If you are counting, it's a month.

One month.
1 week in Campinas + 3 weeks in Curitiba.

The math isn't exactly right, but for purely symbolic reasons, I accept it on this Monday, because it was the 4th weekend. Wednesday night, I'll move into the hostel. Wednesday afternoon is the first day of why I came. The next few weeks will be the real transition. But for the last 4 weeks, I'm deeply thankful it moved so smoothly.

And for that 4 weeks, not a single entertaining picture? Desculpe. I'm terrified of bringing my camera anywhere, and you can decide for yourself whether being so scared of having your camera stolen you don't take it anywhere and actually having your camera stolen are equivalent. For now, I choose to believe there will be an event, a perfect event, where I'll want my camera, and everyone will have a visible bulky camera like me, and everyone at the event was background checked as especially not a camera-stealer, and I run around like Ashton Kutcher in those canon(?) commercials I hate. I hope it's on a beach!

Last week I became overly sentimental, though I showed no physical signs. On Friday night, we were staying in. I drank a bottle of wine, watched Jumper with Mari, and then Be Kind, Rewind with Bela. While watching the latter it made me miss home. Oh the friends are like friends, and the video store is like 9th street, and the making movies is like going out. But Jack Black actually sucks, the video store is nothing like 9th street, and there were no parallels to my life. I remember, I was living in my father's house in 'White' Brook when I left.

On Saturday, I made coffee promptly after waking up. I stopped drinking the coffee Brazilian style, with half milk and sugar, and gulped down the coffee to perk my weary eyes. I remember why I love coffee now, it serves a purpose. Drinks are wonderful like that. For food, you satisfy Maslow's needs. For drinks, you satisfy your desires.

Mari proposed to get some real Brazilian food, the kind I'd shamefully avoided since my arrival. Rice, beans, etc, want it. Bela, Mari and I walk 200 ft. to the right of the building into a buffet. Earlier, I asked Mari the price range. She said "Well how much do you eat?" I didn't know what that meant, when people ask that at home I'll say 'a lot', but it was clear she had something specific in mind. "Because 1 kg is 18, but you probably won't eat a kilo, do you think you'll eat a kilo?" Regardless of the fact that I have absolutely no reference for how much a kilo is, I couldn't even figure out a way to think of how much I eat in terms of the familiar lbs. I thought about a half pound hamburger and fries. That was a pound. I think a pound is more than a kilo. I think a pound is less than a kilo. 1 kilo is 1000 grams.

"I don't know, but I'm sure it will be fine," I responded.

My plate was half a kilo. Pickles, cabbage, potato salad, rice, beans with beef, some beef, and chicken. 1/2 kg. They have the right idea, rice and beans fill you up. Bela waived down the waiter after I told her, yes, I would like a drink. The waiter arrived and was like "oaubefiasdlkfj" and Bela asked what I wanted, cocacola, and he was like "bousdfjsdflkaj" "bottle or can", Bottle, and he was like "Normal e light" I said Normal! and everyone was like YEAH, you understood Portuguese!

We left. We were initially going to get some sort of chocolate pie. We walked past a clothing store, and Mari and Bela walked in, they said they'd be 5 minutes. Normally I'd just go in as a sort of reminder to Wrap it Up, but something about looking at girls and clothes after eating makes me sleepy. I stood outside, leaning against the wall, crossed my left leg over my right, crossed my arms and did that think where I bite my cheek. I probably looked pretty cool.

When we left the restaurant, it was a rare sunny, warm day in Curitiba. As I waited outside the clothing store it went from sunny and warm to rainy and cloudy. You may think this is to illustrate how long I'd been waiting, but actually I'm showing you how f'd up Curitiba is weather-wise. They came out, Bela left, went to super market with Mari, then went to McDonalds for dessert. I successfully ordered a McFlurry, pronounced Mick-flor-ree, and it was delightful. Some airy chocolate. It was welcomed that they had some other toppings beside M&Ms and Oreos. I remember the days when they had 8 different Mcflurry toppings, and the scarcity of variety now is nothing less than a disgrace. America is all about options.

So, then the night occurs. Mari asks if I want pizza, I'm like YES! Jason had told me to get Pizza first, among everything else. She then says "Do you want pizza hut pizza?!" I'm thinking 'FUCK!', but yes, I did have Pizza Hut pizza with wine I bought at the super market. And it was good. 4 cheese, mozzarella, gorgonzola, cheddar and...i don't know, provolone or something. One, two, three, or all four of them were responsible for my stomach getting poked by knives for the next 3 hours.

Halfway through pizza-eating, Bela and Mari started snapping, which meant we were going out. We went to that Chicagoan's house whom I'd met at BOHEMIAFEST09 for his bbq. On second impression, he was nice, he'd only been there for 2 months longer than me, and spoke about 2 months more worth of Portuguese. Skol, Caipirinhas, etc. At one point a song comes on and all the girls do a coordinated dance to it. One thing I've noticed about Brazil is the improbable teen movie scene where everyone gets together at prom and does the same dance is not so improbable here.

When I am greeting or saying good bye to men in Curitiba I get fairly nervous. Even if someone were to tell me whether they were going to do a traditional handshake or where you do the sideways high five and make a fist like that famous symbol of racial unity, I don't know, it's the move you do before you pull each other close and pat each other's back like that dude hug. Yeah so even if someone told me if they were gonna give me a handshake or brofive I'd still get nervous because of their wild accuracy, and propensity to improvise with slapping my chest three times, or going for the arm. Each time I'm not sure if I'm supposed to lean into this gesture, stand still, or give them my whole chest, shoulders back and head looking up, as to avoid a scary situation.

Anyways so when I left and was shaking hands, I had a very familiar, not awkward goodbye handshake to fingertips thing with Chicago dude that I don't even really do at home, but it seemed welcome at the time. Like when I enjoyed hearing Pink at that one bar.

So hopped in the car, the three of us with an Argentine. Go to this first bar, line for miles. Pick up one of Bela's friends. 5 in the car. Have to pee unbelievably bad at this point. Then traffic arrives. And I'm in pain. Then we get out and go to the next bar, and there's a line. And while in the line I give up all worries of the appearance of grabbing my weiner violently, as I was hoping I could cut off circulation so thoroughly it would become numb, and I could merely feel the pain in my bladder. I was unsuccessful, and as I wondered how crippling it is socially in Brazil to piss yourself, we entered and I walked briskly to the bathroom.

When I came out a glass was handed to me and a bottle poured beer into it. I couldn't tell you much about this bar at all, looking back. Kind of looked like Tin Can without the awful paint job, a converted Italian restaurant, I suppose. We went downstairs, a band played. More bottles. We went upstairs, and more and more bottles. And Mari tried to teach me to dance. And it just doesn't happen. I'm fine with the whole step here and then step there thing but as soon as the 5'0" Mari steps back and twirls herself then directs me that I too follow up with a twirl, except the height difference is extraordinary and my arm is getting dragged down as I turn and my back has to arch...anyway there's no way to do this smoothly, Latin Americans. Frankly, i'd rather dance by myself, arms doing fun stuff, legs moving. But it appears this another thing I'm needing to be fluent in.

There wasn't much to Sunday or Today. I'm happy the bears won.

Bel is back. I move out soon. Good night.