Carne!

Well I´ll just tell you now there is no organization to these pictures. They´re just kind of thrown on there. Well I arrived here in Brasilia safely this morning and Alex picked me up at the airport. It was really interesting being in a city in Brazil that I already knew really well, instead of how I always felt lost in São Paulo. Well we went and saw his mom who works in Brasilia not too far from the airport and she was really happy to see me, I had always called her mom when I was in Valparaiso and it´s just that kind of really close relationship. Anyway she walked towards me to give me a hug and then paused and said, "I can give you hug now right?" It was funny. Then we went back to Alex´s house and dropped off the luggage and picked up Nalva, a girl who´s family I baptized and we went through the whole "I can hug you now, right?" routine. Then we went back to Brasilia and picked up Adriane from her work and went to the mall. We went to the "Shopping", what we would call the mall, and played at the arcade place for a while and rode this virtual reality roller coaster thing (pictures)and then we went for the really good stuff. We went to a churrascaria called Portão do Sul where we took some pretty goofy pictures in front and then ate ourselves silly. It was really good food.

Oh and one more thing, I couldn´t write yesterday but it was a pretty cool day I got to see all the touristy parts of São Paulo. The places I had always heard about while I was in Brazil but never had the chance to see. I saw the Praça da Sá which is a huge square right in the middle of São Paulo with an enormous Catholic Church. I made a joke that it´s kind of like the Salt Lake Temple, because it´s the center of the city. Anyway I got to see Liberdade, the famous Japanese neighborhood of Brazil where the largest number of Japanese people outside of Japan live. It was really cool, it was like an enormous Lee Lee´s market, seriously, that´s exactly how it felt. Oh and people speaking portuguese with a Japanese accent is awesome, I loved it. I got to see the Avenida Paulista which I would compare to the fame of Times Square in New York. I saw Parque Ibirapuera, a huge park in the middle of São Paulo and another historical square of São Paulo with some really old mansion like buildings. There was this one that is a museum now that totally looks like the mansion from The Count of Monte Cristo with an even bigger front lawn. It was really cool. The pictures were all taken at night so they didn´t turn out very well but you´ll see them when I get home. Ok well I love you guys and I´ll talk to you later.