Rollin in Brazil: Holiday: Corpus Christi

Brace yourselves: this will be a longer post with more pictures. Hopefully it doesn't deter any of you from reading this. If you can't bear to read the text, just check out the pics. :)

So. I only had a few goals for the day: 1. explore, 2. buy groceries, 3. get money. I ended up sleeping in until 11 or so, and didn't get out the door until after lunch - the rest of the box of frozen chicken nuggets from my last grocery run. After eating, I packed my water bottle, my passport holder, my copy of Neuromancer, and my camera into a backpack and set off to explore.

I headed down to the lake attached to UNICAMP's campus to try and walk around. Both Rodrigo and Professor Sabbatini had told me multiple times how nice the lake was, so I wanted to check it out. It took about 10 minutes to walk down to the lake, but there was a fence that separated the road from the trail and the water. I finally found the gate to the fence, and decided to walk around the trail.

The lake

A bench on the path

I took some pictures along the way, and finished the 1.6 kilometer circuit - just about 1 mile, and decided to continue on my way of exploration. Next, I found the strip of restaurants that Professor Sabbatini had showed me during my first week here, but most of them were not open for lunch. By then I had walked around for a good 3 hours, so I decided to head back to the house to rest up before taking a bus to the center of Barao Geraldo. During this break I somehow managed to talk to my parents, check fantasy baseball, and sublux my shoulder.

Street of restaurants

So after my break I walked back out onto the street and over to the bus stop. As I was turning the corner, I saw one of the buses I could take pulling away. It turned out I had to wait for another 20 minutes before the next bus came, so I had some time to take some pictures. Apparently even Kumon has made its way to Brazil.

I eventually arrived at the bus terminal, which was less crowded than I had seen the night before. So I set off to find some groceries and a place to eat dinner.

The center of Barao Geraldo was not very busy, but I found a number of restaurants along the main street, a Citibank where I successfully completed objective (3), and, of course, a McDonalds. I also found a grocery store where I was able to stock up on plenty of food supplies. My shopping cart included miojo (brazilian ramen), nutella, heinz ketchup, french's mustard, bread, sausages, frozen chicken nuggets, froot loops, cookies, mangos, and oranges.

No city is complete without Blockbuster and McDonalds...

I rode the bus back home and was in the middle of watching Bolt when Tiago messaged me on msn, proposing a hot dog run. I agreed, and about a half hour later Fucho, Alex (Gordao), and Tiago showed up and we went off. The hot dogs at the place were monstrous! Well, they were really as big as you wanted them to be. Fucho and Gordao made simply gigantic dogs, Tiago's was midsize, and mine was quite modestly proportioned. And they were only 5 reais apiece ($2.50). Unbelievable. So I went home with all my goals satisfied and then some.