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

[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.