Chicken hearts and charades

Angela took me to her friend´s bbq. My first real experience with Brazilian bbq here. Delicious! But before I talk about food (again) I´ll introduce the cast of characters that were there. It was a small bbq with just close friends invited in honor of the birthday boy who was so sweet, but I forgot his name! He is married to the sweetest woman, who´s name I also forget, and they have a 4 month old baby named Ariel (phew a name I remember)! Their friend Guilleme was there who spoke no English, that was a challenge! And another lady and her baby. So basically a bunch of people who made me feel at home but who´s names have completely escaped me.
The food... chicken hearts.. I ATE CHICKEN HEARTS!!! They were really good, they taste like chicken, only better- like the dark meat. I actually think even Kat and Nick would like them... I swear! Tony- you would eat them like popcorn! We also had sausage, steak and chicken wings. They eat everything here with cornmeal. This is true in Sao Paulo too. They mix it with some, I am not even sure what, and use it as a side to accompany meat and rice. It´s very good, but I am not really sure I understand the point of it... it doesn´t really add that much flavor. I really enjoyed the food though. The meat, the steak was rubbed with rock salt an hour prior to its cooking. The quality of the meat kicks our best in the USA. It is super tender and filled with flavor- it tasted like it was marinated in butter, but it wasn´t at all!

Another interesting thing about Brazilians is that they like there beer SUPER cold. I already knew this from Paula, but its interesting to see when it is a whole group of people rather than just one person. We all drank out of glasses and we shared the cans of beer so you would never have a warm glass. And we drank a lot...

We played charades in the front of the house. Though it was very difficult because it was in both Portuguese and English. I am not really sure the game worked, but it was fun just the same. The birthday boy was very sweet and said that out of anyone that Angela has ever brought over, he likes me the best. He said that my energy was amazing, very open and that I break all the stereotypes of being an American. He says he can totally see me travelling the world with no problem and fitting right in. He said I was Brazilian at heart and this point was heightened when they were teaching me to Samba... all of the guys (at this point some neighbors joined us- three HOT guys and a super sweet lady who is a samba instructor) and girls almost died when they saw me shake my booty... jaws dropped in disbelief as I picked up the Samba right away! It´s very different than what I had seen in BsAs. It is very, very fast here with lot of jumping... hard to explain but if you ever have seen me dance you could understand why I would be good at this.

I must say being the foreigner is like being the new girl in school... let me tell you, it´s fun! I had almost all of the guys interested in me and well, I loved the attention! I don´t know what it is with me and 18 year olds lately... but there was another cutie patootie 18 year old who dug me... so sweet.

The night took an interesting turn when we had to stay over because there was a shooting war between two poor neighborhoods- Cidade de Deus and another. A few people were killed- it was over drugs. But it was all over the news and they advised people not to drive by these neighborhoods- the problem was that we have to pass through both on the highway. So, we did not take our chances and we decided to stay over! Don´t worry mom, I like my life far too much to get stuck in cross fire! It´s crazy to think that this is a problem though! Imagine not being able to go to Union Square East because Alphabet City and Murray Hill were shooting at each other.

We ended up going swimming as the sun was coming up... so I guess we never really went to sleep there... and once again we made it home at 7:30 am.

I really hope to see some sites today... maybe tomorrow. You can definitely say I am getting a true view on life here... though I really need to do some touristy things... and a lot more Samba!