happy easter

Wishing everyone a happy easter! And I hope you enjoyed your holidays (if you had one)!
Brazilian greetings from the other side of the globe.
Valentina

a weekend at the beach - Guarujá

It's easter. Friday is free... so what do you do as a native upper class paulista? You go to your appartment at the beach. Well... I am not an upper class native paulista, but I do know some. So this time it was my turn to go to the beach. As a group of six we started of on friday to return sunday afternoon: Ricardo (24), Cesar (24), his girlfriend Patricia (20), Anja (24), me (24) and the owner of the mentioned apartment Celso (26).
The apartment was located on Praia das Pitangueras in Guarujá, itself the most exclusive beach in the most expensive paulista beachtown. Of course we had our own ocean view and of course with the apartment comes the exclusive right of your own place on the beach right in front of the building, already prepared by the building's staff.

And as you can see it is quite big (the apartment, I mean) so that the couples had each their own bedroom and Anja and Celso their single rooms (to Anjas joy and Celsos sadness).

We did our own cooking which means we lived on meat and pasta. Pasta in the evening and meat, lots of meat during the whole day. Of course that was the boy's task. And they did had fun while preparing it.
And. By the way. Brazilian meat is so tastefull you cannot spoil it. Not even they could. It was delicious.

Meanwhile we could relax on the balcony. On the 16th floor you do have a quite impressive view of the see. So we relaxed after eating, after coming from the beach, while eating... a reeeal relaxing weekend. But, as you can see, there are only four chairs available.

No problem though. Inside you could choose between three giant sofas. With ocean view (my favourite word for that holiday).
And I did take some advantage of that as well...

the beach

Of coures, the apartment was a dream. But nevertheless we came to Guarujá because of the beach. So here we go:
The weather was quite fine, although not 100% sunny. So we spent friday afternoon walking along the beach to get a feeling for the town. This is where supposedly the rich and beautifull of Sao Paulo go on their holiday. But well... poor Sao Paolo. Compared with the beaches from Rio the rich and beautifull of Sao Paulo seem to be more rich than beautifull.

But at least bay watch didn't let us down. The coast guards obviously did have to pass a special test before being employed for Guarujá beach. And part of the text was obviously checking their physical appearance.
This one passed.

And they better had some coast guards. Here you see some children playing in the sea. The sign says "Alto risco de afogamento nesse loca". Which basically means: high risk of drowning in this place. So have fun you little brazilian children.

And something that just cannot be missing when going to a Brazilian beach: coconut. To be more specifically: young coconut. They chop it open for you and you drink the coconut water and then eat some of the coconut flesh. VEEEERY delicious. And very refreshing.

upside down

Presuming, that you will be reading the post from upside down and NOT the way I posted them (thus this is your last new post to read), I'll start from the back:
In the end there were three couples to be counted.

Couple #1: Patrícia and Cesar - brazilian relationship

A VERY Brazilian couple. Three day, two fights. At least two we actually followed live and on stage. God knows how many other misunderstandings we didn't even know about. After all, Cesar actually cleaned the kitchen after our saturday's dinner. With Anja. Only the two of them. Alone.

And then on saturday Ricardo and Cesar took a walk along the beach. Alone again. Who knows what these boys have been looking at while they were out of Patty's sight???

Couple # 2: Valentina and Ricardo - european relationship

Strictly speaking this is a mixed relationship, BUT I'm just not comfortable with the brazilian "we cling to each other and shame of you if you EVER talk to one of your friends again or spent any minute of your free time without me"-type of relationship. So we agreed on a European one. Which means he is perfectly welcome to meet his friends on sunday night to watch football and he does not interfere with my weekly movie-nights with Kimberly (my best friend in Sampa). In public we do hold hands but we do not spent hours kissing at every road crossing. And I'm sorry, but I don't see why I should make a scene every time a pretty girl walks by. Although I know this would be expected from me (ask Patricia. She did indicated some situations to me where I should have drawn some attention to myself by... say... screaming?). But only in a brazilian relationship. I prefer to take it easy.

Couple # 3: Anja and the invisible Harvey - the take-it-easy couple

Anja has the most relaxed relationship of all. Poor Celso, who did seem to have a least bit of hope when he saw her. But he just won some of her bitter sarcasm when trying to impress her with all the trips he's made to Europe and Japan and how he sometimes flys over to Rio just for lunch.

So Anja happily enjoyed herself with her invisible friend. Who by the way ALWAYS does as she demands... even better than a european relationship!?

french party

Oi galera,
there have been some complaint about me not posting any photos any more, so here you go. Two brand new fotos, from yesterday night. The problem is just that normally I do not take my camera with me when going on parties or in bars... but thinking about you, yesterday I did.
Here you see me and one of the pretty Brazilians I met at the french party. We both ended up at that party mostly by accident. Me, because a friend of mine actually is part of the french circle and forwarded the invitation to me. Her, because a friend actually new someone who went and made her go as well. But we had a great conversation, especially about life in the metropole in contrast to life in the jungle. She is from Manaus (easy to guess, she has indigenous descendance and is very proud of it), which is Brazils biggest city in the middle of nowhere.

And that's me. Twice. Just in case you were missing me in my own blog. We actually changed location after midnight and had a lot of fun spying on the other guests and the waiters/waitresses and ourselves via the mirror. And just in case: the drink you see there is milk with pineapple, orange juice and strawberry. Sweet and powerfull.
I just LOVE living here. So, don't be surprised if it is rather difficult to get me on the phone at home or to get me responding emails. There are just sooooo many things to do here, to experience, to visit etc. And time is already running out, so I am kind of taking in as much as possible without suffering from information overload.
So, enjoy Easter! I'll be going to the beach. With Anja, Ricardo (the guy next to me in the picture) and his friend Celso. Just so nice to have friends with cars and weekend houses at the beach ;-)