no wheels? make your own bus!

we arrived in são paulo this morning and were surprisingly greeted by my distant relatives at the airport. they came to pick us up--very nice! we changed some cash at the airport so we could pay for our hostel. then they meant to drive us to our hostel but they went the opposite way to their parents' home instead and we go to spend some time there and meet the family. they live quite a bit away from central são paulo and so it was nice to see an alternate to the concrete jungle. one street we drove on for awhile isn't serviced by buses so i got to see something typical for there but not where i'm from. guys will hang off the back of trucks in order to hitch a free ride. a lot of them are trying to make their way to the subway metro station. they hop on when the cars have stopped or slowed down. it's not like they're asking permission from the drivers either. it's a very dangerous way to make your own bus.

staying with my distant relatives were several people from washington dc and one kid from london. when we arrived, a couple of them had just pulled apart the family dogs from fighting and it wasn't a pretty sight. the losing dog was covered in blood. the other dog has killed another dog in the past. after an hour or so they drove us to our hostel and we blew pretty much all our cash on paying for the room. on the drive over to the hostel, once we reached the city proper, i busted out the ipod so i could hear a couple chico science e nação zumbi songs. i really wanted to hear 2 specific songs in brazil to make me feel like i'm really there. ("a cidade" and "rios, pontes, e overdrives")

we are staying at pousada dos franceses in bela vista. after we settled into our room, we walked over to avenida paulista and checked it out. it's mostly businesses but it's a major street and worth checking out to familiarize ourselves with our new environment. we have heard so much about the dangerous of this city and country that we're being really cautious but we needed to go to the atm to get more cash.

veganized pizza

it was still early but we were already hungry for dinner. that's something you can't do in latin america as they eat late and party late. we saw a small take-out pizza place on the way back to our hostel and there were workers working away. we tried to order a vegetarian pizza without cheese but the lady wasn't happy with us. none of us speak portuguese. twiddle thumbs is trying to use her spanish skills to get through somehow but it's proving difficult. the lady whips out one of their to go menus and points to a section and i realize that she's saying they're not open yet, that they open at 6pm which is 10-15 minutes from now. we go to the corner place that serves food and drinks and is open now. we have a drink there and wait, go back and order the pizza. we take it back to the hostel and it's pretty good except it doesn't have any tomato sauce. it does have hearts of palm which we've only had once or twice before. we had no idea you could put it on pizza. that combined with the sesame seed crust, it's a pretty damned good pizza!