Brazil Days 6 and 7

Sábado na balada! Those are lyrics from the popular Brazilian song, "Ai se eu te pego," which mean Saturday in the nightclub. In this case, we spent Friday and Saturday in the nightclub.

On Friday, we celebrated Mimi's birthday by going to Belo Horizonte, the nearest big city. We took a bus there at 8:30 am, and spent the whole morning shopping at a beautiful mall. Honestly, it was pretty much like a mall in America, but with some different stores and it wasn't dying economically. We also ate at a Brazilian fast food restaurant called Giraffas, which serves homestyle food.

After the mall, we went to Mimi's friend Cecilia's apartment, where we met our friend Mariana. We ate some pizza there which had fancy sausage on it instead of pepperoni. After that, we got ready to go to a nightclub called Night Market Rooftop and had a bottle of champaign for Mimi's birthday.

Cecilia, Mimi, me, and Mariana getting ready 

The nightclub itself was only okay because they had a live band singing American pop music, which was sort of terrible. The only good thing about it was that it forced us all to go outside, where there was a beautiful view from the patio. Although, after the band a DJ played Funk, which is Brazilian club dancing music. I've never been to a nightclub in the US, because I'm not 21, so I can't really compare it to one, although one thing that really sucks is that you have to pay for water. Also, people in South America go out way later than people in the US, we left at 3:30, and that was kind of early.

The view from the club

Look at this fancy blue light!! 

The next day, we came home from BH on the bus at like 1:15 pm and came back to Mimi's house. From there, another group of Mimi's cousins (there are sooo many) surprised her. Their names are Victor, Sergio, and Luisa. We hung out with them for a while at her house, before going over to Mimi's family friend's house (Mariana) because we were going to go out to dinner. We went out to a pizza place, where I experienced Brazilian pizza for the first time! It is nothing like pizza in the US, there are crazy flavors and combinations. I tried Zucchini pizza, shrimp pizza, salmon pizza, plus Margherita pizza. I enjoyed all of them, but I still liked the Margarita pizza that I was used to the best. Maybe I'm not as worldly as I thought, or Margarita pizza truly is the best type of fancy pizza.

Zucchini Pizza!

Mimi is the only Brazilian I've seen who
orders caipirinhas every chance she gets :)

Shrimp pizza and Ham pizza!

Shrimp pizza and Margarita pizza! Uau! 

After that, we went over to Mimi's cousin Sandra's house and she took us to a balada in Congonhas. We picked up her other cousin Nicole, and met Sergio and Victor there. It was a cousins night out! Honestly, I liked this nightclub better than the other one, because the music was better. They had a live band too, but they weren't as bad and didn't play as long as the other one. One of the DJs that did a set played a lot of really popular American rap songs, so I had a lot of fun singing along, plus they played more baile funk. 

At the balada in Congonhas with Mimi's cousins

We stayed for a really long time at this balada and didn't get home until 5, which is pretty normal here. It was cool because you could hear the birds chirping. Mimi said that sometimes people throw parties here that last until 8 am, which doesn't happen too much stateside. 

Anyway, that was pretty much my experience with the Brazilian party scene. Stay tuned to hear about Christmas Eve and Christmas.

Ayyy!! 

Beijos!!

- Emily