Whew, this has been a long 8 days in Brazil so far and, now that I’ve only got today and tomorrow left, I’m feeling too worn out to do anything but chill. The past 3 days here in Bahia with two of my roomies has been a mixture of relaxation, great conversations, and straight-up comedy….the last part is especially due to my man CG. He’s a youngin’ (24 yrs old) who loves to go out so he can mack and kick it, which would normally be fine in the US, but down here in Salvador, it isn’t so easy because none of us speak Portugeuse. Being able to speak Portugeuse wasn’t a big problem in Rio de Janeiro or Buzios because those are tourist locations and many people speak at least some sort of English, but it’s a whole different story in Salvador. Here, an only-English speaker would just go out to a club and stand on the sidelines because none of the potential dance-mates would understand him. We have so many comedic stories about CG trying to go against that certainty that he’ll get a whole chapter in my autobiography when I write it.

One other thing that has hampered us in Salvador is that the music is totally different than anything we’re used to. In Buzios, we were able to hear American hip-hop and top-40 at bars and clubs, so it was easy to dance and have a good time, but, here, it’s all about Brazilian music. When we went out on our first night here, the three of us just stood around and watched everyone else because it was so hard for us to catch the rhythm of what was coming through the speakers. Everyone on the dancefloor was having a great time, but, as three black dudes from America used to bumpin’ to hip-hop beats, we were like fish out of water. And we couldn’t even order good drinks because we couldn’t communicate in effective Portugeuse to the bartenders. needless to say, this segment of the trip was filled with fewer late nights hanging out on the town than the first half of it.

I should also add that I finally found some of the Brazilian women that people in the US tell stories about…we’ve seen some gorgeous ones in Salvador and they’ve all been “regular folks” who were just doing their day-to-day thing. After having spent time in three different brazilian locales, I’ve observed a decent set of women here and decided that the mean of Brazilian women is about the same as that of American women, but the standrad deviation is much larger in Brazil than in the US (if you don’t understand that statement, think back to your MBA Core Statistics class — B-school education goes much further than just dollars and cents ). If any of the fellas reading this entry are thinking about coming to Brazil, I’ve got three pieces of advice for you: learn some basic Portugeuse, hang out at the beaches, and be single (it’s hard to be an effective wingman otherwise).

This has been a good trip, but I’m pretty much worn out and am looking forward to getting back to VA so I can take a vacation from my vacation