I had HAM this morning

They told me yesterday that it had been on the news... that all the ham that had been bought in the last ten days shouldn't be consumed... and that it was dangerous... I had not watched the news... Oh well... I had ham yesterday morning and my ears didn't grow bigger so I guess it was fine so I had some again today...

So here I am writing and sitting in the shadow of a palmtree and after a long walk that started on a normal road that turned into a paved road that turned into a kind of trail... with small rocks at the beginning and then sand and then earth and then mud and then nothing else but grass... and then really nothing so I was walking into the wild and I found the magic couch! I even took a picture of me and the magic couch!

If you asked me where I am, I would say that I don't know because I was only trying to find a way to get across a river so I could climb the mountain that was on the other side... But I met a rabbit and I asked him which road I should take... He asked me where I was going and I said that I didn't know so he said that then it didn't matter which road I would choose...

So I picked one and Doris came to me while I was on a little boat with a singing captain with a white beard, sunglasses, a cap and a cigarette and probably the tatto of an anchor on his arm... and a pipe somewhere not too far... Popeye the sailorman dum dum... So Doris told me to just keep walking and just keep walking and then just keep walking...

So because I believe that Doris is always right I told myself that I should keep walking and that it didn't matter which road I was walking on... So to tell you everything the smell of this place is almost like the one at the Biodome in the rainforest part! Plus the heat and the humidity! Some brasilian probably went to Montreal and stole a bit of the smell of the Biodome rainforest and he reproduced it in Brasil...

Yesterday I saw on TV that some one had captured two ghosts in two small bottles - the ghosts looked like some blue colored water... and they were selling them on ebay... I should have been watching the news...

On my way back, I met a man and he looked like the second last human on earth - in this part of the city - and then a car (!!!) came very fast and it also looked like the last car on earth - but this time in the whole world... This car had probably been used to put some trees down the way it looked... Or the thing about the ghosts is true and this car was the ghost of a car and... Oh my my (it's a line of my new favorite song) it was blue! And I am sure it would have looked like some blue colored water if I had put it in a small bottle...

Animal Farm by George Orwell ends like this: The creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which... I'm not sure if the ham was good this morning but I feel normal...

I still have to get back to the river to meet the "passeur" if he is still there... The happy sailor man dum dum who found the best job in the world... after a lifelong quest trying to find happiness... he realised that it was in the journey and not in the destination... Now he helps people to continue their journey - some of them in direction of a magic couch!

___

Besides all this, I did arrive in BC on last Thursday - I was going to camp but after walking for several hours with a ton of stuff on my back - and smiling at people who would take pictures of me - I started to ask where (the h***) it was and then I got tons of different information until I got to the right street and a woman standing in the middle of the street told me it was closed... I found a pousada but there was no running water... hum... And then I stayed in a hostel where I am sending this from - and will move later today with some CSers (he know les TETES A CLAQUES!) that I met on Saturday! So I really enjoy being here - once again it is very different than what I had expected!

Why I LOVE Facebook - and some other news

I got a friend request this morning from someone I had met in Montreal about two years ago - I accepted obviously - and then I looked at this person's profile to find out that she was from Floripa - exactly where I am right now (it was totally random) so I sent her a message to tell her - and about an hour later she was there to pick me up and we went to a small city - where I had already been when it was actually raining (!!!) to eat seafood! It's great to be living in such a small world! And it's even greater when there is absolutely no expectations between two people and when you realise that it is as if you had known each other for a long time! I really like the not planned plans!

---

An other great and true story:

Yesterday I went to the beach and it rained... The end.

(Look at the pictures if it is not exciting enough...)

---

I might leave Floripa tomorrow for BC (the brasilian BC) and I will probably be leaving in a tent... So even if I guess I could, I don't think I will use Internet everyday... I already hear some of you begging me to continue writing as often as possible - I will try to, don't worry!

---

NOW, I'd like to know who read one or more entries in this blog... So here is the list of everyone who told me something about it - by the way, have I ever told you that I LOVE reading your comments? And that I really sincerely appreciated to know that you were reading it?

So, if you are reading this and your name is not in the list, let me know! If your name is there but you have no idea who I am nor what this blog is about, let me know too... I will remove it!

(For your information, the names with * are the followers... and the names in bold are the people who hosted me - I thank you all so much!)

Eli * Dominik * Luila * Andree * Susana U.* Julia L. * Mariany * Amanda M. * Beatriz * Michelle * Anne * Camila V. Renata Ulisses Mariana Ana K. Marianne Anne-Sophie Claudia A. Maria H. M-H Vero Isa John Émilie Debora Miguel Vivie Cornelia Jessica L. Simone L. Caro D.

The last but not the last... (drums...) CS Friend!!!!!!!!!! (You really don't remember singing Ironic? I thought we were going to start a band...)

Me - And isn't it ironic...

You - Yes it is!

Me - Don't you think?

You - A little too ironic...

Me - Yeah I really do think,,,

Together - It's like raaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.........................

---

If I still have some of your attention in this moment full of emotions - and if you're interested of course, you should go read this: http://blog.invisiblechildren.com/?p=5815

If you know some of the things that I've been doing in the last year, you know that I tried to help the movement called The Invisible Children to reach their objective which is to free the child soldiers who were abducted by the LRA in Central Africa and to help the children who suffered because of this army... The link is about a MAJOR NEWS!

---

About the pictures, the tree that you see is huge just in case you didn't pay attention to the size of the people... It is probably something like 40 meters wide!

---

Before leaving, there is one question (that I don't have an answer to) that I have in mind... Don't answer if it is not relevant to you... Why is it normal in Brasil to wear a shirt or sandals or a swim suit or any piece of clothe with the brasilian flag and/or the word Brasil and it is not normal in Quebec - except on our national holiday?

BOA NOITE ;)

Eu quero saber... Você já viu a chuva ?

I wanna know... Have you ever seen (that much) rain...?

Ok I am now in Florianopolis - I thought it was only raining in Sao Paulo, but apparently not... they decided to share the rain with other cities... and the rain I'm talking about is not normal rain... It's a deluge! It can be sunny for a long time, you can get some sunburns and as you are putting some sunblock on, the sky turns grey and the next second, it is falling on you... not drop by drop, but all at the same time... and you would expect that after it fell on you, it would turn blue again, but it doesn't... it keeps falling and falling and raining and raining until wherever you were hiding - you get wet anyway - and you are very thankful for wearing havaianas because anyway, even if you got long legs and you jump very far, there is just no way you will not step in some deep ponds of water on your way home... They had told me that summer in Brasil was the rain season, but I had not listened enough... I heard yesterday that some beaches were not there anymore... and there is something else that is not there anymore, my facial tan... it litterally fell off... At the beginning, there were just a few pieces gone, but I either looked as if my face was burned, or as if I was dirty... or both... so I took everything off and I look as arriving from the winter again! So the moral is that you should always carry sunblock AND an umbrella with you in Brasil!

---

Here is a typical Couch Surfing story... Everything started when I contacted some other foreigners who appeared to be in the same city... Some of them replied to me - and they were two finnish girls... They actually made the perfect/impossible pair - I can't imagine one of them traveling without the other one... One was totally crazy (Stinke - fake name) - the kind full or piercings and tattoos who talks to every strangers - and the other one (Iida) was normal - whatever your definition of 'normal' is, she was the normal one...

The first time we met, they had a plan and it went fine... We went to swim in some 'natural pools' which meant at this time swimming in a lake with huge waves surrounded by huge slippery rocks... that were either dangerous when the water would push us on them or impossible to reach when the water was going the other way... It was fine though... The more typical CS plan happened a few days later...

I went to the finnish CSers' place - they said that there was a party somewhere in the evening... But they didn't have any more information... Their CS host was not home, neither was their CS co-host... There was an other guy who was talking on the phone with someone he didn't know - that the girls had met the day before - and that they also hardly remembered... so this guy came to pick us up to take us to his place - but not really - he was a brasilian CSer - he had to ask for the key to the neighboors... we entered the place - he said that the guy who really lived there was going to come later... So I asked for the plan for the night - I wanted to know because if there was no plan, I had to go back home by bus...

There was still no plan - the only answer I could get was that the other guy - the peruvian guy who lived in the apartment - was walking home... but he had to stop often because of the rain and this was why we had to wait for him for hours... So I thought that my best option was to go home but there was a problem... the gate was locked and the neighboors were sleeping... this is what I call a typical CS plan... So I climbed the gate hoping to catch a bus - that never came... it was too late - so I went back to the apartment - and finally met the peruvian guy... Then we decided to go to a university party - with a reggae band and a crowd of hippies (and cheap beer - something like 1$ each) fighting to stay under a roof - the party was outside - and the sky was still falling! At the end, we got in the car, completely wet - there was no way the driver could see where he was going, we opened the windows - I kept trying to dry the windshield - but anyway, the water splashed higher than the car and it kept raining in the car... we drove slowly and after a stop in a gas station to get something to eat (mmm... gas station food!) we were back at the first apartment! I was dry again + there was no more gate to climb to go inside or outside!

---

So right now I'm in Florianopolis - on the Ilha de Santa Catarina... It is very different than most of the places that I've seen so far... There have been waves of immigrants from many european countries - mostly germans! So we can hear many spoken languages - but also a lot of spanish because we are not far from Argentina and the beaches here are just perfect!

---

One last thing... I made many jokes about Charlie and his stolen kidney and the brasilians also stealing kidneys (and other organs) in the previous posts... but... I had been recommended a movie called 'My sister's keeper'... And I watched it... and the main topic is actually a kidney... that a girl is kind of forced to give to her sister to save her life but she doesn't want to do it so she sues her mother... It made all my kidney stories not very funny anymore... So thanks Caro! :P

(Not so #2) Random Entry

Yesterday evening, I was reading the news on radio-canada.ca and there was something about the famine in Ethiopia in 1984-85 - and there were some comments below the article that shocked me - so I decided to reply to some of the comments - and as I was doing it, I had in mind some names and faces of kids that I had met and whom I had developped a friendship with... Because of the maximum number of caracters allowed - and also because it wouldn't have been very pertinent in the end - I chose not to include any names.

This morning, when I opened my hotmail, I had a new message... It was a message of one of the kids that had been in my mind the night before! It is the first and only email I have ever received from any people from Ethiopia and it happened right after I clearly publicly took position for them... Isn't it more than a coincidence? It made my day!

If you expected a funny part to this entry, here it is: the members of the website can not only comment the articles, but also express if they agree or disagree (by clicking on the word) with each comment... Because it was my comment, I thought (without really thinking) that I could see the name of the only person that had disagreed (!!!) with me - by clicking on 'disagree' - but guess what happened? I disagreed with my own comment... Call me Mr Internet or Internet Genius!

One (not so) random day at the BEACH!

Yesterday I went to the beach and it was cool because I was with my new CS friend that I had met at a bus station - so we went in the water trying to make peace with the ocean but the ocean only wanted to play with us (we were some kind of toys that the ocean was trying to destroy) so then we decided that we should be friend with the sand and a little bit with the sun... and also with a coconut and an acai - but at the end, there was not much left of the coconut because after we drank the water, we asked the guy with the machete to cut it into two halves so we could eat the white stuff inside... This was our plan... So we stayed there, I read a little bit as my new friend was pretending to make crosswords... (I say pretending because she was using symbols that I didn't know...)

Something really cool (and real!) about her is that she had been teaching to some Ukrainian and Ethiopian people in Israel... :)

Then my CS friend met - by chance! (go read the story about the small world in case you forgot) her CS host who invited us for a drink and who also decided to invite 4 american guys to join us... One of them was Mitch from Baywatch - and I am sure it was him because he behaved just like Mitch probably do when the cameras are not on him... something made me doubt though - i'll tell you later... so we talked about the gold medal hockey game that they had lost... One guy was also impressed by the fact that I was from Montreal because he had been there very often - to a bar called Wandas when he was studying in Vermont... Then they started to order rounds of caipirinhas (a caipirinha is almost only sugarcane alcool - with a bit of lime juice and a lot of sugar) that we slowly started to drink... Someone asked for some sugar - the waiter brought a glass with some white powder in it - an american said it was heroin... my CS friend put some of it in her drink and mixed it...

Mitch and CS host began to be very friendly... (Summer would have been jealous if she had been there...) They kind of forgot that there were people around them... And my CS friend and I sang Ironic from Alanis Morissette... Then my CS friend began to feel not too good so Mitch told us to take her at his place so she could rest - which I tried to do... but then, drama #1! Mitch - or the guy who pretended to be him - I know he pretended because if he hadn't pretended, he would have told me he was not him - remembered that he had left the keys with his drunken friends on the beach - and I know that Mitch would have never done that... And drama #2 - the CS host who was visibly super drunk told me that she was brasilian and that her mission was to take care of my CS friend and that I shouldn't be there - and that I should go home... I didn't feel like arguing, so I started to walk alone on a dark road...

Drama #3 and Mambo #5 - I saw a banana tree and because of the music and the monkeys who were dancing and singing at its top, I decided to climb to join them - and I was served a drink called 'vitamina' which is a kind of banana milkshake, a piece of banana cake and some banana doce - which is a kind of banana jam or banana jelly... some people think that we shouldn't make any of those things with bananas because the texture is not one of jam neither one of jelly - still, some people make some because they believe that the most important part is the taste... And I woke up at home with - of course - a banana in my favorite ear... I checked if I had scars - I didn't - my kidneys were there!

All the leaves are green and the sky is grey...

Guess where I spent the last 5 days?

A city where it's been raining a lot in the last... months!

A city where when you call someone to pick you up at the airport - it might happen that this person's phone is in this person's car - not working anymore - because there had been a flood so there was water in the car and the phone drowned... (phones can't swim...) (And don't worry Vivie - I still like you!)

A city where wearing shorts and my new white Havaianas probably looked strange for some people - but fortunately, I don't care! And there are small brasilian flags on them - but I don't think it made it less strange...

A city where they sell the biggest mortadella sandwiches in the world - mortadella is a kind of bologne, but what makes it so special is that there are big chunks of fat to add to the taste - seriously, there were probably more than 50 layers of mortadella + the cheese!

A city where when the people say they go to the beach, they actually go to the shopping mall! And when you think that they talk about eating filet mignon, they talk about filet miau... (cats filets! ...joke...)

A brasilian city where I looked like a tourist - not because I was white, but because I was actually more tanned than at least 2 people whom I compared the color of my arm with!

A city that has a museum called MASP (oh! the name of the city is in the museum's name) - where I went thinking that I would need a few hours to visit it... but after I arrived, met someone, made 2 or 3 photos, I left because the cool thing is the building itself and not the exhibition - because some of the important paintings had been stolen... (but there are still some paintings - don't worry)

A city where - surprisingly - they tried to steal my kidney! It happened in the Museu da lingua portuguesa - There was a short movie in a small room after which a wall opened - and some quiet person asked us to come behind the wall - then the wall went back to its original position - and once again, we were stuck in the dark - about to have our kidneys stolen... but I guess that the doctors were busy (probably watching the Olympics) so they didn't come...

A city where - after giving my email address to a woman in a bar - after she asked for it - I considered making one up but I didn't - she gave me her phone numberS! She was a little bit creepy...

If you don't know the name of the city after all this very precise information, just forget it...

_______________________

So with Mariana, I've also been to the park Ibirapuera - the gay street (there was not much gay stuff - at least at daytime) - the Cathedral - an area called Liberdade (a place where many Japanese people lived (and still live) after they immigrated in Brasil 100 years ago... the downtown with many pedestrians streets - where there are people who sell stuff and some people who watch for people who would see them - because it's illegal - so when someone arrives, they scream something *a*a (guess what - I forgot the word) so everybody takes its stuff and pretend that they just like to walk their cellphones or their boxes of CDs and DVDs - and of course the cellphones are not stolen and they are not trying to sell them... We also met with Lucas and Jessica - two of last summer's students at the school - not by chance this time! I tried two kinds of Cachaca (a suave one and a strong one - which makes me not understand why sometimes some students say that they miss it - because it is not something I would really miss - it is really good in drinks though) We made brigadeiros - let's keep it as a secret - it was already the third time I was making some here - so I had a lot of sugar to eat during the 11hours bus ride to the next city... where I am now... in the South... about which I still don't have much to say except that at 6h30pm, through the bus windows, I saw something I had not seen in the last 5 days... the SUN!

Winter Olympics in Brasil

After watching a lot of hockey and a lot of curling, one brasilian girl thought that Brasil should have more than 5 athletes at the next Winter Olympics... She thought that the best way was to create a new sport! It doesn't have a name yet but it's a mix of curling and hockey and what you need to play is a broom and a frog that appeared in your living room - magically!

So what to do is 1) turn your eyes from the TV to the frog 2) go in the kitchen to get a broom (any kind works - even though some might have more power than others) 3) get as close as possible to the frog without scaring her 4,5,6) open the door, broom the frog outside and close the door - all this should be done in 2 seconds or less - if you ever hope to take part to the Olympics...

You have to stay very calm or some bad things could happen 1) you could never notice the frog 2) you could not find the broom in the kitchen 3) you could scare the frog while getting closer to her 4,5,6) you could forget to open the door - so the frog would explode on the closed door, you could kill the frog with the broom even before it is outside the house, you could not hit the frog hard enough and close the door on her - so it would explode and you would lose a few points...

Here is how the points work 1) you get some points if you do everything in the right order (so you lose some if you try to hit the frog before getting the broom 2) you make points if the frog is still in one piece after you hit it 3) you make points if you don't faint after doing such incredible thing 4) finally, you make points for the time you take to do all of it

There might be an adaptation of this sport for the next Summer Olympics - an adaptation of lacrosse - which would be called - take this bat outside the house... :)

_____________________

Besides all this creativity that Brasilians show, the Winter Olympics were a big deal here in Brasil - We could watch them almost from everywhere - even when you would expect to see a futebol game in a bar - because it is summer here - there were some hockey games or curling games on the TVs! It is very common to walk on the streets and to hear Kevin Martin's name in a conversation as it was also common to hear people guessing who would score the winning goal in overtime in the men's final! (ok... maybe a little bit of exageration, but still... - it is true that the commentators discussed how Brasil could get some ice rinks to practice curling and to take part to the next Olympics...) I also watched Johannie Rochette's last performance in a japonese restaurant in Sao Paulo - almost everybody in the restaurant was also watching!

____________________

Finally, it felt good to be canadian for 17 days, but now it's time to get back to my real identity: quebecois of course! (just kidding)