A weekend of food and not much else!!

It has been a seriously busy couple of weeks, up until tonight I hadn't had an evening of doing nothing so it makes a welcome change...

Last weekend was another busy one. On Saturday I went with a couple of friends from work to explore the Jardins area. I guess the nearest equivalent in London would probably be Knightsbridge. The bairro is home to the most expensive street in Latin America, Rua Oscar Freire. We wandered up and down admiring the beautiful shops, any possibility of buying anything obviously non-existent on an intern's salary!

We then went to a nearby salon and two of my friends got manicures, it was a seriously smart place and even though I passed on the manicure I enjoyed the cappuccino I was given on entering!

Afterwards we headed down Oscar Freire again to find somewhere to eat. We chose Frutaria, a restaurant specialising in the most amazing fruit juices, stating the obvious! Shame I chose a panini with fries!! I'm getting spoilt, the fruit juices are just so amazing and cheap here that they didn't seem that tempting especially as they were triple the price of my local lanchonete. That being said my panini was delicious and made a welcome change from the daily rice and feijão. We then treated ourselves to an ice cream from the most amazing sorveteria, somewhere I will definitely be heading back to!

The fruit ready to be juiced...

Cioccolato Guanaja and Maracujá

Later in the evening I cycled back home from my friend's house on my flatmate's folding bike, let's hope my mum's not reading this!!! It was a pretty terrifying experience, especially as one of the lights was broken, probably very stupid in hindsight but I made it! São Paulo is definitely not a cyclist friendly city! 

After arriving home at around 9, exhausted, I was asked by my flatmate if I wanted to go to a friend's for a few drinks, it was the last thing I felt like doing but I vowed to myself when I arrived to say yes to everything (within reason) so I enthusiastically accepted and we headed out again. We got back home at around 5 AM after a "few drinks"! I don't know how I physically managed to keep my eyes open!

Sunday was Dia dos Pais (Father's Day. In our family at least, it doesn't rank very highly in importance, however in Brazil it is a big deal. We headed to my flatmate's cousin's house where the entire family had already gathered, probably around 30 people in total. After a bit sun bathing on the roof terrace, we all sat down for lunch and began to eat....and eat...and eat a bit more. We didn't stop eating until about 3 hours later! We ate everything from moqueca(sea bass stew) to prawn curry to slow cooked lamb all accompanied by copious amounts of farofa, rice and manioc chips!!

Moqueca                          Farofa

Manioc; This....                   becomes this

Then there were the puddings, around 8 of them in total I reckon! Pudins are not to everyone's taste but luckily I love them as I think I will be seeing a lot more of them. They are normally crème caramel-like in texture and flavoured with lots of different things.

From left to right... mil folhas, pudim de chocolate, pão de mel, pudim de maracujá!

There was also Pão de Mel, Mil Folhas and lots of different types of home made cookies. And I was expected to try most of it. By the end of the meal I practically couldn't move I had eaten so much!!!! Luckily I only had to make it downstairs where we began a game of Rummikub, it always surprises me which games are popular abroad! We ended up playing for around 3 hours, a new member of the family rotating in each time, it was exhausting!! We then said our goodbyes, were given more food in doggy bags and headed home. It was a father's day I will definitely never forget, our celebrations in the UK seem pretty rubbish in comparison!

So now I'm in the middle of a normal working week... I managed to make my first big error a few minutes ago...I arranged a teleconference with a UK company but told them the Brazilian time so they were waiting 4 hours to speak to us! Not in my boss' good books at the moment... 

Better go and clear up the mess! 

Bolivian Independence Day

I thought the first weekend in the apartment might have been a bit lonely but it was the total opposite, people came over on Friday night and all day Saturday, the girls I'm living with are serious partiers (is that a word?!), they put me to shame, especially considering I'm 10 years younger! 

By Sunday I was ready for a bit of a rest so after a good lie in I was happy to hear that one of my flatmates was planning to go to a Bolivian cultural celebration (well that's all I understood at first, my brain is telling me that I have listened to enough Portuguese now and I am struggling to understand a lot!) and asked if I would like to join. Of course I said yes...

We arrived in the car park to see it full of very drunk Bolivians in traditional costume staggering around, a funny sight!! We arrived at the Latin American Memorial, a cultural exhibition centre where all kinds of events celebrating Latin America take place. 

The costumes were amazing

There we met up with Paula's Bolivian friend Chris, it was great to be able to go with a Bolivian as he explained what the event was all about; celebrating Bolivia's independence day from Spain. I stood out completely as obviously I don't look Bolivian but also as I was about a foot taller than everyone else, including the men!

Traditional cholas wearing their bowler hats

You may be wondering why there was a Bolivian celebration in São Paulo, I thought the same thing, Paula explained that the Bolivians are the largest recent immigrant group to move to the city, figures estimate that there are over 500,000, most of them doing the worst paid jobs, largely in the textile industry. 

Absolutely everyone took part

It was an amazing experience, like nothing I had ever been to before, I felt super lucky to be there as there were no tourists and we only got to go because of Paula's Bolivian friend. It felt such a privilege to be able to experience what was obviously a very important day for the Bolivian population and the atmosphere was amazing. 

The cutest baby I have ever seen!

When I got home in the evening I achieved the impossible and managed to make brownies without a tin, scales, caster sugar (their sugar is like icing sugar), and difficult gas oven! They only came out a little bit dry, but they'll be better next time! I brought them to the office this morning where they were demolished in seconds! It's so nice having lots of unfussy people to bake for!!

Brownies in a casserole dish

Ready for their journey to work!

All in all it was a pretty good weekend.