Dogs With Bindis?

The other night, while still at our old republica, Guillaume and I went to get some açaí at the fruit stall just near our house. There, on the steps near the fruit stall was a very-neatly-trimmed grey Maltese puppy, looking up at his owner who was having his açaí. 'He's so cuuute', I squealed to Guillaume, 'he looks fresh, fresh out of a banho e tosa, as though he literally walked out of a grooming session before coming here!' 


Guillaume agreed in regards to the Maltese's cuteness, but disagreed with my remark, 'If he had just walked out of a grooming session he would have a lot of glittery shit stuck to his forehead, Shiva.'


I had to concur. This is something that I have noticed about Brazil in general: Brazilians absolutely love their dogs. And they demonstrate this love through the use of cute costumes, hair accessories, glittery jewels, and hairdoes on their canine friends. Cats do not seem to be nearly as popular.

I first became aware of this national obsession when visiting my friend Rodrigo's home in Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais. He also had a cute little Maltese named Nina, whose hair was adorned with little clips and who had a little diamante stuck to the middle of her forehead, almost like an Indian bindi. I asked him, why did Nina have a bindi on her forehead? 'She came from her banho e tosa (bath) like that. They always put decorations like that on her. At Christmas, they put green and red for example...' I remember finding this very amusing. Since then I haven't ceased to notice the extravagant dog-decorations on the Brazilian dogs I see in the streets.

This is the connection that my brain makes everytime I see one of these Brazilian toy puppies with diamantes stuck to their furry foreheads. Unfortunately, the original Nina was unavailable for a photo at the time of writing this blog as she lives 5 hours away in Minas Gerais.

That's okay - It's funny, and most of all, cuuute!!!!!

A Chance To Practice Some Portuguese Swear Words

I am ...how can I put this? ...continually shocked by my consistent bad luck here in Brazil. But I am too stubborn to give up and go home, however much I may feel like it.

Don't judge me - I know that life isn't a bouquet of roses - and I am a reasonable, logical person. The past few months have just been really ...crap. I have even been feeling this in my body - Over the past month I have felt  food-poisoning-like symptoms for at least 7 days. It occurred to me the other day that perhaps my nausea and awful stomach cramps might not in fact, be food poisoning, but just plain stress. I am esgotada.

On Tuesday Guillaume and I got kicked out of our republica, our sharehouse. Why? Well, apart from the leaky ceilings, water literally inside of my walls, the fact that my room actually flooded once, yes, flooded, the very noisy work from the probably illegal construction on the house, the washing machine that made our clothes dirtier, the internet which constantly cut out, and the gossipy maids and construction workers reporting my every move to the landlady, the landlady was also a totally stupid, manipulative cow who thought that her boyfriend (one of the construction workers on our house - yet another example of her absolutely unprofessional and disgusting behavior) was interested in me, and decided to get rid of me, for her pure insecurity. So, when she came to me to report that 'everyone was complaining about me' (and believe me, I could write a whole essay on those people), I was not very impressed, and told her where to go. Why, after all, had she been coming to ask me every few days if her boyfriend was trying to flirt with me? It seemed very convenient for her to have a reason to get rid of me. After lying to me and trying to intimidate me about Brazilian laws (I did not fall for this crap), she also told me where to go. Com prazer! I told her, with pleasure.

Needless to say, this verbal altercation did not leave us much time to get out of our place. Rafael, my good friend, who never ceases to amaze me with his problem-solving skills and engineering brain, cleaned up my mess with the maldita filha da puta vagabunda dona de merda landlady and helped us get our new place. Yes, you just witnessed my intense effort at swearing in Brazilian Portuguese, as you can imagine, I had a lot of practice using them in this past week.

Now we are living in a much larger, more dormitory-style accomodation, in a better location, still near the university. It is a dorm with 34 other people, shared bathrooms and kitchens. A place which Guillaume once delicately described as Cap d'Agde, a reference to a nudist town in his native France. This, because in our few days here, we have encountered an astonishingly mostly male population walking around barechested. It's damn hot here, they can't be blamed, right? Guillaume however persists in his dislike of our shirtless housemates.

Amusingly, in our new place, there is this very-Brazilian microwave:

Brigadeiro and cocada are in the easy-cook sections!

We managed to move all of our belongings without any suitcases (we had them stored in Guillaume's aunt's place, 1.5 hours away, for lack of space in our old room), but by use of plastic bags, rubbish bins, cardboard boxes, backpacks, açaí buckets, and hammocks-turned-bags. Another demonstration of the versatility of our Amazonian-bought hammocks. 


The next day, on the way to a voice recording for an English textbook (one well-paying but hard-to-find job for English natives here in Brazil), I took a hard fall down the marble stairs of my new place. Havaianas are comfortable and cute but they consistently seem to do me wrong while walking down stairs. Unfortunately this past Thursday there wasn't anyone at my side to catch me from falling and I got to top off my awesome week with a very sore back, neck, and lots of analgesics. I think this one will take a while.

I am trying to not be a pessimist...