The Key is a Brazilian Boy!

I've tried to learn a bit of Portuguese, but clearly I don't have the talent for it. I can get by on basic phrases: Bom dia (Good day), Tudo bem? (How are you?), Tudo bom (Everything's good), Posso ter... (Can I have...) and a few more like those. My conversations with the locals are very brief and to the point, usually accompanied with a lot of facial expressions and hand gestures. Most of them also end in awkward laughs or giggles, mainly directed towards ourselves when we realized we haven't a clue what the other person is talking about.

Some girls Jen and I have met who have stopped in Jeri for a while somehow become fluent in Portuguese in a matter of weeks. I was stunned and thought they just have an amazing knack for picking up new dialects. But just the other day, I found out their secret: Get a brazilian boyfriend then he'll teach you. It's an instant tutor! I don't see Jen or myself following in their shoes, but I'm going to try to initiate more conversations with some of the locals we do know. Most are happy you're giving Portuguese a try, and will correct you where you go wrong.

On another note: Jen and I had our first solo English teaching a few days ago. It went well, although we did choose an easy topic for our first lesson: Food. The adults got right into it and I was impressed that we actually pulled it off. Jen did most of the teaching while I provided examples and corrected her spelling occasionally. The next lesson will be teaching the future tense, hopefully we can pull it off too!

Sunset Sail

The water has been extremely busy the past few weeks with the major rental spot, Club Ventos, renting to over 130 people. The best time of day is either super early when the wind is just coming up, or later once everyone is tired. The problem with going out before the crowd is that there isn't much wind, and once it finally builds to a good level the water becomes extremely busy almost instantly. The other way to get non-choppy water is to sail until you can't sail any more. The crowds thin out at 5:00 because all the Vela customers have to go in then, and most of the other sailors are too tired to remain on the water. Its fun to try to ride a few waves and not worry about crashing into a dozen people along the way. The only problem is the sun sets at 5:30 and it's completely dark by six. But I've always been partial to sunset sails, I like sailing in on the last puff of wind.

Caitlyn's Version of How the Jeri Wind Works: The south east trade winds provide the base of the wind, averaging at 6-7 knots. When the large sandy dunes heat up during the day it causes a regular thermal effect, but because the trade winds are already blowing from the south east it increases the pressure and strength behind those winds. The combo of thermal and trade winds results in the strong winds blowing through Jeri!

Good Ol' Jeri

I'm sad to say that Jen and I are into our last month in Brazil. It's hard to believe we've already been here for over two months. We have fallen into a routine of lazy mornings, windsuring afternoons and relaxing evenings. As a result our remaining time here seems to be flying by and after looking at the Vancouver weather forecast, boy am I glad to be only three degrees away from the equator.

Jeri seems to be the town that never disappoints. There is always someone to meet, some place to go or something to do, while keeping its small town feel. The best part about Jeri is I've never felt unsafe. You can walk the sandy streets and not worry about the dangers that plague the rest of Brazil. These are a small part of the reason why so many people, both windsurf/kiters and travellers extend their trip to Jeri and why it is described as a backpackers paradise.

If anyone finds their way to this end of the world, all I'm saying is you have to check out Jericoacoara.

Dinner with Luane and Barbara

Jen and I help teach English every Tuesday and Thursday with Julianne. In our adult class, Luane is one of the star students; she practices the lessons at home, does extra work and always helps her peers understand the lessons. Her daughter Barbara, is in the kids English class and though she may be a quiet student in class, she certainly became a whole new person when we were invited to their house for dinner.

Luane and Barbara are moving from the warm and sunny small town of Jericoacoara to the wet and cold southern Brazil where Luane is receiving a scholarship to go to school. As a thank you for teaching them Jen, Julianne and I were asked over to enjoy one of their few nights left in Jeri with them. Luanes' mother helped cook and Alex and Paulo who are also in the adult English classes joined us for a delicious pasta meal. Along with dinner was appetizers of bread with either a mussel dip or pesto. Barbara, with the help of their Italian neighbour, made the most delicious pesto from scratch.

My Portuguese only consists of a few basic phrases which were easily covered in the first few minutes. After that, Luanes' basic English and Juliannes' fluency in both languages got all of us by. However the true entertainment was brought by Barbara's boldness which I had never seen before. She was teasing Alex and Paulo while taking all sorts of funny pictures of us and rapidly chatting away in Portuguese. She even convinced her mom to pop the top of their champagne, although much to her dismay, Barbara was only allowed to drink Coca-Cola.

Harness Weggie!

I am seriously considering investing in a waist harness. My seat harness usually does a fine job, but that's when you are wearing a thick wet suit. With only a bathing suit and board shorts it gets to be a little bit uncomfortable after an hour or so one the water. Chafing on my thighs and what I call my 'harness weggie' does not result in the most comfortable of sails.

In other news, there's a freestyle competition in Jeri today! I actually know a few of the people signed up, so I think this will be an event to watch. Since the competition is in the middle of the windsurf day and the wind hasn't picked up yet, I think it may be an easy going day for me. The chop has been pretty rough recently, it makes it a lot harder to try new things when the only flat areas are in massive wind shadows. But I'll check out how the pros cope with the chop. I figure if they can do it, why can't I?! Oh right, most of them windsurf 365 days a year.

Yesterday the board and I got a little face on face action. Nothing big, apart from a little bit of swelling, but am 1 cm higher and the '$5000 smile' might have had some temporary readjustments. Not to worry folks; no pain, no gain!

Ponto Do Big

'Ponto' as I like to call this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant is a major highlight in both Jen's and my diets. After hours of hard work windsurfing, we are usually very ravenous and need a quick fulfilling meal. Because of its inexpensiveness, quantity and quality Ponto has become our go to place. I'd call it equivalent to any fast food restaurants back home, except it's moderately healthy, only 100 meters away from our Pousada and it is delicious. If one of us gets off the water before the other and isn't in our room, it's a safe bet to guess we're at Ponto enjoying either a picadinho (an authentic Brazilian ground beef and vegetable stew, my favourite choice) or a molho do frango (marinated chicken, Jen's usual pick). Both meals are of course accompanied with the usual rice, beans, salad, spaghetti and hot sauce.

The amazing Ponto meals are cooked in a 10' x 5' box of a cooking area surrounded by fluorescent green walls. The tables are in the middle of the busiest alley, so there plenty of people watching and talking going on. You can't eat an entire meal without someone you know joining you for a bit. Jen and I had a shock the past week when Ponto suddenly and without warning was closed. Jen heard through the grapevine that it was closed for renovations, so we half thought we'd never eat there again. It took a whole week of trying to find a new favourite spot before Ponto re-opened for business! That was probably the best meal ever, and since the renos, we have eaten there every day.

Ponto also has the best, most refreshing maracujá juice for only R$1. In fact, writing this has made me rather hungry...

Happy birthday Grandma C!

No Cook Cookies!

At home I bake quite often, I find it's a great way to take a break from homework and you get a delicious reward once you're done. The kitchen here is difficult to work in, the elements are quite temperamental and the oven needs some tampering with to get it going. But I figured I'd give Grandma K's Maui No Cook Cookies a try.

Obstacle 1: Obtaining the recipe and translating. I had to wait until someone back at home came online and I figured both parents would be needed: Mom to find the recipe and dad to scan it to me. That process was easy enough, and with Google translate I figured out all the Portuguese words pronto!

Obstacle 2: Finding the correct ingredients. This proved to be the most difficult task. The grocery store isn't very big, but it is packed full of items which are easy to miss. Leite (milk), açúcar (sugar) and manteiga (butter) were easy to find, and instead of buying the expensive pack of sweetened coconut I opted for buying a fresh Coco (coconut) and chopping it up myself. Finding cacau (coco) and aveia (oats) was a different story. Finally I found a container of good ol' Quaker Oats that looked like it had been sitting on the same shelf for a few years. Since I couldn't locate pure cacau, I went to the next best thing and bought the only hot chocolate mix that had cacau listed as the first ingredient.

Obstacle 3: Cooking to No Cook Cookies. This was easy enough; just melt, boil, stir, mix and cool. The real challenge here was not eating it all at once! The cookies turned out great and maybe for my next kitchen adventure I'll take on the oven.

Halloween

Well in true form I always come up with my costume in the 11th hour. This Halloween I definitely had nothing much to work with. I had a bandana and... that's it. So I went as a bandit of sorts. I'm not really sure, it didn't matter any ways because with a little face paint no one cares what you are exactly! Jen and Arrianne went as Greek Goddesses full out in togas and plants in their hair. During the night they found their Greek God, Thomas, who was also a fellow toga wearer. I'm not really sure what Pete or Julien went as, but they had their entire faces painted in various colours. Laura and Bas were African tribal folk, and Peter went as a prisoner with a coconut ball and chain. Berit was a cowgirl who then turned into Captain Jack Sparrow's, aka Tom's, hostage.

We had fun getting ready then headed over to the Swedish guys place where the Capirinhas were plentiful. None of them were dressed up except for Anna and Amy who were preparing to roll around in the dirt and go as trolls. As the night went on the Swedish guys all put on plaid shirts and called themselves lumberjacks. (Or 'lumberyacks' as they pronounce it!) Also Halloween wouldn't be complete without some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I'm happy to say I saw one Leonardo walking around and one turtle who was lacking a mask. Tayna, Max and Alli were members of a rock band, Maeli was Cat woman and I don't even know if Bryan knew what he was.

Over all it was a good Halloween. We got a few funny looks walking around Jeri because Halloween is not a big event here. It's really not even an event, mostly just kids dress up. But we got into the spirit all the same, its fun how an ordinary party becomes lots more fun with costumes. There was old music (aka from our childhood) playing such as the Backstreet Boys and other fun music in the 'lots of fun to dance to' genre. The only thing lacking was the amount of candy that was consumed.

P.S. Happy Belated Birthday to Trevor!