Adventures of Emily and Émile: Brazil Day 1.5

Yesterday, Mimi and I arrived in Brazil after 24+ long hours of traveling! The first thing we did was get Brazilian Starbucks at the airport because I guess we weren't ready to leave American culture behind just yet! Although we got Brazilian themed drinks; Mimi got a brigadeiro frappucino and I got a churros espresso. Brigadeiro is a Brazilian dessert made with chocolate and condensed milk.

Starbucks' drinks in Brazil

After we were picked up from the airport, we went to Belo Horizonte where we hung out in Mimi's cousin's apartment for a while Mimi caught up with some of her Brazilian friends who surprised her there. Naturally, all that traveling made us hungry and we went out for lunch at a buffet style restaurant with many typical Brazilian foods like feijoada - a bean and meat stew. The food in Brazil is really good and pretty different than anything that we have in the US.

The next day, we spent time at an art fair called "The Hippie Fair" in Portuguese. It had little stands selling every trinket imaginable, from woven baskets to lingerie. This fair is huge, and it took us hours just to walk through it. It was really cool though because there were a ton of different types of people there, and I felt like I was experiencing Brazil. Many of the vendors sold handmade crafts, and there was a lot of indigenous art.We even saw a capoeira circle, which is an Afro-Brazilian martial art/dance and a group of people jamming to pagode music, a style similar to samba. While the fair could be a bit overwhelming for the senses, the loud, vibrant pace of life here is fun to experience.

People playing pagode

This style of living even extends to food, which we sampled from street vendors all day! I drank coconut water, straight out of the coconut (which was delicious!). Mimi had an acarajé, a fried sandwich from the Northeast made out of bean flour and stuffed with various kinds of seafood. We also ate pamonha, a mashed corn mixed with sugar or salt and topped with cheese. It sort of tasted like the outside part of tamale. Later, Mimi and I shared a plate of espetinho with jiló, which was chunks of grilled steak with a Brazilian vegetable and onions. One of our friends that we were with also bought chicken heart on a stick, which was actually really good! I also had a little açaí smoothie, which sort of tasted like frozen yogurt.