Camaroes?

Patrick and I have found ourselves very confused. This city is just weirding us out. It’s like we’re in a Portuguese oasis far away from Brazil, because this is nothing like what I thought Brazil would be like. It radiates rules, organization, boundaries and nothing to do but eat good food (phew). I got laughed at yesterday over and over because I couldn’t speak Portuguese. They just couldn’t fathom it, they thought it was hysterical. This made me laugh hysterically myself. They clearly wanted to help but, well, first I didn’t want them to and it wasn’t always easy to have them leave you alone. I had someone who searched his store for an English speaker before trying to tell me there was no one and I just kept trying to say it’s ok. It’s ok it’s ok! (Thumbs up) I look only! (Point to eyes). I really think that I have never had such a major issue with the language barrier before, even in Portuguese Africa. Even they can understand a word or two of English. We had the taxi drive us to the shopping center and when we went to leave there, there was no taxi in sight. None. We had to walk along the road which really was not pedestrian-friendly at all until we came upon a Hyundai dealer. We stopped there for some car service prices and ended up talking to a super nice guy who spoke perfect English; he had lived in NY for a long while. He gave us a long list of great restaurants to visit while we were going to be here. We finally ended up getting a taxi back (taxis don’t appear to be used that often in this city, it seems most people drive.)

We wanted to go to dinner yesterday at one of the suggested restaurants. We got in the taxi, and arrived at a small center with a gym on the first floor and a spa on the second floor and that’s all we could see. “Is this Camaroes? We asked the driver. Yes, yes. We got in an elevator and pressed the “restaurant” button for the 3rd floor. We were at a restaurant, but there was no name of this restaurant anywhere. In fact, the menu even had an advertisement for a different restaurant (I was convinced that the different restaurant was the one we were actually at). We had no idea where we were, or if we were at the right place. It was so strange. We sat outside and cracked up as I tried to tell the waiter no nuts but he completely thought I was talking about looking for a creamy entree. Then it took forever to order and he found a guy who spoke some English to help out a little in order to pick “the best entrée” because Patrick and I couldn’t read a word of the menu. We both got girly drinks, and when Patrick tried to order a beer, he got another girly drink. Then it took a while even to get a taxi because we had language issues. Wouldn’t you think TAXI is an international term? Once we said taxi, the hostess said tax… tax… no TAXI Patrick said. Eventually we figured it out, but not before causing the girl to have to go behind the wall and crack up which caused me to crack up as well. The only way we found out we were actually at the right restaurant was because Patrick’s charge slip said it. Ahhh what a really strange city. Really. We live in the hotel sector which is all hotels dating back to the 60’s. The architecture is all from the 60’s, or appears to be as well - all space-lookin architecture. Probably one of the strangest places I have ever been.

Today I slept in. To 12. It was really nice, especially because I couldn’t sleep well at all last night. I kept having the strangest, broadest range of nightmares from spiders crawling on me to people being in my room (coming in from the door and the balcony) and my friends drugging me so I had no idea what was going on, to trying to scream and not being able to. Very disturbing. Time to get a move on to the day…. Lata!!