Busy Being

[jrising]

jrising and www.livejournal.com have been having problems in Brazil-- one or the other hasn't been available for weeks. But I'm alive, and feeling it. A lot has happened! Briefly:

Flame arrived. We flew to Salvador. We got mugged. We got kidnapped. We ate great sushi. We chilled on an island known for its lace, but found no lace. We flew back to Belém. We partied with the World Social Forum. We attended one out of the ten lectures we tried to find. We took over a stall and collected people for my projects. We went to Marajó island and saw many water buffalo. We biked around town, and to a fishing village, ranch, and beach. We bussed for three nights to Campo Grande. We've seen 12 live music performances, eaten at 10 by-the-kilo places, took two warm showers, memorized one poem, and kissed an enumerable number of times.

Our subsequent plans include three days of Pantanal tour, one day of Bonito snorkeling, one day at the Foz do Iguaçu falls, three days of São Paulo, three days of Rio, a plane to Recife for four days of carnaval in Olinda, two days in Fortaleza, and a sad goodbye in Belém.

Comments

[calledtovienna.livejournal.com]

Wait, you got kidnapped? What happened? How did you get out?

[jrising.livejournal.com]

I should write up lots of stories, but here's this one, briefly: We asked at a hostel for a nice restaurant with local food and were given a name. It was pretty late. We got a taxi, told him where to go, and sat back. And waited. And waited. And watched the cost pile up. And tried to ask how far it would be-- oh, just a little further, he kept saying. We got to the middle of nowhere, and decided we couldn't go any further, because we had no credit card, and over half our money was going to the taxi driver. We demanded to be let out, but were told it was too dangerous. Eventually, we were left at a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, where we were assured we would get assaulted if we tried to take a bus. But we explained our situation to the greeter, who called a taxi and convinced him to only take the rest of our money to drive us home.

[kjcitygirl.livejournal.com]

yeah - i really want to hear the kidnapping story too!
and the mugging one!

glad to hear you're okay though!

*also - as a complete aside - a new girl joined our cast and as a birthday celebration she was taken to different places and given 21 different drinks. when you moved away (I doubt you'll remember this) we inherited a bottle of Brazilian Rum from you. well,when she came to our apt i gave her a shot of your Brazilian Rum. All I could think was how happy (hopefully) you would be that something of yours was used in such a celebration.

[jrising.livejournal.com]

That makes me totally happy that the rum found a good mouth. I now know the right way to use it-- I'll have to make you some drinks!

So, I need to write up a ton of stories-- I wrote the kidnapping one shortly in another reply. The mugging story isn't very good: we were walking in a deserted place late at night, in the middle of Salvador, where we definitely should not have been. Some teens came up and begged money, and then grabbed me. I don't think they even had knives, and probably would have spooked if I'd shouted at them, but I've always been told to let muggers do their thing here, so I did. They totally left Flame alone, or I would have fought. The worst part was they had this kid with them-- like 6 years old-- and he went through my pockets just like the two teens.