Kelson's favorite places

Today I accidently slept in until noon... whoops. I'm going to chalk that up to jet lag... ;) After waking up, we left for the day and explored Maceio a little bit; this day could be titled "Kelson's favorite places."

The first place we went was a restaurant called Baru, and was an open aired restaurant overlooking a river (the river where his Jet Ski accident was, none the less.) This picture is looking at the parking lot,

away from the river. The restaurant always has music, and today it had a quartet that played mostly samba music. It was fantastic! What an atmosphere! And that's exactly why we went. We were at this restaurant all day. We started with drinks, and I enjoyed my new favorite, aqua de coco (coconut water). Lest you be diverted, it tastes much different t

han what you find in those dry, brown coconuts in the grocery store. Murilo practically lives off this stuff when he's here, and he won't touch the water from the coconuts in the grocery store. We eventually ordered a dish of fried fish with farofa (a tasty variety of ground corn meal, i think) and a salsa of diced vegetables. Murilo's family eats most food with olive oil, which really does make food (especially slightly dry meat) taste great. After eating we just stayed. With the perfect, winter-in-Florida temperature, slight breeze, the view and the music, it was amazing. That is, until Kelson caught me off guard by calling the quartet over and had me take a picture with them... I dragged Luisa into it... And they discovered a new past time: getting me to flush.

I am learning, however, to do things slower here. I am learning to walk slower, eat and drink slower, and just how to sit and enjoy the atmosphere. It's a nice change away from angry Corvallis parents to say the least. :)

After Baru, we went to another restaurant on the same river called O Peixarao. It had a magnificent view that I struggled to capture with the camera.

I decided it was better in real life, but here are a couple of my best attempts, anyway. We watched the sunset here which turned the clouds into this crazy display of colors. Here we had agua de coco and shrimp soup, which again, was AMAZING! It was a little bit like oyster chowder only not quite as thick and the chunks were more like small shreds. I'm keeping track of my favorite food so I can open a Brazilian restaurant someday - it's just not right that the US is deprived of this stuff.

On the way back to the apartment we stopped at the grocery store (owned by Wal Mart, believe it or not) and split into two: team grocery and team tapioca. Tapioca is a food typical of Bahia. The food has this base of a fine, sweet rice-type substance pressed into a small tortilla-like shape with coconut. (I think this is the "Tapioca" part of it all). They top this base with various things: you can order it with cheese and chicken, ham and cheese, chocolate and banana, cheese and condensed milk. Louisa ordered for her and I and we split the two she ordered. One was queijo e carne do sol (cheese and this salty, corned-beef-but-better like meat), and the other was quijo e dulce de leite. She ordered the second one without the cheese, but they missed that detail. I thought it was still good.

Now we are having our typical evening: hanging out in the living room with TV, conversation, and food (really, we eat a lot.)

I'll post more pictures to facebook. Time to stop indulging myself with english! Tomorrow I'll try to write a post to introduce you to the family.