Weekend Edition: The Fourth, Churrasco

Saturday came and Tiago picked me up again to spend the weekend at his house. I had already told him of my desire to buy fireworks, so we dropped my bags off at his house and set off to buy them. Unfortunately, I suffered a burn at the hands (tailpipe) of his motorcycle, and it is now an unsightly brown air blister surrounded by a patch of red. Quite lamentable. Regardless, we continued with the plan and went to a pyrotechnics store, where we bought a dozen little rockets, and a dozen typical colored-burst fireworks. Along the way, I even got my hair cut, something I had been neglecting for a while.

Pyros

Later that night, Tiago and I started shooting off the fireworks from his roof, and Fucho joined us shortly. Video evidence is below.

Afterwards, we went to a Festa Junina in a part of the city called Taquaral. The festa was more like a fair, with hordes of people milling around the fairgrounds and lines of stalls selling food, hot wine, and quentao, a super-strong mixture of ginger tea and vodka-like alcohol. The three of us walked around for a while, watching people dancing a traditional Brazilian square dance, quadrilha.

Sunday was spent attending a churrasco at the house of Fucho's friend. During the day we ate and played around with the kids, kicking around a light soccer ball and shooting a basketball at a makeshift hoop. Everyone was a bit impressed with my handles, even though, as many of you know, my game is much to be desired by American standards. We took a break in the evening, walking over to a little live concert of samba at a house/shop in the neighborhood. I tried to learn the steps from one of the women, but it was pretty challenging, and the language barrier prevented me from asking more about the intricacies of the steps.

After that, we headed back to the house for more churrasco. We played truco, me and one of the guys against Tiago and Fucho. The guy (Aurelio?) and I ended up winning after a closely contested best of three matches to 12 points. I had to leave early, since Tiago was worried about rain on Monday morning. So I headed back to my house in Barao Geraldo, where I was able to skype and watch an episode of Flight of the Conchords before bed.

We're officially leaving for Rondonia (the Amazon) next week, so I'm getting more and more excited every day. Hope to hear from you guys soon. Much love.