when travelers colide

When I was up in Recife I met this aussie traveler named Tom who was backpacking South America. He passed through são paulo this weekend, so i offered to show him around (sadly i couldn't give him a place to crash though). Last night i took him and his hostel crew (total party 9 people!) out to vila madalena to ó do borogodo for some traditional samba. we got tehre an horu before the usic started, and they all decided to get some food. well. we got back 2 hours later to find the place was crazy full plus a line, so we went next door to grazi a dio, the club georgiana itnroduced me to (did i mention she broke up with her bf? shame i'm skipping town).

we had a good time. sambasoul was playing and did that thing they do. music ended sorta early, but we kicked it until we were the last kids there. looking for an after party we got some drinks at a tiny bar set up in a parking lot, which was soorta wierd but cozy. the bartender was kinda unfriendly but it jsut added to the whole drinking in a parking lot atmosphere. some other guy there said he was trying to compile a book of drink mixes and that he felt it aws almost complete. i had the honor of giving him the white russian recipe. i'm pretty sure he doesn't actually know shit about cocktails if he didn't know that one and thoguht his book was complete.

today i met up with tom and his friend joel again in the center of the city to visit some museums. i only had a little under 2 hour to play cause i had stupidly arranged for a make up class with a student that day and had a chanukah dinner with the extended family to get to afterwards.

we never made it to the museums. we were all still sorta hungover and more interested in food. i took them to liberdade, SP's answer to china town, where we ate alot. really good food. eating with tom and joel was alot of fun cause they had been eating basically the same thing for months (i suppose i have too) and needed the diversity. their elation rubbed off.

wierd coincidence: on the way to meet them, i ran into some relatives on av. paulista. crazy crazy crazy. 4th biggest city in the world by population: you don't jsut "run into people" here. by the way, ehre's how complicated the relations get down here: the family i ran into are my mom's cousin's brother's daughter and two grand kids. so i think my 3rd and 4th cousins?

i hung out with that crew again later at channukah, which was well timed; as i'm leaving in a week, so it gave me a chance to see the family again. we had a goofy arts and crafts contest making little menorahs out of potatos we painted and decorated with stickers. we didn't ahve a dreidel, jsut a die. we enver got aroudn to playing , but i would've been DOWN to play some craps at chanukah. i always thought it was funny how we encourage litle kids to gamble, why not step it up and teach em a real fucking game, right?