rio II

8-8-04

ah rio. on friday me and O went to meet her professor. he is getting paid to be in rio and write a paper. must be nice. he is writing about neighborhoods that are inclusive vs. exclusive. it is apparently a very big subject in cities like rio and probably places like new york, london, etc. yawn.

he and his family are nice though. another history professor joined us for "ice cold" beer at this well known spot, Cervantes. me and history professors. well, the wife is a fellow attorney. so, that helped a lot, even though she was often occupied with their five month old baby. and the conversation actually focused on me. these people that study old stuff were completely fascinated by the on-line mediation work that i do. it was soooooo weird having people listen to me and ask all kinds of thoughtful questions. talk about the tables being turned.

that night my crew (me, o, and j) enjoyed a dinner at this fancy french restaurant, Olympé. in a word, OHMYGOD!!! it was freaking amazin!

we had such good food. parmesan scallops, escargot something or other, chocolate cake, banana tart, my favorie red wine (amarone), and lots of caipirinhas. holla! if you ever good to rio, please eat at Olympé. it ain't cheap. but it is so worth it.

afterwards, the now tipsy crew went to Lapa, which is another area of rio. i have no clue where it is geographically. but it is the area for going out. or so they say.

there were, in fact, lots of people out. but we couldn't seem to connect with the local energy. a lot of people were either really young/silly or just boring. nuthin like the snoop dogg video.

saturday was pretty uneventful. i worked for a couple of hours in a cold but cool (lol) bookstore. and i hung out with jason in barra. he bravely took the really long walk with me in search of harley davidson. man, we walked a long ass time. we finally found it, but it was closed. just closed thought. so that means i had to put my sweet talking in effect. it worked. the heavily armed hired security guy open the gates and let us in. it was kinda funny seeing the tan brown versions of my cousins and parents talking harley talk (i guess) in portugeuse. my mission was to purchase some harley rio t-shirts for my mother, daddy, cousin myrtle and cousin wilbert. no luck. the shirts they had wouldn't fit my finger. hopefully i will have luck in sao paolo. keep your fingers crossed! that night we had dinner at the copacabana hotel. very victorian. very old fashioned. afterwards we stood outside of HELP. this is a very, very famous club where anyone who wants to get their freak on in rio must go. we saw soooooooo many johns and their "dates." i am not drawing conclusions either. it was very obvious what was going on. i wish we woulda went in.

sunday i worked so more. then we went to the museum of contemporary art. or modern art. the kind that is hard to figure out. it was actually pretty neat though. the building looked like slabs of concrete in the shape of a long tee-pee. afterwards we went to the mall.

you know you are american if you going to another country and seek refuge (or at least a good time) in the mall. lol. we saw stepford wives. it's actually pretty funny.

when we returned to the hotel there were some american guys standing outside. we introduced ourselves and chatted a bit. one of the guys runs tours for this art gallery, http://www.octobergallery.com/.

it's was pretty funny exchanging salvador stories with them. we went our seperate ways, but then decided to follow them (without their knowledge). can you say high school? it was actually pretty funny and they were ok with our impromptu stalking. we went out for drinks and talked the most random things from music. i liked one of the guys and he lives in atl. but of course i don't have any game. so, i didn't give him my info when we said our goodbyes. oh well.

tomorrow we leave for sao paolo.