Feliz Natal!

Merry Christmas!



It sure doesn't feel like Christmas for us, but today's the day here in Sao Paulo. Tonight we're having dinner with Andreia's family (at midnight!!!) and it should be a lot of fun! Her aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents are coming, too. I need to practice my Portuguese today.



Yesterday was a busy, busy day. Greg and I split up so that he could be spared all the grammar talk at the Museum of the Portuguese Language in Downtown Sao Paulo. Andreia and I went there and it was really cool!! Greg and Rafael went to the Soccer Museum and sounds like they had a lot of fun. Apparently one guy is credited from bringing soccer back to Brasil from a holiday in Scotland. If he only knew...



After museuming we went for lunch at a Rodigio (sp?) like Samba in downtown Vancouver. If you're not familiar with Samba, it's all you can eat salad buffet and meat on swords. But the salad buffet had everything!! Every kind of pasta you could want, they had a quesadilla station (kinda like an omelette station, only way cheesier), and every kind of side dish you could think of. The sword meat was really good, too. So far the food has been amazing, although our favourite meal by far has been the lunch we had at Andreia's place (in the pictures). Her mum made Feijoada, which is kind of like a pork and beans stew. So good. I'm gonna learn how to cook it when I get home.



After lunch we went to Sao Paulo's shopping street, Oscar Friere. We've been calling it Hobsom street. The shopping here is awesome! So many stores, many of them actually affordable with nice things! Vancouver shopping is so lame. We met Fernanda there, had some award-winning coffee at a little coffe place she knew, then went to Paulista Ave to meet her husband, Gustavo, for dinner. Paulista was crazy, because they were putting on a Christmas show at the bank, so they shut the street down so people could watch. It was also Christmas happy hour, so placed you would never knew were bars were spilling out onto the street with co-workers having two-for-one Christmas drinks. We went to FNAC, which is an book, DVD and electronics store, and it was mental. SO we promptly drove to a not-quite-so-crowded pub which is almost totally patio and had a light dinner. The pub was awesome! We're really upset that we didn't bring our caera yesterday, because it was a really cool place. When we see Fernanda and Gustavo in the New Year, we will for sure be bringing our camera.

After dinner we came back to Andreia's, got ready and went out to Hip Hop night at a night club Dani knew. We met Danielle, Cassiano, Andre and Guilherme, as well as Dani's sister and some of her friends. We got there at about midnight, but the club wasn't open yet, so we had a couple beers on the street at the place next door. After about half an hour there were about 40 people on the street drinking in front of the club, so they let us in!! We danced to hip hop until about 3am. The line-up for the club at 3am consumed the entire street, as did the lines for the few other clubs we passed on our way home. I was happy to be going home at 3am, but I guess most Brasilians like to leave the house at that time. And it was Christmas! Crazy!

So that was our busy day in Sao Paulo yesterday. I'll let you know how our BRASILIAN MIDNIGHT CHRISTMAS SEAFOOD BUFFET goes!

Merry Christmas,
Lauren.