Just ignore everyone!!!

Although I´ve already talked about Sao Paulo in my overview, I feel it is important to emphasize just how crazy this city is.  I think `monstrosity´is the only word to properly describe it.  Everything is so fast paced that one feels as if one is getting left behind if one is not running everywhere and speaking super fast Portuguese.  Everyday, though, Jema and I venture out into the city and walk from one destination to another, encountering difficult situations which we walk away from either laughing or stressed out.  Today, for example, while trying to find a new hostel to stay at, we stumbled across a farmers market.  We thought it would be a good idea to get some fruit for lunch.  After walking up and down the aisle we decided on getting some Mangos.  The man selling the mangos instantly pounced on us spewing a string of Portuguese that not even a native Brazilian could understand.  Jema started rattling off some Spanish, and I just stood there like Forest Gump at an auctioneers convention.  With Jema´s Spanish and a lot of hand gestures, we made a financial transaction with the guy.  For 15 Reals, or about 8 dollars, we got three mangos and some crazy looking fruit that ended up not tasting all that bad.  This was one of the situations that we walked away from smiling.

An explanation for the title of this entry:  Since I don´t speak Portuguese, I don´t have a clue as to what people are saying around here.  And because this is a big city, there are people everywhere aggressively trying to sell you stuff.  So these people will single you out as you walk buy, and if you look at them, they will just get more aggressive.  So all I can do as we walk around is ignore people.  Sometimes I sneak a peak at what they are selling, but mostly I just stare straight ahead and continue walking even if I know for a fact they are speaking directly to me.  I can´t tell which is worse, for them to know that |´m an ignorant American who can´t speak Portuguese, or for them to think that I´m being rude and won´t answer them.  I guess the first one would keep me out of trouble, but I´m trying my hardest not to look like a foreigner.

Jema started rattling off some Spanish, and I just stood there like Forest Gump at an auctioneers convention!

I know for a fact that I will lose weight on this trip because:  1) it´s so damn hard to buy food when you do not know the language 2) the food you do manage to get is portioned for this country, not America.  What I mean buy that is American´s tend to serve huge portions of food at restaurants.  In Brazil, the food is cheap but you get what you pay for 3) Also, we do a lot of walking, especially now that we have signed up for Portuguese language lessons, because our school is about a 30 minutes walk from where we are staying.

Today also included a much needed nap, and then we woke up and went searching for an internet cafe, which we found, obviously, because I wrote this entry in said internet cafe.  Anyway, we are getting hungry, so it´s probably time to exercise my hands for some extreme gesturing.  I hope everyone is having a grand weekend.  I´ll be back!!!

Patrick  =:-)