Is Gheller even a Portuguese name?

This past weekend was also action-packed as our weekends typically are.  We returned to the hotel after work and changed to head out to town with the sole intent of YOLO-ing (You Only Live Once).  First we piled into a taxi and rode to Dragão do Mar, a local area repleat with clubs that were not yet busy at that point in the night.  Saturday marked the Brazilian Valentine's day known here as Dia dos Namorados and one of the local clubs we hadn't yet visited was hosting an event with presale tickets half the cost of day-of admissions.  As the cab drove away, we began walking around the building looking for a place to buy the tickets until we stumbled upon a large steel door with a small eye level rectangular cutout on the side of the building.  We knocked and a guy inquired about our intentions and subsequently unbolted the door and let us into a small makeshift office.  Yes, we paid a shady guy in a shady office real money for what we were assuming were the real tickets for the event (they were).  After all, the tickets looked fancy and colorful so they had to be legit.

Then we headed up two blocks to the main bustling stretch of road that heads toward Beira Mar and walked  on the sidewalk until we came to Gheller Churrascaria, our second intended destination.  A greeter opened the door for us and directed us to a table.  A nice managerial-type (possibly Gheller himself) came up to us, identifying us as gringos (foreigners, but not a derogatory term here) and was very kind and forward with us.  For those not familiar with Brazilian churrascarias, they typically have lavish salad bars and "gaucho" servers who circle the restaurant with skewers of fine meats that they carve at request onto your plate.  Typically in the U.S. this meal service can run up to $50 per person so it was to our delight that we visited what was commented as the "best value" churrascaria in Fortaleza which cost R$19.99 per person or the equivalent of roughly 10 USD.  The meat was quite good, although I know that Matt, the only one of us brave enough, had a unique experience tempting fate with chicken heart, a local delicacy that he followed with a chaser of bottled water. I think the value for this restaurant came from the quality of meat as we felt that some of the lacking natural flavor was covered up with over-salting the meat.  I would love to eat at one of the more expensive churrascarias here for comparison (still significantly cheaper than those in the U.S.) although my health dictates that we should probably wait a few weeks before we venture out to another churrascaria.

Once our stomachs were sufficiently full of meat, we waddled toward Beira Mar to perch ourselves on the rocks at the end of the pier until the hotel shuttle arrived.  While we were there, our English attracted the attention of a 17 year old named Lucas, who was born in Brazil but had been living in Maryland until returning alone the past year.  This struck us as strange considering his mother with whom he lived sent him away and gave him a monthly allowance to live on his own in Fortaleza when he should technically be in high school still, all the while having an open ended return date.  As Lucas and his friends accompanied us as we walked toward the shuttle, the situation became clearer that he lived in a favela as he educated us about the gang culture in Brazil that he is a part of, which varies heavily from that of the States.  Here, it is based on where you live and although some is rooted in drug culture, most of the culture Lucas was telling us about is about protecting your street.  This made more sense how a woman would feel comfortable sending away her teenager to another country as he is protected by the favela's gang.  Unlike gangs in the U.S., it seems that bonds are formed over similar living experiences rather than committing crimes together, giving the concept a bizarre sense of moral rationality.  Needless to say, I would assign a zero probability that we will get involved with Lucas and his friends and get sucked into gang culture this summer.

Saturday during the day was much less eventful as I stayed back at the hotel while Ben and Matt headed out to Praia do Futuro and other impromptu excursions that Matt may blog about.  I decided to forgo the adventure because I had to do some law school financial aid applications so "Present David" could borrow lots-o-monay from "Future David."  Plus, I enjoyed sleeping in and spending much of the day catching up on my personal reading.

When Ben and Matt returned, we got ready to head out to the club that we had probably bought tickets for the previous night.  The process of getting ready to go out typically entails taking off any jewelry and emptying the non-essential contents of your wallet.  We arrived by taxi at the club once more, but this time music was pumping from the inside.  We walked through the entrance, were wanded by some seriously big dude wearing mock turtle necks under black suits, and proceeded through turnstiles in exchange for the tickets.  We also each received a bracelet indicating relationship status (mine was the only red one of the group indicating that I was taken... no worries, Chelsea) so I didn't find myself in an uncomfortable situation, especially since Brazilian culture promotes some serious kissing the first time you meet somebody of interest and not kissing is typically a bad sign.  I'm not sure what theme the night was supposed to have but we wound up listening to a DJ in an outdoor venue mixing American music from the '80s and '90s with hits from Vanilla Ice and Michael Jackson (before he turned white).

On Sunday, we took a complemetary hotel shuttle round trip to Praia do Futuro.  The shuttle was run by a company called FAG Tours.  Given the nature of the van and the all-caps of the word "FAG," we were guessing that it's an acronym starting with the word "Fortaleza," but we've been told by several people that Fortaleza is also the San Francisco of Brazil so the situation is open for interpretation.  For Ben and Matt, this day was marked as "National Viagra Day" as the beach mission was to get up on their surfboards, which I am proud to report was a success.

A nice nap followed the return to the hotel until we got ready to take the city bus to the apartment of one of the people Matt works with.  We picked up Habib's for dinner, trying the Brazilian-based and not at all politically correct fast food chain.  The food, some of which is Middle Eastern and the rest of which is a Brazilian interpretation of the likes of McDonald's was pretty good, and definitely satisfied our hunger for a reasonable price.  We ate the food at our friend's apartment and watched "V for Vendetta" with Portuguese subtitles even though she mouthed all of the words in English since it was her favorite movie.  This was actually my first time watching the movie and I really enjoyed it along with picking up some new vocabulary matching the subtitles to the spoken dialogue.  I'm assuming Ben enjoyed the experience too as he passed out in the hammock hanging on the balcony right off the small living room.

We were finally driven home that night at what felt like midnight given how busy we had been that weekend, but was really just ten at night.

Until next time,

-David Rood