tl;dr
- Please check out more photos/videos here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmE9JDZY .
- I went to the beautiful Ibirapuera park, to the vegan restaurant PlantMade, and to CIP (Reform Jewish Center) to celebrate Shavuot.
NOTE: So I realized that I have limited photo embedding capabilities on WordPress (with just the Day 1 post I already used up 5% of my free photo storage 😳), so I will be putting a Flickr links to my photos/videos to supplement. Enjoy! https://flic.kr/s/aHsmE9JDZY
Day 2 began with Maria making another amazing breakfast which included Pão de Queijo and fresh fruit (the mango here is really good). Maria had me put a Brazilian cheese spread called requeijão on the Pão de Queijo, which was really good. After breakfast, Maria got two coconuts from a lady selling them on the street and we drank coconut water as we walked to get our nails done. Maria said the manicure would be a unique cultural experience because the way they do nails in Brazil is very different from the US; they paint your nail as well as the skin around your nail, and then clean the extra polish off of your skin. Apparently, many Brazilian women get their nails done every weekend. Maria’s aunt was also at the salon, and she and the ladies who worked there were gossiping in Portuguese. It was very fun to watch them all talking so much with their hands 🙂 They kept talking about how I didn’t understand what they were saying in Portuguese “Ela não entende”, but I actually understood some of what they were saying. Still, I hope to learn more Portuguese this summer so that I can speak more in Portuguese.
After leaving the salon, Maria and I went to get lunch at a place calle Poke Haüs. We then walked along Rua Oscar Freire, where there were tons of people walking and shopping. Maria showed me Melissa shoes which are made of plastic and apparently very popular in Brazil.
Check out more photos here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmE9JDZY
We then went to Ibirapuera Park. There happened to be a food truck festival going on, called Smorgasburg. I was impressed by the number of people who came out to the event! Families, teens, millennials, etc. were all there. After walking through Smorgasburg, we went to the park, which was really beautiful.
Check out more photos here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmE9JDZY
It was a massive park, and there were people everywhere. I was so impressed, but Maria told me that since the weather is so nice here year-round, it’s always like this. She said that she really noticed in America that people don’t go out as much as they do here in São Paulo, especially during the winter. There were a ton of open spaces where tons of skateboarders practiced their tricks.
After walking through the beautiful park, Maria and I went home for a bit before heading to PlantMade, the vegan restaurant that the Chabad rabbi was talking about. Luckily, there was no wait.
Maria and I ordered the same thing, the famous vegan Mac & Cheese and caipirinha. Caipirinha is Brazil’s national cocktail, made with cachaça (a distilled spirit made from fermented sugarcane juice), sugar, and lime. Both the Mac & Cheese and caipirinha were great.
After dinner, I went to Congregação Israelita Paulista (CIP) for Shavuot. Eric, my friend from ISSI, connected me with a friend of his named Daniela who was also going to the event. The event was diversity-themed and featured speakers, music, and dance shows from 8pm to 6am. This congregation is reform, so the way they chose to celebrate was by having talks on Islamophobia, transgender issues in Judaism, etc. instead of studying Torah all night (as the more orthodox folks do). Because all of the talks were in Portuguese, I must say that I enjoyed the dance and music performances best (see Flickr for the videos!).
One talk I did understand more than the rest was given by American (which somehow made it easier to understand – maybe because she spoke a bit slower than the native Portuguese speakers!) who is transgender. Her name is Lilyth Ester Grove, and she studies anthropology at UNICAMP (University of Campinas) in São Paulo. I really enjoyed that her talk (on transgender issues in Judaism) allowed us to study the Torah by applying the lessons it teaches us to modern day issues.
At CIP, I met a lot of young people who are part of a kind of Jewish boy/girl scout camp called Avanhandava. They were all super welcoming. As part of the Shavuot tradition of eating dairy and sweet things (milk and honey), I had a guava-cheese wrap. It was really sweet and the guava squished out of the wrap and on to my clothes, but I’m glad I tried it.
I left CIP at 2am (there were still so many people left!) and went back to Maria’s to sleep.
Adventures of Talia 