pizza de brasil!

hello friends and welcome to another episode of rural life in brazil... today has been a lazy day becuase as ricardo told me "domingo e a dia de descanso" or sunday is the day of rest. so, we had cafe da mahna (breakfast) of coffee and mango.

let me backtrack a little, so my second day here loja asked me what i knew how to cook and i began listing off items which i felt comfortable cooking for others, icluding pizza. oh man, loja was so excited! apparently brazilians love pizza... well, who doesn't?? anyway, yesterday at the market ricardo and loja bought ingredients to make pizza and told luis (code name: mateo) and i that we would "fraze pizza por almoco a dia" or make pizza for lunch today. so that is what we did. luis made the dough (masa) and i made the sauce and prepared the toppings. pizza in brazil is a little bit different. apparently brocoli is a common topping and it is good to eat it with mayo, mustard, ketchup and pickles (it's not a burger!). it was fun and enlightening and we have decided that every sunday will now be pizza sunday, luis and i are already planning our next combination of ingredients; he was trying to convince me that adding nutella to the sauce would be a great idea. i vetoed that one.

later we went for a walk along the rua (road) and acted like silly tourists. it's funny, here in picada cafe we don't stand out as much as we would further north in brazil where there are more people of african descent. so, the town's people were aprroching us asking us questions, commenting on the heat and the rain of last night, but we had some problems understanding/responding so mostly we just smiled and nodded.

agora (now) it is raining with thunder and lightning. it came so fast! just an hour ago were were walking in the sun! we had to run around the house and shut all the windows and doors because there are some fierce winds as well. tonight we sat on the porch and listened to monkeys howling in the forest and i read about sao paulo, the third largest city in the world. 'luis' and i have decided that it is nessesary to visit florinopolis. it has some of the best beaches, liberal minded people, veggie friendly resturants, young people and did i mention beautiful beaches??? can't wait. im off to smell the freshly cleansed earth from the saftey of the balcony, boa tarde!