ATMs in Brazil

One thing that I will never understand about Brazil is the way that ATMs work here.

ATMs here seem to be like Brazilians public servants: both the sucess of your transaction and the answer you get depend on their (its) current mood.

Some facts about the caixa eletrônico here :

1) Brazil is the only place where I have seen an ATM announce that it has run out of money. True story.

2) Brazilian ATMs, strangely, announce which bills they have available to give out your money. For instance, you walk up to a machine, and you want to take out R$30. The ATM screen shows Available Bills: R$20 and R$50. You have to go elsewhere for your R$30. Goodbye.

3) ATMs, from the same bank, even in the same physical location, may work differently depending on the moment. For instance, the first time you try your card it might say hey, this shit isn't working, sorry for the inconvenience. And then a minute later, when you try again in the exact same machine, everything will be fine. One second, one machine will warn you, the maximum transaction is R$400. Then the machine next to it will give you different information: the maximum transaction is actually R$600. It's like the machine just tells you what it f***ing feels like saying.

You want money? Better have the time to try your card in all four machines. Good luck, you'll need it.

4) Any traveller coming to Brazil with a credit card/ key card should be warned : don't expect to be able to take out money when you feel like it. You will be able to pay for most things with credit card, generally without a lower limit like we have in Australia. But if you do find an ATM that actually accepts your card, take advantage of this. And: have all kinds of change available when you go into a shop - salespeople often shamelessly say, sorry, got no change, when you try to break a larger bill. One time I wanted to purchase a R$35 top in a large-chain clothing store, and went to pay with a R$50 bill. The saleswoman was horrified at my proposition, "não tem troco", she snarled, there's no change. I paid by card, thinking to myself, but, this is a clothing store. Shouldn't this be one place where people regularly spend amounts of money similar to me? 

5) ATMs here generally have a closing time. You usually can't go to an ATM between the hours of 10PM and 6AM or so here. I have been told this is to inhibit flash kidnappings. Anyway, you can't get money out at 3AM after your night out to pay for your Macca's meal here, like you can in Australia, no, no.

6) You have to slide your card in-and-out, in-and-out, in-and-out, during the transaction. It does not stay, effortlessly in the machine, as it does in Australia. Another method, I assume, to make it harder for theft. Good, I guess, at least you won't forget your card in the ATM...

Speaking of methods-for-inhibiting-crime (it seems to have turned itself into a bit of a theme here), Brazil is constantly evolving ways to stay one step ahead of its criminals. Guillaume scolded me one time recently for accepting money with a pink marking on it. Apparently, if an ATM is (don't ask me how) is exploded by thieves to access the money, the machine releases a pink ink onto the bills so that they can be recognized as stolen money and therefore not used. Pretty smart.

I'm sure it would make things slightly easier to have a Brazilian bank account with a Brazilian bank card. That, though, requires opening a bank account, which will make you want to commit suicide is not so easy.

Two remarks may sum up today's entry: 1) when I go to the ATM here, I basically assume that I will have no success, and 2) Brazilians seemed to have nipped that flash-kidnapping problem in the bud, at least.

First Day

Today was the first day of my new job. I got on the internet at 11am. At 11.30 they sent me my assignment. An article of about 1800 words about the petroleum industry in Brazil. After I had asked for him to give me an idea of how much time I could have, the employee who sent the text to me said 'faz tranquilo e bem revisado, ai nos medimos quanto tempo levou', do it calmly and edit it well so then we can see how long it took. At 2.30 the boss asked me, 'are you ready to hand it in yet?' I was halfway through. I replied that, no, I was only on the second page, and asked if I was translating too slowly. He said 'yes, lol.'

Because apparently everything is less offensive with a lol on the end.

After that, I rushed through the text. I eventually turned it in without editing properly because I was worried that I would waste too much time. That was stupid. Thirty minutes afterward I realised that I had mismatched columns in the PDF document - I had missed a paragraph. I told him that I knew it was unprofessional but that I had to fix it and resend the document. I fixed it in ten minutes. He had already sent the document to the client. I felt really stupid.

I was speaking to him online throughout the day and he said that their translators produce on average 700 words per hour without translating software . I felt awful. The rate that I went at today was 300 per hour (and I don't have the software either). From my brain and internet research. I do not touch any automatic translators on the internet. I thought, wow,700 per hour, that sounds crazy - but hey, maybe I really am just slow.

Anyway, I had a cry to myself about being dumb and then I had a look around on the internet and it seemed like I had at least a normal-good pace for technical translations. But that's relative, I know.

It makes me wonder though, who the hell are these people who are doing the translations this fast? They must be native Portuguese speakers translating into English without doing much research on terminology and who think to themselves, hey, awesome translation, let's send it off, because they don't have a clue of how disjointed or artificial it sounds to a native English speaker. Texts like that cannot be of much quality.

Just saying. I will get faster with practice and one I get more used to the different technical jargons. But I do still think a good translation takes time and a bit of reflection on the less-obvious things. I don't settle on a word-for-word translation. That's not what it is about at all.

Look at me all-up-on-ma-high-horse! To be honest, clearly, I am not a professional translator, nor do I want to be. I have learnt Portuguese for less than a year and a half. What I want is to be a linguist. This is to sustain me while I spend some more time here to improve my Portuguese. And I like the fact that you get to learn more of the language while working. Anyway, the pay is good, so I hope they keep me and are not dodgy. We'll see. Suck it.

Eight Jobs That Only Exist In Brazil

Writing about the cobradors yesterday made me think about the fact that there are some jobs that only seem to exist in Brazil. Brazil is a world leader in unnecessary employment. It's a good and a bad thing; I'm no expert in economics but I'm pretty sure all these extra jobs have played an important role in the improving redistribution of wealth in Brazil. But at the same time, there are many times where I simply think hey, this is just going a little bit overboard, isn't it? Brazilians will not bat an eyelid over these jobs; they will be totally used to seeing them in their daily lives - even I don't find them remarkable anymore. But other Australians and foreigners would be surprised to come to Brazil and see:

1) The Flanelinha: This is the guy that helps you park your car on the street. He stands behind the car, encouraging you to keep going, keep going or just a little to the right. He may or may not be employed by a company  - but is probably not. 

2) The Gym 'Motivator': This is a person employed by the gym to just hang out in the gym and excite people about the fact that they are exercising. For instance, the other night at the gym I asked a lady next to me when the Body Jam class was going to start because it was past the time on the schedule and nobody was in the room. She said, it starts in fifteen minutes. Let's go on the treadmill while you wait, hey? Go on, there it is, I'll turn it on for you, there you go - go, go on, get on it. Meanwhile I was thinking, hey lady, who the f*** are you? I just want to do Body Jam, not go on the boring treadmill. Luckily, then, my phone rang. Saved by the bell. These 'motivators' hang out in the weights and in the cardio room, to tell you what to do if you have questions. This is one unnecessary Brazilian job I guess I don't mind though, at least in the weights room.

3) The Xerox Man: This is the person who operates the very high-tech photocopying machine. He photocopies papers for you and puts your USB in the computer to print papers off. It is unthinkable for a Brazilian to operate a photocopying machine themself. You can generally find a Xerox Man every 100 metres.

4) The Man Who Wears a Sign Advertising Other Jobs: That is his job. I have not seen this one yet, but Guillaume swears that there are people who do this in the centre of Sao Paulo. We do not know the Portuguese word for this; any suggestions?

5) The Person Who Gives You a Consumption Card When You Walk Into The Bakery:  Many restaurants or 'bakeries' here are kind of like big buffets. When you walk in the entrance, this employee hands you a 'consumption card', on which all of your purchases are either ticked off or, in the case of the electronic ones, scanned onto the card. If you lose it, you pay some outrageously large price. It is the same in bars. You present the card to the cashier and pay on your way out. Which brings me to (6)...

6) The Cashier: In any shop or bakery or restaurant, there will be a person whose job is exclusively to take money and give change. Nothing else. It's weird, right?

7) The Security Guard For The Street: There are security guards everywhere here. This is so unfamiliar for an Australian like me. They are everywhere you go - university, the train station, the bank, the shopping centre... Sometimes whole streets band together with a security guard just for their street. They stand there, observing their surroundings during their ten-hour-shift and are generally used for giving directions - similarly to Brazilian police officers. I have never seen either (security guards nor police officers) reprimanding anyone while I have been here. Except on TV. But that's Globo. Fuck Globo.

8) The Cobrador: Remember him, from all that talk about buses? The cobrador also acts as a human indicator for the bus - using hand signals to show the way the bus will turn and getting aggressive motorcyclists to back off and make way for the bus in heavy traffic. His other duties include: letting the bus driver know that he can close the back doors again and turning a blind-eye to the Brazilian parents who pick up their clearly-over-ten-years-old-children and pop them over the turnstile. If there is a soccer game on, he also provides the radio on his mobile phone for the whole bus to listen to the commentary. This would have to be my next favourite Unnecessary-Brazilian-Job. They are quite useful, because they know the bus lines very well.

There you go, a possible explanation of the improvement in the Brazilian economy from a linguistics student...

How To Catch A Bus in Brazil

I have been super busy in the past week since I got back from Iguassu Falls. I had a few interviews: one was for a coordinator position at a translation company, and two were for English teaching jobs. I also did a 'test' translation and got offered a job as a full time translator (Portuguese--> English). I also have had more and more private students. And the craziest part: I got 3 job offers on the same day. I think what I will decide on is the full time translating job (11-7pm) and then teaching in the school that is close by (8-10pm) on weekdays. I'm going tomorrow to the translation company just to meet with the boss and check the company is trustworthy and then I'll try it out for a month. I'm excited about this job because by translating you learn so much - but I'm also a bit unsure about myself because I have never done it professionally before. But we'll see how this first month goes. Yesterday I also did a voice sample at a recording studio for possible work in  recording dialogues in ESL books for publishing companies. 


All this job negotiating has meant a lot of catching buses and metro around town. 


Catching a bus in São Paulo is an art. It involves various skills: excellent core strength - to stop yourself from losing your balance and falling over while the bus weaves around motorcyclists as it rides up and down the hilly terrain; hunting skills - to successfully find a pole to grip onto through the mass of bodies surrounding you; fantastic timing - to know which few seconds you can take your grip off of the poles to put your bus ticket back in your wallet; spatial awareness - to get past the catraca (the turnstile) while carrying anything larger than a purse;  and good estimation skills - to know when you should start making your way through the crowds toward the back of the bus to get off (too late, and you might not get off; too early, and you will be stuck clinging to the inside of the bus as people angrily request licença to get past you to the door).


This may sound a bit strange to people in Australia. After all, the buses here are quite different from the ones there. All the buses that I have been on in Brazil (excluding in the Amazon) have been the same: you board at the front. The front section is separated from the back by a turnstile where the cobrador (the person who takes the money) also sits. You get off of the bus generally at the very back (after the turnstile). Old people, disabled people, and obese people get off at the front part and don't pay for the ride.


My first reaction to the cobrador was 'gosh, another one of those unnecessary jobs that only exist in Brazil!' ...but I think it's at least a little bit more sensible here - after all, Brazil is slightly more populous than Australia, right? A full bus in Australia is an empty bus in Brazil. Somebody's got to take the money from all of those people.


I remember being shocked at the violent bumpiness of the bus rides when I first arrived. It was discussing this with my friend Rafael that I first learnt the Portuguese word for 'rollercoaster' - montanha russa (which means, literally, 'Russian mountain' -  there's one for you, Valentina, if you're reading this^^).


Another remarkable thing about Brazilian buses is what I like to call The Seat of Death.


If you are Brazilian, I'll give you time to realise which seat I am talking about...


































Got it? Yes. It is the seat right at the back of the bus, in the middle, generally placed higher than the seats in front because it is on top of the wheels, where there are no poles to hold on to to stop yourself from flying into the crowd if the bus jolts around (a highly likely occurrence). You sit there, you may as well have thrown yourself off a bridge. You will die. When I first came, I remember going to sit there and being told by Rafael NOT TO. I avoided the seat until a couple of months later, when, without thinking, I sat there with another friend beside me. The bus started moving and if my friend had not caught me...I would not be writing this today. These days, I have learnt my lesson - I am not tempted by that seat, however alluringly empty it may appear in peak hour traffic when you are fighting to stand upright on a bus full of people hot and sweaty from work. It's just not worth it, kids.


Also, here in Brazil, there is no such thing as a 'bus schedule'. You just go to the bus stop and hope for the best!


Somehow, it works... 






































 

Uma Avaliação Física

So after my earlier embarrassments, I finally joined the gym last Thursday. As part of the enrollment you have a health evaluation, which I went to do tonight.

I went there, met my consultant (whose name was 'Cleverton' - Brazilians seem to have an obsession with  names that end with -ton..), and answered a few questions about my health. Next, he said,  tá bom, Shiva, agora tira seus sapatos e fica de top para tirar medidas, which I understood as 'take off your shoes and XXXXXXX so we can take some measurements.' De top? I asked, confused. Tira a camisa, he clarified, making a gesture (so I thought), for me to strip down to my underwear. 

I slipped off my tank top and as I started to take off my gym shorts I said, mas hoje estou usando calcinha feia! Today I'm wearing ugly underpants!

Não!!! he cried, pointing to my chest, isso  é um top!

And that was how I learnt how to say 'sports bra' in Portuguese.

The Biggest Gambiarra in the World

Gambiarra was one of the first Portuguese words I ever learnt, back in Germany, when some friends were an trying to get old radio to work in the student dorms.

It means 'a quick solution to a problem, makeshift object'.

For example - I used to have a leak in the ceiling of my bathroom here. The handyman kept sealing it up, over and over, but this only made a difference if the rain was light. Then, one day I awoke to a flood in my whole room. The landlord came and moved me temporarily into a different room. A few days later, they had put this on the roof on top of the leak:

Well, two months later and I am proud to say that the gaping hole in my ceiling was repaired yesterday. But I still had to share this extraordinarily large gambiarra!

AMAZON PART 2: São Gabriel

In São Gabriel, we spent our days passeiando with our group, with the occasional excuse of promoting the professor's Nheengatu grammar book. It is a small town; by the third day there we had memorised  most of the streets; by the fourth day the staff at the local lanchonete 'MacDragon' - what an awesome name - were greeting us like old friends. Hah. Okay, that's a lie - although, we basically went to that lanchonete 3 or more times each day, and as the days passed their service towards us gradually got faster. We took that as a sign of friendship; it was a great improvement from the first night, when I had waited one hour for an acerola juice pra viagem, 'to go'. Hahahaha. It's true what everybody says: the further north you go in Brazil, the slower and hornier the people get.


In between our meals and tapioca snacks at MacDragon, here are some of the things we did:


1) Guillaume and I visited the local health clinic. Of course - because, clearly I am the foreigner in Brazil with the most extensive and varied experiences in health services ever (!) - and what trip would be complete without a visit to the local posto de saude, right... I had caught something on the boat up the river.


We discovered, in the community pharmacy (i.e. in a room squished in between the lavatory and the consultation room, with a  sign on the door marked 'farmácia'), that the military are the only ones who seem to be getting any in the whole municipality:

Town Pharmacy

Translation: Monthly Distribution of Condoms 2011, November. Women: 5; Students: 1; Homosexuals: 0; Health Professionals:1; Adolescents:0; Indigenous Peoples: 1; General Population: 2; Military:7. 

(São Gabriel lays very close to the borders of Colombia and Venezuela; this is why there is a big military population in the region.)

Anyway, this was my best public health experience in Brazil as of yet - I walked in one day, gave my name and made an appointment for the next day. The next day, I went back, waited just thirty minutes to see a doctor, and was given what I needed. Nothing else! I only had to go to the northwestern-most point of the country for that...

2) We tried local fruits. And we found out what açaí is really like. Açaí as we know it here in the big city is really quite different. The açaí berry is like 95% composed of the seed - what we eat as açaí is the skin of the berry only...mixed with...slush? And with sugar! Up there, they sell it more as a drink than the kind of sorbet/slush that we have in São Paulo. There, it doesn't come sweetened, but you can add a teaspoon or two of sugar if you like. They also like to drink it with those Sago beads. The açaí seeds are often painted and used in jewelry by the indians - of which I brought some back with me! 

The other extremely common fruit up there, is, of course, cupuaçu. Guillaume bought one on the last day in São Gabriel to take it back to Manaus. Everyone drinks the juice of this fruit and eats creme de cupuaçu up there! And so do people in São Paulo - but the thing is, nobody ever seems to know what the actually fruit itself is like! So we decided to find out. But the good old Federal Police confiscated our cupuaçu. Yes, you read correctly: they confiscated our cupuaçu as we boarded the boat back to Manaus. 

Welcome to Brazil! Please meet the nonsensical Federal Police. 

Anyway, it was a shame; I was in the middle of carving my name into the cupuaçu:

3) We found out a lot about indian culture from our new indigenous friend, Dani. She confirmed that many people in the region still take seriously the Lenda do Boto (The Myth of the Dolphin) : It is said that the Pink Amazon River Dolphin turns into a charming bachelor at night with good dancing skills, who woos innocent women into sleeping with him, and then turns back into a dolphin during the daytime. Women in the region who do not know who the father of their child is or whose child's father does not take responsibility are therefore considered 'victims' of the dolphin. Hm.

4) We made a group of catholic priests hate us. One night, we came back late to the Diocese and nobody had the room keys. The gate to the area where our rooms were was closed. But it was so late at night, and the professor was too ashamed to further annoy the priests, so we sat for hours as different people took turns trying to pick the lock to the gate. The boys considered scaling 10 metres up the walls of the building ; I advised them against it due to the strong thunderstorm going on. Eventually the professor gave up and went to sleep on a bench. We were sleepy and desperate to get into our beds, so a few of us decided to make every noise possible, clapping our hands in unison, whistling, turning the lights on and off to get the sleeping priests' attention...nothing worked. At something like 2AM one girl, Veronica, picked the lock.

Exhibit A: Rodrigo breaking into church property.

4) Guillaume and I prayed to São Antonio! This is the saint you pray to when you want to make someone stay with you forever and get married and bla bla bla. Yes, Brazilians love their saints. When we returned back to the diocese, I mentioned that this had occurred. 'Nãooo,' commented the professor, 'what you really need to do when you are trying to keep a man is give him coffee which has been filtered through your panties. That's how it's done here in Brazil.' 

+

=

Brazilian Equation for Long-Term-Love

5) We ate. From street vendors. Or...maybe 'house' vendors should be the term. Every single house up there had a little sign on the front door announcing vende-se dindin (ice blocks sold here) or temos refrigerante (we have soft drinks). When not accosting strangers at their front porches, we were buying salgados from the food stalls. I think at least half of the town population there were street-vendors by profession! This goes with my general sentiment on Brazil : it seem like everyone is selling something - no matter what it is - just something. 

6) We drank. Caxiri - the local alcohol from mandioca (cassava?), pupunha (not even sure how to translate that one, it's some fruit from there), or abacaxi (pineapple). It is only allowed to be made by the indian women, who put those plants in their mouth, chew, and spit them back out to ferment. Then, it is only drunk by the men!

7) We pretended we were married. Everyone kept referring to us as husband and wife. Senhora, seu esposo está te chamando lá fora, they said, your husband is calling you outside, as the police were confiscating the  cupuaçu from Guillaume when he boarded the boat back to Manaus. After a couple of weeks there we realised that this wasn't such a crazy thought up there - it seems common to get pregnant and start a family at a very young age in that region. A 35-year-old lady up there is already considered a velhinha (an elderly person). 

8) We made friends with lots of insects. Cockroaches, pernilongos, mosquitos - you name it, they were hanging out everywhere we went! The largest one that we saw, however, was a louva-deus, which, according to our indian friend Dani, are consulted by pregnant ladies in the area to predict the sex of their child : 

Guillaume and Louva-Deus. It's a boy! Hehe.

9) We took boats. One particularly memorable boat trip was to an indigenous community on an island an hour away from São Gabriel on the Rio Negro. One hour of pure rain and thunder in a dinghy (with no cover), with me questioning in loud Portuguese the safety of such a trip and saying my final goodbyes. I was sure I would die. 

10) We went to the prainha (little beach). Heavenly. This next photo is taken at Ilha do Sol (Sun-Island), a little island a two minute boat ride from the prainha. 

Returning to Manaus, we went with the 'fast' boat. It took one day instead of three; no hammocks:

The 'Fast' Boat

Rio Negro

Here are some more mixed photos from our trip:

Banks of Rio Negro

Cacao

Our local friend Dani told us that this dude is known around town because he had his leg amputated after a snake bite. 

A common way that the restaurants and street vendors show what drinks they sell : Taping old cans together into a display.

Indians living on the rocks on the Rio Negro. They go there during the dry season and stay when the water rises.

In our beloved MacDragon.

At our Manaus Hotel. Someone used Google Translate !

In the church where we stayed. When I first saw this poster, I thought, why, that's Osama Bin Laden in a mug! and never managed to get that thought out of my head. It really does look like that, am I not right?

Trilingual Sign in São Gabriel : Portuguese, Nheengatu, Spanish.

The Boat Trip Of Death

Rio Negro in Manaus. An Indian Home - imagine having to swim to the toilet in the middle of the night!

Hike in São Gabriel

  

The Best Portuguese Word Ever

Hello. I promise I am going to write about the Amazon soon! I've just been quite busy lately, looking for jobs or internships. Uni Adelaide conferred me my degree on Jan 1 - and since I am trying to stay in Brazil longer I have to find some more permanent work than teaching private ESL classes. And to take one step forward here in Brazil in regards to, oh, anything, you need to shovel through a large pile of bullshit bureaucracy, which eats up your time. 

And I am going to Iguassu Falls today, to spend a few days with a friend who I met in Australia. 16 hours by bus! I'll be back on Wednesday Jan 11.

But just briefly, I wanted to teach you all a word which I think is very educative about the Brazilian language and culture. 

'Tomara-que-caia'

This translates to 'Hopefully-It-Will-Fall'.

Which means this:

A 'Hopefully-It-Will-Fall'

When I first heard this word I did a double-take. It's straight to the point, right? And a good way to learn the subjunctive too: Tomara ('hopefully') takes the subjunctive form (because it expresses a wish, possibility or doubt...) of cair ('to fall') which is caia. 

And culturally, well, you can imagine what it teaches us about Brazilians. I bet a brasileiro made up that word. Rsrs

My Jamaican NYE in Brazil

So, I have been silent on here for a few days as I was spending the last few days of 2011 and the first few of 2012 up in Jandira, a town about an hour away from my house in São Paulo, where some of Guillaume's relatives live. We also spent Christmas Eve and Day with them.

Something interesting about the rice at Christmas time here; they put raisins in it! Reminds me of Persian Adas Polo..Mmmm

Brazilian 'Holiday' Rice

At midnight, we watched the neighbourhood light up with amateur fireworks from the surrounding houses. I was also wearing a new white dress which Guillaume had bought me, according to the Brazilian New Years tradition. But strangely, as you can see, I, the foreigner, was the only one doing so. 

Something that would be very illegal in Australia.

New Brazilian Family hehehe.

But moving right along: after the potential in-laws Guillaume's relatives went home after midnight, his aunt asked us to 'go and wish a Happy New Year' to her neighbours. So we go. Before we even arrive at their gate we can heard their music blasting down the street. We walk past their barbecue, into the living room to greet them. Coloured disco lights flashing all over the walls, and a six-year-old fast asleep next to a stereo blasting Bob Marley. Did the kid even notice that we walked in? It's hard to hear anything over that stereo! The dad offers us beers, constantly pointing to our drinks and asking 'Acabou? Acabou?' and then racing to the fridge. He shows us some CDs, and complains about the shallowness of popular Brazilian music. Funk?! Sertanejo?! Exaltasamba?! Brazilians have no music culture these days! We nod our heads. Guillaume mentions that he kind of likes soul. Our host puts several piles of his soul collection onto Guillaume's lap and demands that he take them home to burn them onto his computer. 'Ele ama soul, cara!' he shouts to his wife, he loves soul, duuude! The six-year-old, Pedro, wakes up. Guillherme, Guilherme ! (The Brazilian version of Guillaume's name.) 'É sua namorada? Qual o nome dela?!', he tugs on Guillaume's arm, is that your girlfriend? What's her name?!  He bobs his head to the music. His father puts  another pile of CDs into Guillaume's lap, you'll love these ones! How we manage to hear what he says over the music, nobody knows. Actually, I don't understand that much of it at all, but over the past 5 months here and various experiences with foreign languages, I have perfected my Feigned-Understanding-Of-The-conversation- Face. A late night... 

The next morning we spent watching DVDs of old concerts from the seventies with Amelia, Guillaume's aunt, before returning to the neighbours' again 'for lunch'...

You know it...reggae blasting, meat on the barbecue, Pedro yanking at our sleeves and checking with Guillaume to see if I am, indeed, his girlfriend. His little two-year-old sister is intently ripping up paper out of a notebook and spilling ink on the floor and rejecting any distracting visitors trying to kiss her on the cheek, as if to say, can't you see that I am busy here?! Pedro calls me linda and decides that I should be his girlfriend instead. Then he asks me what my name is again. His father realises that I am Australian. Um francês e uma australiana na minha casa no ano novo, cara! A french guy and an australian girl in my house on New Years, duuude!  He sings a song from the Lion King and insists that it is Australian. He asks me about kangaroos and praises the film Australia.We  get forced-drunk and dance to reggae music for seven hours, during which, the father intermittently explains to Guillaume how to use his music program. Sometimes, the music stops for 5 seconds because Guillaume has been briefly distracted. Pedro appears distressed in such moments, 'Bobby acabou!', he cries, Bob (Marley) stopped! I notice that Brazilian parties do not appear to have an ending time. I complain to Guillaume, 'I can't party anymore!' We go home one beer and one hour later and burn more CDs from our new friends. 

An interesting day (and night). I hadn't expected my New Years in Brazil to be a reggae-fest. It was nice, I discovered my inner reggueira. Guillaume's relatives and their neighbours were very welcoming.

Me and Pedro

'Seja minha namorada! Qual seu nome?'

See? See?