its taken me a few days at home to get up the desire to finish this blog off. now that i’m no longer traveling around brazil, i’ve decided to stop blogging. i’ve definitely not decided to stop living life with excitement and enthusiasm or to stop having adventures, but i have decided that from now on, i want to connect more directly with the people in my life. i want to spend time with my loved ones, keep in contact with all the amazing people in my life, both old and new, and focus more on developing my relationships with others. so, if you haven’t heard from me in a while, i invite you to send me an email (kate.sonhando@gmail.com), give me a call or come over for a visit. you can’t possibly imagine how much that would mean to me.
my three months in brazil have been invaluable to me. the development of my mind, the openness of my heart, and the expansion of my soul wouldn’t have been possible without this experience. i am eternally grateful to the universe for providing me with this opportunity and i send out my love to all those people in my life who made it possible for me to take such an extraordinary journey.
here’s to life, my friends, as one chapter ends and i excitedly open yet another. and here’s to us being a part of it together. the story continues…
last day in brazil. well, last real day. tomorrow will spent in either an airport or an airplane. so that doesn’t really count.
as a special treat, lorena and júlia and i went out for lunch today. it was amazing and i had these bolinhos de batata (potato balls, essentially) and i’m a little sad i only just discovered them now. after lunch, we headed to the post office so i could mail home all my receipts to prevent customs from deciding to use their calculators to manually calculate all my purchases. just makes life easier.
then, in the afternoon, i went for a manicure and pedicure. women in brazil get this done pretty regularly, some once a week. but, considering how inexpensive it is here, i would too! it was a lovely almost two hours of pampering.
for dinner, we headed out to a restaurant so i could get my last fill of tapioca before leaving. i had my old standby - cheese, while igor and lorena ventured into the unknown and had hot dogs wrapped in tapioca. to be honest, i wished i’d been adventurous, because it looked really good. don’t think i won’t try it with the tapioca i’m bringing home! for dessert i had the romeu e julieta (queijo coelho and guava), and the chef decorated it with hearts especially for the “stranger from canada” who was ordering something not on the menu.
after dinner, we went back to the apartment and i had to say good-bye to marina and igor. and so begins the inevitable sadness of leaving ones new family. my brazilian family.
today was lorena’s birthday, but instead of going out for breakfast as planned, we stayed at home enjoyed a lovely breakfast (because lorena had a headache). apparently, since she left calgary, she’s been talking about these amazing chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing she had at a rotary event. to her delight, they were cupkates! so i spent the day in the kitchen preparing lorena’s birthday cake - a chocolate cake with lots of peanut butter icing.
andré made an excellent lunch with salmon in maracujá sauce and some sort of cheesy potatoes, all of which was amazing tasting. after lunch, we watched a movie - our family wedding - and then headed to the mall to buy a present for lorena. she chose a beautiful new blouse. then we went out for sandwiches at a little sandwich shop. knowing i could get sandwiches back in canada, i stuck to pão de queijo and torta de limão for dessert.
today, i went with andré and two of his friends to porto de galinhas, a beautiful beach about an hour south of recife. unfortunately, the weather wasn’t so great, so there was no relaxing on the beach. after a late lunch on the beach and feeding the street dogs, we headed back to recife.
in the evening, marina came over and taught me how to make brigadeiro, a brazilian dessert specialty. she helped me modify it so that i could enjoy it too (it is traditionally made with chocolate).
today, walmir and lorena took me to the oficina cerâmica francisco brennand - an art gallery and studio of a famous brazilian artist. working specifically with ceramic and tiles, francisco has created a wonderland of weird statues that would make tim burton proud. his style is specific and flows through many of his pieces, which are strange and slightly morbid. he’s the type of guy i’d really like to have over for dinner, just to see what’s going on in his mind.
we came back home for lunch and after lunch i fell asleep on the couch. dead to the world for a few hours, i missed every coming and going - even noni going to the vet for dental surgery. by the time i woke up, she had left and come back again and was wandering around the house sedated, looking drunk. taking so many different medicines is actually very tiring and my body is doing its best to fight off whatever its got, so i’ve been sleeping in and going to bed early and having naps during the day. since the weather in recife hasn’t been that great, its been kind of nice to just relax and i’m lucky to have walmir and lorena and their family to take care of me.
in the evening, marina came to pick up lorena and i to go for dessert. of course, this was the secret plan to get lorena to her surprise birthday party! she thought we were going to a local doceria, but marina had “forgotten” her purse at home so we had to stop by her apartment first. of course, when we got there, lorena was surprised by quite a few of her girlfriends. we enjoyed lots of treats. brazilians love treats. including this pastry coated in icing sugar, filled with ground beef. brazilians not only love treats, they are known for putting together the most unsuspecting combinations of sweet and salty. you would think the combination of ground beef and icing sugar would be terrible. and you would be wrong. you’d also be wrong about the combination of cheese and guava; cheese and banana; grapes and condensed milk; and french fries and ice cream.
