Casas, Cars, Churrascos

Last weekend was quite the busy weekend in Fortaleza. We arose at 8:45 am on Saturday, after a late dinner at a friend's house the previous night. We headed to meet the landlord for the apartment that we planned to begin renting on Saturday. We arrived at the apartment, reviewed the rental documents in Portuguese and prepared for a day of moving. The first task we faced was making copies of the keys to the gate, two ouside doors, and doors to our first floor porch, and roof top patio. Noticing a key maker adjacent to our apartment, I quickly came to the conclusion that perhaps for the first time a task could be accomplished easily in Brazil. Little did I realize that the key maker did not have enough keys for the sets that we needed. Thus, he did what any shop owner would do, he asked me to sit and watch his shop while he set off on his bicycle to acquire more keys. I assumed that he would just be headed around the corner, but instead he arrived back nearly an hour later, keys finally in hand. The first task of the day now complete, we qte a quick lunch, and set off in search of a rental car to move our things and make a trip to the local Hiper Bompreço (Walmart Brasil) for supplies for our new home.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, we finally were able to obtain a small rental car for $30 for a day. We were told that the car had no gas, and so we quickly headed to a gas station. We were not told however that this car had a habit of quitting when stopped, AND had some problem with the battery that prevented it from restarting. And so as we journeyed to our old home in Rodolfo Teofilo to pick up our things, the car quit just as we rounded the final turn. Fortunately, the car had a manual transmission, and we were able to have three of us push the car, while the third person steered and popped the clutch to restart the car. We then began to move our things, planning to pack the car as full as possible along with 2 people (one person to drive and one to push should the car stall). Chris Brown and I made the first trip, and indeed the car stalled out on a busy street at an intersection. Fortunately, I was up to the task of pushing the fully loaded car through the intersection, eventually achieving a high enough velocity to allow Chris B. to pop the clutch and get the engine restarted. After a second trip, we headed to Walmart Brasil to purchase items for our new home.

I am not a fan of shopping at large department stores in the US, and this trip to Hiper Bompreço reminded me exactly why. After scurrying around the store for a long two and a half hours, we finally felt that we had all that we needed for our new home. Ben and I took a car full of things back while Chris and Nate took a taxi back to our new house. We then began to unload our things, which included some furniture for our rooftop patio. We quickly realized that this furniture would not fit up our narrow staircase, and devised a cable (actually an old piece of coaxial cable connected to an exercise band) to raise the tables and chairs to the roof. This process went reasonably smoothly, with the exception of one chair crashing to the ground from near the roof as it slipped from our poorly tied harness. Exhausted, we finally were able to catch up on our sleep. We planned to have friends over for a barbecue the next evening, an event that would teach us amny more lessons about life in Brazil.

Regarding our barbecue, we purchased some chicken from the store from the refrigerted section. First mistake: In Brazil, apparently one should always purchase frozen chicken unless they want inedible foul smelling poultry. I had also purchased some charcoal and lighter fluid. Second mistake: Purchasing not enough charcoal, and the wrong type of lighter fluid. We had planned to barbecue the chicken American-style, and had purchased some barbecue sauce and salt. Third mistake: I purchased regular salt, not realizing that to barbecue, one needed to purchase churrasco sal, salt designed just for barbecuing. Also, apparently to properly barbecue chicken Brazilian style, one needs to use pepper and other spices, rather than barbecue sauce. And so as our guests arrived, we were informed that we had spoiled chicken, not enough charcoal, the wrong kind of salt, and a complete absence of suitable spices or Brazilian side dishes. Fortuantely, our friends Fabrizio, Germana, and Fabiana were able to resuce our barbecue by bringing more meat, and suggesting appropriate spices to use. And so the barbecue ended up going well, just with a bit of a delayed dinner secondary to all of our "mistakes."