Back In SP

So Ben and I just got back from my uncle's beach house in Ubatuba where we had this chill family gathering (plus ben) for like the past 2 weeks. We gto a lot of rain, the place is sorta in the rainforest, but the sunny days we had were unbelievable. Some assorted highlights:
--meeting lots of new family. My aunts brother remarried, so i got to meet the wife, two new "cousins", the wife's sister, and her daughter. Also, my cousin (my "uncle" David's Daguhter) Adriana's kids Nina and Alice were babies last time i saw them, and now they're 7 and 9! saw that was really cool getting to know them too
--drinking caipirinhas on the beach. the first day we got there ben and i went straight to the bar, got sorta drunk, stumbled back to the house in the dark where we found out adriana and her kids had jstu arrived. I drunkenly said hi, gave them gifts, and then Ben and i both went upstairs and passed out. great first impresisons all around!
--eating breakfast with the birds. Right by the dinner table there's a hummingbird feeder, and my uncle always puts out a little tray with fruit to attract birds. the brids in the area were beautiful! there were these realy colorful green birds that flocked to the tree, yellow birds, blue birds, this one brilliant red bird called a "Tieh Sangue," and tons of hummingbirds.
--BEN AND I ROCK AT EBACH TENNIS. 29 volleys, bitches.
--oh yeah, i started running with ben. i hope i keep it up. one day ben was running alone and saw what we think was a tamandua.
--this one day, all the young kids held this goofy "Espactacular!" for us. it was like a magic show (with pretty low end magic, i mean the oldest ones were 10 or 11), some clowning i didn't understand cause it was in portuguese, and acrobatics on the hammock chairs. it was realy cute. they were super disorganized, fighting over who got to do what, and the show went on for like a half hour.
--Ben and I made the theme of the trip, "BITCHES." There was no one on the beach our age, less any girls, so we just joked all the time about the dirty shit we'd say if we foudn any. finally we met these 2 really cute girls on our beach, helena and leila, so we invited them to the next beach over for a drink. Helena said she lived near me in SP, but they were on their way to lunch, but would be back afterwards. Ben and i left the beach as well to go running (really hard run up this monstrous hill). Lunch was waiting for us whend we got back, so we didn't get back to the beach until about 2 hours after we met the girls. They had already gone home, so ben and i went to the bar alone. it was kinda late, so surprise surprise, a bunch of people hanging aroun the abr were already drunk. two of them decided to be friendly to us. super friendly. they were liek touching us and making us generally uncomfortable, and were generally just hard to get rid of. this one really nasty old lady just loved ben and kept hugging his head to her breast and kissing him. finally i was just like (in poor portuguese) "allright lady, leave us by ourselves. go to some other place away from here." she got kinda mad and gave me the "you're a jerk! i thought you guys were cool" bit and scampered off. As we left the bar, and started to rain. heavily. we got soaked. The next day we left for a friends place on a nearby island for the weekend, so we never saw those girls again. damn shame too, cause that helena girl seemed real nice, and lemme tell you, she had a rack.
Our whole family-crew went to a friend's place.
--so we spent a weekend at this island, "Ilha Bella," at David's friend's house, Carlos and Vera. These two folks have the nicest place i've ever seen. They had this sorta 3 house set up real high up on the island overlooking the ocean. the houses are set up so you can't see any other nearby houses, so you feel like you're alone at this beautfiul place. We ate very well too, cause carlos knows how to cook. i tried to learn a little, but we'll see what i picked up next time i try to cook fish. That night Ben and i hit the town. We started out with coffee with my cousin Flavia and her faincee Alex at this wierd cafe. Anywhere you sit, you are looking at display cases filled with random crap they are trying to sell you. after that we wandered around and found 3 bars, only one of which interested us. We got there early, so the place was empty with nothing but us and a Shitty DVD of some concert going (i'm pretty sure it was the same show from 40yo virgin). the drinks were terrible. they were soooo strong, and we made the mistake of trying to drink them with straws, which made them taste worse. finally the band started at midnight, playing brazilian rock. Really, they played US covers with made up brazilian lyrics. People were singing along, so i guess most of brazilian pop is probably plagiarized rock. These two girls, prob firends of the band, sat on the stairs right in front of us. We asked them over to our table a couple times through the night, and they always said no (bitches!). Later on i got these 2 local girls to sit with us. we flirted a little, then after maybe 30min one of them said they had to leave. really, they meant they were bored and were goign to the opposite side fo the room to hang out away from us. roudn 4am when Ben and i were leaving, they were a little closer to our table, and well, i was a little drunk. so i look to ben and i go "ben, i'm gonna kiss her!" he didn't even udnerstand what i meant at the time, but we went up to them to say goodbye, and i made a move on the cuter of the two. we made out for like 5 seconds, then ben and i stumbled home (up this hill for 45 min).
--Our last day at ilha bella, we went to this secluded beach where we met these 2 cool girls, esther, who lives outside SP, and her friend lorinne, who was visiting from france. it was kinda embarrassing, my relatives started talking to them, and then like called us over, and left when the four of us started talking. i got esther's email, so we're probably gonna hang out some now that i'm back in town. So at least i've got one friend in SP my age now.


so yeah, that was a long blog entry but hey, it's been a fun 2 weeks. Ben has been digging brazil, and i'm glad he's here. next week we're going to rio, and then to a beach nearby called buzios (sp?). The airports are kind of a problem though. we were planning on flying out of congonhas, but there have been problems there to say the least. A few weks a go a plane almost slid off the tarmac in the rain, and a week ago one actually did, killing at least 144 people and startign a pretty heavy fire. we were at the beach at the time, but kept up with the situation from the news. it was kind of annoying, the news never really reported anythign new. last night or the night before, we were watching some higher-up give a speech on teh investigation and he said (loosely translated), "in brazil, we traditional don't look for 'causes.' we don't liek to point fingers. we don't even liek to use this word 'cause.' the word cause implies 'responsibility,' and we're here to identify factors that contributed to the incident so we can minimize them in the future, not place blame on anyone." Now, it was recognized the nigth of the incident that a) the airport floods in the rain because the tarmac does not have special ridges, and b) the pilots had been telling the airport folks to close down, but they weren't listening and were recieving direct orders from someone or some organization to stay in operation (the brazilian FAA i guess). translation: some one is definitely responsible. I thoguth it was really funny hearing this kind of bullshit, cause i was so used to it from the bush administration, and now here it was again in portuguese. Apparently the president of brazil, Lula, can abrely even read. you win brazil. either way, the airport flooded again a few days later, there was a landslide of some construction material, and now the place is clsoed and it's supposed to be really hard to get local flights anywhere.

so yeah, the short story is Ben and I are going to take buses to rio. i'm going to stop writing now cause chances are you stopped reading. i'll update in a few days on the rio plan. And oh yeah! i've got job interviews this week, so wish me luck!