Paulo

I went to hang out with fellow teacher that I met in Rio. She moved to Sao Paulo and her birthday is actually on Christmas. She~s from London and since both of us were away from home for Christmas for the first time we made a pact to hang out for Christmas.

She had a friend that invited her to spend Christmas with him and his family. The bus ride from Belo to Sao Paulo was supposed to be about 8 hours but it ended up being about 9 or 9 and a half. The bus broke down and we had to get a new bus. I heard these guys talking in the back and I thought they were arguing. Next thing I notice the bus is going really slow and parks on the side of the road. Another bus pulls around us and stops too. People start getting off and I~m waiting for the driver to say something, like I would understand anyway.

Finally he comes on and I basically understand that the bus that pulled over is going to Sao Paulo too and has room for 4 or 5 more people. Another bus would be coming shortly. I decide to wait a little bit and let the others have the other bus. The other bus comes in about 15 or 20 minutes and I have a lot more room. The bus isn~t near as packed as the one I was on.

I meet my friend at the bus station and we use the metro to go back to the apartment. The metro is so huge and complicated, I~m glad I don~t live there. I think they have 23 lines of metro and train where Rio has 2. 2 is better and simpler for me.

We meet her friend on the way to the apt and he is ready to drive us to his family which is about an hour and a half from where we are and is still Sao Paulo. We get there and his family is super nice. He speaks English but no one else in his family does. Well, his wife speaks a little bit but not much.

The tradition is to wait to eat dinner until midnight, officially on Christmas day. I eat a lot, I mean alot. They were glad to feed to me and I was glad to eat. Kids opened presents, there were no presents for the adults. Then we went to sleep. I had a mattress on the floor which was comfortable. I found out the guy and his family are Christians. His dad is an Assembly of God pastor. Pretty cool.

The next day we eat breakfast and then go to the wife~s family and eat lunch, which I~m still full but as I feel it is my duty I go ahead and eat anyway. The wife~s dad has some Christian music which I listen to and I recognize one guy and then he says he loves Jimmy Swaggart~s music. Haven~t heard that name in a long time. He has a ton of songs from Jimmy Swaggart. So interesting to hear Jimmy Swaggart on Christmas in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Just not something I would have expected.

I get back to the apt Christmas night and am really tired and full. My London friend and I kept joking, Did you know today was Christmas. Because we really didn~t feel like it was Christmas at all being away from family. It was really good but really different.

While in Sao Paulo I went to some museums: soccer, art and the Portuguese language. I~m all cultured I guess now. They still had some Christmas lights up which were pretty cool. We met another friend of my friend and she brought along a friend. We ended up eating at a pizza buffet the next night. I think I ate around 20-25 pieces of pizza, including dessert pieces. Needless to say, everyone in attendance was impressed with my eating skills. I didn~t feel so well afterward though.

My next post will be about New Year and another long bus ride.

Ouro Preto

I~m actually starting from before Christmas and moving forward. I~m breaking the blogs into smaller ones with a main topic instead of putting it all into one. Trying to be more methodic and neat, what is wrong with me.

I went to a famous town outside of Belo Horizonte called Ouro Preto which means black gold. Minas Gerais, the state of Belo Horizonte is famous for its mines. Minas Gerais actually means general mines.

Ouro is a cool town with cobble streets and has a university there too. There are lots of hills and I got a good workout. When I originally bought the tickets, I was going to leave at 9 and come back at 7 that night. After thinking about it along with the surprise look from my friends when I told them how long I was going to stay there, I decided to change the return bus ticket the day of the trip. I changed it to return at 3 instead of 7 and thought everything was okay, remember what happens when you assume. More about that later.

I get there and start walking and don~t see a map so I~m just wandering around and think, Is this all there is to it. I finally find a guy who volunteers to show me around. He~s got on some kind of vest which seems official to me. He shows me around some of the churches which has a ot of things made of gold. Pretty cool stuff. He also shows me a good place for lunch. It had cabbage, rice and gravy and something else that I really liked. I felt like I was at Mom~s house. It was soooo good.

I hustle to look at a couple more churches before my bus leaves. I probably should have given myself another hour but I wanted to avoid work traffic coming back. Oh well. So, I am walking back to the rodoviaria and notice that when the woman who changed my return ticket made it a ticket going from Belo Horizonte to Ouro Preto instead of making it from Ouro Preto to Belo Horizonte.

I got worried because now I have to try to explain what happened in my broken Portuguese. I get up to the window and I try to explain and show her the tickets. I have two tickets to the same place, why would I do that. The woman at the bus station made an error. The woman in Ouro Preto said I need to buy another ticket. I told her, I don~t want to buy another ticket. I already bought one. She doesn~t understand so I get out of line to look up some words (not curse words) to better explain my situation. I get back in line and use my new words and they still don~t help. She calls her manager and within 5 minutes he issues me a new ticket and I get on the bus just a few minutes before it left.