You Got Your Samba in My Sioux War Dance

Mission Started--Not Accomplished.

I went into the city with my Texas Friend, David, and did a little exploring yesterday. We toured the National Library (I have to say, a bit of a let down...rather than explaining history about the building, architects (our guide did a bit of this, materials, interesting insights about the building and its history), she pretty much lead us from room to room and told us what happened in that room/books stored and let us enter and look.), the large concrete Conical shaped Catholic Cathedral...I'll try and post a picture of that for you--it's a modern TRIP to say the least, but in it's own way, quite pretty, and the romanesque arches of Lapa...originally an acqueduct (sp) to bring water to the downtown area of the city--now a trolly track.

So overall a good day of sightseeing. We looked like tourists...and acted like ones too--took a couple of pictures.

THE BRASILIAN PECKING ORDER

While eating lunch, outside of our cafe a Peruvian Flute Band was playing for tips. Most of you have probably walked by these groups...they play some kind of wind flute (the Zither if you've seen the tv-infomercials), hyped up by a muscial underscore. The variation here is that while this Peruvian music is playing, one or two, dressed in pretty authentic looking American Indian dress and head gear, are out front doing an American Indian Dance. It's a strange mixture of cultures, music, and dance, and I'm guessing most Brasilians don't know the difference. It would kind of be like us watching some Southeast Asian Dance and not having any idea that maybe the music or the dance form came from some place in Russia.

Anyway, all's good, we're chowing down on our Ham Pizza without any red sauce, and we look over at this performing group and a old drunk has decided to join in the dance. It was pretty funny, watching him try to mimic the American Indian dance moves, but with a samba mentality. David and I were having a good time, laughing, and seeing what he'd do next when what I think was the Owner of the restaurant stormed towards him, screamed for him to leave and when the Drunk protested, saying he was only dancing, the Owner HIT him in the head, forcing him to the ground. He did stand up, but moved away...just out of swinging position, then proceeded to moon the owner, and then flash a full Monty at him in protest and defiance.

We were pretty appauled of the assault on the poor guy.

David was so mad that he called a policeman over and protested to him about the abuser's actions. According to the policeman..."it's complicated". Meaning that it isn't his task to monitor social issues like a drunk...the hard reality is Brasil hasn't progressed to the point where they have a large social infrastructure to take care of these types of people/situations. So it's left to what in this case was the vigilante action of the restaurant owner. The policeman's defense was that he exposed himself. Both David and I quickly chimed back, BUT ONLY AFTER HE WAS HIT.


The sad thing was, yes the guy was obviously drunk, but was he hurting anyone? Causing anyone harm? No.

Yet being low on the pecking order, he took a beating. And it appeared that only David and I saw anything wrong with that.

I'S BES SPEAKIN GOOD PURDY SOON, YESS I'S BES

So I did I...I hired me a Portuguese tutor. She begins today. I tried to bring here down another $3 per hour, she wasn't budging, and finally I thought to myself...WHAT? You're haggling over $3 per hour? LOL

It was like when I was in Shanghai with friends back in 1985, and we really wanted to go see the Shanghai Acrobats. World renowned, yet preforming there in their own auditorium. A chance of a life time, right?

Well, you get so accustomed to haggling for better prices, that when we got there, and tried to buy the tickets from a scalper, we almost walked away because he wanted us to pay $5 per ticket, instead of the $4 we were trying to haggle down to.

We finally had to look at ourselves and say, WHAT ARE WE DOING? It's a DOLLAR. We'd got caught up in the drive a mile to save $.10 mentality.

We did pay the price, saw the act, and loved it.

I hope I love my Portuguese Professor as much.

I wonder if she can teach me while sitting atop six chairs all balancing on only one leg of each chair.

I'd pay $5 more per hour to see that.

MSN GETTING ME DOWN

For some reason, My Microsoft software sent me a message last night that I had to download some new version of something--I hope it's not a virus. But it wouldn't let me proceed forward with anything Microsoft related unless I did, so I started downloading last night and because of it...I couldn't log onto here to write this.

Sorry for another lost day of blog.

I hope you missed it/me.

Chovendo ontem...18