I Have the Worst Luck: Jake's Arrival

After contemplating my options, I finally decided to take a bus to Porto Alegre last minute. I figured arriving around 10pm was worth not having to be up early the next morning, since I was meeting my husband, Jake, at the airport at 11:45am. However, after an hour on the bus, I was still only half way to the centro; meaning I still had to sit on the bus for another 20ish minutes and wait for the 7pm bus to Porto Alegre. At that rate, I was looking at arriving at midnight. I decided it was better to eat my free dinner at FURG and try my luck with the 7am bus the next morning.

At 6:15am, I woke up and made my way to the centro. I was able to catch the 7am bus, and made my way to the Porto Alegre airport. The first issue of the day was arriving 15 minutes after Jake’s plane was supposed to land, to find out his plane was delayed an hour. The issues only piled up after that.

We missed the 2pm bus by a few minutes and instead took our time to eat and relax until the 3pm bus. I had never heard of this bus company before and made the mistake of buying sem seguro tickets. (I found out later that com seguro means that if you are injured in an accident, you receive money from the bus company.) Twenty minutes after our midway snack break, our bus broke down. We were told another bus was on its way, but was about 2 hours out. By this point, it started to get dark. To top it off, the bus did not have a hazard kit. Someone called the police to say we did not feel safe, but they never showed up.

Finally, a bus arrived, but the issue was there were only 18 seats for the 40 passengers. Jake and I were able to get onto the first bus, but this meant leaving his luggage behind with the broken bus. As we were switching busses, we found out the original bus had ran out of gas (if I understood correctly). Either way, we were finally on our way home, which we finally reached at 10pm. To make things better, we ate some awesome bauru and called it a night!

Jake eating bauru

Work Hard, Play Hard

After a week of classes, working, and little time for a social life, we finally were going to have time to relax and hang out with friends. Friday was one of our friend’s birthday, so after some chimarrão and work, we headed over to our old living accommodations, the hotel, to say happy birthday and celebrate. It turned into amazing pizza (the second day in a row, because I made homemade pizza the night before), and Happy Birthday being sung in three languages, five different ways. After, we headed to the store to buy ingredients for sobremesas (desserts).

Catherine and I had been craving desserts all week, so I decided that chocolate fondue with fruit was in order. However, this is not exactly what came out. Instead, as some friends met us at our house, I made chocolate and coconut covered bananas to eat with our vihno tinto. Chocolate and wine, the best combination ever. In addition, we played some music and ended up dancing bachata, which I had been missing a lot.

Chocolate and coconut covered bananas.

The next day was spent relaxing before heading out to celebrate our friend’s birthday again. We went to watch several bands play forro, and had a blast! However, as Catherine and I were tired we decided to head home. About an hour later, Catherine received a phone call and life got crazy.

Catherine comes to my room and explains we had 7 guests on their way over. We frantically starting counting beds and figuring out where everyone was going to sleep. By the time everyone arrived, we were all set to go, only to find out half decided to head home and there were only 4 guests.

Sunday was relaxing once again, and I decided I needed to read. We felt bad that we were unable to see our friend that had just returned from break (a week into the semester), but due to timing, we hung out at home, and I stayed up till 7am Monday morning reading. Obviously, that hadn’t been the plan. So, Monday was a little more difficult to work than I had anticipated. But, I started and finished two books. So, maybe it was worth it…

By the time we made it to campus, it was lunch time. We ran into our friend and ended up following him to the mechanical engineering office. (Yes, most of our friends are studying mechanical engineering.) Surprisingly, the office was fun. We hung out and I ended up seeing Wesley’s project, a go-kart that he is building. Also, he made sure that I received one of the best gifts from his mom! After being made fun of for putting hot sauce on everything in Maceió (and apparently more in one sitting than anyone they know), she made me my own bottle of hot sauce! We have to wait to try it, but I cannot wait!

See all the peppers? So excited!

At the end of the day, I was exhausted, and passed out for a while before having the strength to go home. When we arrived home at 10:30ish, we decided it was a good time for bauru. Earlier in the week, we found an amazing bauru place at the beginning of our road. Let’s just say, if we don’t watch it, we are going to get fat quickly. 

Bauru Number Two!

Cell Phones!

Today, Luan randomly showed up at 11am and asked if we wanted to go to the University Restaurant. Catherine and I had just finished doing our laundry, and weren’t exactly ready to go out in public, but we ended up having a great time. (See a picture of our laundry facilities on Catherine’s blog, here.) On our way out we ran into a handful of the guys we met at the barbeque. It made us feel like we were finally making friends.

After Catherine was finally ready to go out into the world, we headed over to our office to spend time on the internet. The only issue we had was that precious Facebook was blocked. We looked into what we wanted to do for Carnaval next week and we didn’t actually figure anything out. So much for being productive on the internet.

Rossana ended up finishing work early today, so she took us into town to finally get cell phones. It was like Christmas as a child. We were so excited that we didn’t put them down for some time. We divvied up the list of numbers we had to let them know we had phones. These are our new phones. At least we know they won’t be stolen!  

The phones are only identifiable by the theme of the phone and the background picture.

 On our way back to campus, Rossana stopped to get us food. (She is way too kind!) We stayed in the car as she ordered us food. When we were getting out of the car to go into the hostel, she noticed there was a note for us:

 

Bauru Box Reads: “We hope you Catherine Rylee! This Rosannas Friend”

It is considered a traditional food from Rio Grande do Sul, but is similar to a hamburger with an over hard egg. We didn't know what to expect. But once again, the food was amazing!

A burnt Catherine eating the bauru.