Sertanejo, Porco e...Gato?

Portuguese Words of the Day
- Bilheteria = ticket window
- Fita = tape
- Cola = glue
- Ilha = island
- Sul = south
- Pega pega = tag (the game)

I don't think I've hated sertanejo more than I did this past weekend. Sertanejo is kind of like Brazilian country music and has a lot of accordions in it. On Friday night, João Neto e Frederico were in town for the Joinville Country Festival, and we (Fatima from Peru and I) were supposed to go. However, we didn't end up getting tickets. Instead I went to another sertanejo party, where they, of course, played sertanejo for the entire night.

On Saturday I went with my hosts Daniel and Camilo to Daniel's parents' house to celebrate his grandfather's eightieth birthday. The first weeks of my trip I went to their house, and I didn't understand a word that Dani's family was saying. However, after two and a half months, I understood just about everything they said. We had lunch there, and during the afternoon Dani decorated the large 1/4 sheet cake for his grandfather (since he's a cake designer). After the cake was ready, we drove a short distance to Dani's aunt's house, where the family would eventually gather.

Dani's aunt's house was legitimately in the middle of nowhere. There was no cell service, no internet, and was surrounded by woods and the main street. It was kind of scary. Dani actually said that it almost felt like the movie Scream, where there was no access to communication and if you screamed, nobody could hear you because they were blasting sertanejo from the trunk of someone's car. However, it wasn't too bad as I was playing 'pega pega' with Dani's cousins. There was also churrasco, or Brazilian barbecue there, so the foodie in me was quite happy...until I thought I heard Dani's father ask: carne de gato ou de porco--qual gosta mais? In my head I was like cat meat? Oh gosh. I'm pretty sure he asked if I preferred beef or pork, but I really wasn't sure and didn't want to ask. So of course, I just said I like the pork.

On Saturday night, I was so tired and just wanted to sleep. Of course, the neighbors had some sort of party where they were blasting sertanejo. I thought that I would miss sertanejo when I left here, but after a day of sertanejo, I certainly will not.

On Sunday, the weather forecast said that it was supposed to be 26 degrees and sunny, so Ruhy and I thought that it would be a great beach day at São Francisco do Sul, about a 40 minute drive from Joinville. However, when I woke up, it was probably more like 16 and cloudy. Since it was cold, we probably should have just stayed in Joinville, but we hadn't been to São Francisco nor the beaches there, and we decided to still go. And then commence the day of hilarious fails.

I had heard that there was a bus company called "Verdes Mares" that would bring you from Joinville to São Francisco, so we tried looking on line for the bus schedule. It said that there was a 10:30 bus from the rodoviária in Joinville to São Francisco. We thought that it would be like the buses that we normally take and drop you off at the bus terminal, but it turned out to be an inter-municipal bus, making all the local stops. Since we had never been there, we didn't know when to get off (or how to signal for the driver to stop), as it was coach bus. We kept on riding the bus.

After we passed a small center with signs that said São Francisco do Sul, we were headed towards more undeveloped areas. A bit confused, I asked the driver where São Francisco was, and he said that we just passed it. Oops. However, we could ride the bus until the very end and take it back to the center. There was a nice couple sitting next to us, and they could very obviously tell that we were lost and offered to help us. They said that we could get off a the stop in front of the beach and hang out there, so we listened.

The wife said that the husband "spoke" English and could help us out even more. One thing here is that when people say that they "so-so" English, they really mean that they don't speak any English. We told him in English that we had been working in Joinville and were just in Sao Francisco for the day. And for the longest time, he kept asking us when we would go back to Curitiba. Anyway, we got off the bus when they did, since they live right in front of the beach.

Upon exiting the bus, they told us how to get back to the city center and how to take a bus back to Joinville from there. Then they said that they could hang out with us for a couple of hours at the beach (even though it was still freezing cold by 12pm). Since we didn't want to trouble them, we politely asked if they had anything planned. Then before we knew it, the wife was flagging down a bus that went to the center of town and asked us to get on.

So, to avoid awkward "we don't want to go to the city center yet" situations, we thanked the couple and got on the bus, only to realize that the driver of the bus was on the municipal bus (awk turtles). Since we were to get off at the last stop, we tried to duck our heads and avoid that driver. But then, I looked outside and saw a sign that said "Centro histórico: 18,0km." What?! Why was the city center 18 kilometers from where we were. We were so confused and had to ask the driver if it was really the case. It was. And it was about a 40 minute drive from where we were.

About 45 minutes later, we finally arrived in the city center. However, since it was Sunday, all of shops were closed. I'm sure that the center of São Francisco is very beautiful when it is sunny and the stores are open, but it wasn't the case. We were also freezing and starving from not having breakfast and sitting on a bus for nearly three hours. We found a buffet, which served semi-decent Brazilian homestyle cooking. I'm just glad that we were able to warm up and eat.

After lunch, we tried to explore the city center some more, but everything was closed. We took some really silly pictures by the dock of us shivering. I even put on a second t-shirt that I had brought with me. Since it definitely was not an ideal beach day and everything in the center was closed, we decided to take the bus back to Joinville.

It's funny because as we were on the hour bus back to Joinville, the sky began to clear up slightly. I'm not sure it was much warmer, but I would have been happy with blue sky there. When we arrived back in Joinville, you'd think that we (perhaps I, having to take multiple buses to/from work) would get on the right bus to go home. But somehow the bus that I normally take to get from the bus terminal to Terminal Norte went to Terminal Sul, all the way across town. Eventually, we got back to Terminal Norte, where I was greeted by the only win of the day. As I got off bus, the bus that I take to go home was about to leave. After sprinting across the entire terminal, the bus driver opened the door, and I was able to get on the bus and finally go home after a strange, yet rather hilarious, day, where I was greeted with a homemade meal of chicken and potato pancakes.