Monday, April 25, 2011

Floripa Through New Eyes

Hey everyone! This is the third and last installment about my terrific vacation.

THE CALLING
I have just gotten home from my amazing trip to Gramado when my phone rang:
- Hello.
- Hi Lily. This is Cristiane.
- Hi! How's life?
- Just fine. I'm calling to ask if you are doing anything next weekend.
- (I had been traveling too much and was about to give an excuse but I had a second thought when I remembered that I hadn't met the distance tutor Cristiane yet). I'm available. Why?
- Mike, my Bostonian friend, is visiting me and we would like to invite you to join us for a hike next Saturday.
- That's cool. I'm in! Can you pick me up?
- Sure. Saturday at 8am I will be there at your place.
- Great. See you then.
- Bye!

THE MEETING
Saturday arrived and I finally met Cristiane, Mike and Eduardo - another friend of hers who joined us for the hike. Everybody was nice and friendly and we spoke in English all the time because Mike couldn't speak Portuguese. Well, he could say some words like 'oi', 'tudo bem?', 'obrigado', 'por favor' and 'que vista linda!'. He learnt all these words from a tourist book he bought at the airport. His Portuguese accent was very cute!

Before starting our hiking we made a stop downtown to show him the Public Market, the former Customs'building, and the Fig Square. Mike loved everything, specially the graffiti that we hadn't noticed before! He thought they were very unique. Then we went to Costa da Lagoa. It was a 7 km hiking but it lasted longer than we expected because Mike wanted to take a lot of pictures. He is a biology master's student at Harvard University and he was very impressed with every single plant here. For me that was amazing because when we live in the same city for a long time we just get accustomed to everything. I thanked Mike because I could see my own city through new eyes.

THE RESTAURANT
Later that day we went to the south part of the island and Mike fell in love with Matadeiro beach. But I told him that they used to kill whales there in the past and that was the origin of the name. Then he changed his mind and said that Matadeiro beach was not that nice anymore! Then the funny part happened. We were in a restaurant and Mike went to the restroom. He took a while there then came back and said nothing. A little later the cleaning lady started to clean the bathroom and kept the door open. When she pulled the cord to flush the toilet, Mike enthusiastically said: 'Oh, so this is how it works!!!' Then he told us that he hadn't understood that he should have pulled the cord to flush! Cristiane, Eduardo and I laughed a lot. But now I think we were kind of cruel. Mike was in a new country and didn't have to know how some toilet flushes work in Brazil. What would you have done if you were in our shoes? Would you have just laughed like we did? Or would you have explained the different ways we use to flush in Brazil? But how could that be since we flush the toilet every day without thinking about it? How can you explain something like that?