Santo André

April 19th continued...

The Freire Family

Ana's Family: Paulo Vinícius (Brother), Ana Mãe (Mom), Me, Paulo Pai (Dad)

Ana's mom is also named Ana. Likewise- her dad and brother had the same first names of Paulo. Thus I began referring to Ana's mom as "Ana Mãe" (Ana Mom), and her dad as "Paulo Pai" (Paulo Dad). I will continue this to avoid confusion throughout the blog ;)



Ana's parents picked me up from the airport and then we went to their house. On the way, we discussed the plan for that evening. In prior messages, I had mentioned that I wanted to go to a churrascaria in order to have the experience of dining in one. However, I was still full from lunch! Therefore, I chose the other option of meeting Ana's cousin Laura, and her boyfriend who were going out to a mall that night.

Ana (the family's last name) has a very nice home! When we arrived, I was given a tour, and saw that Ana's house was built on the second and third levels, above where her grandparent's live. Upon entering the bedroom where I was to stay for the next few nights, I noticed a bag on the bed. It contained a big chocolate egg. It is a custom in Brazil to give a really big chocolate egg as a gift to someone for Easter. This was an extremely nice and thoughtful gesture by Ana's parents. I was able to partake in this delicious Brazilian tradition thanks to them!

Many stores have a variety of these Easter eggs leading up to Easter. They hang down from the racks above^.

I found this size of clothing humorous:
"GG = Grande (2x)"

After getting cleaned-up, Laura and her boyfriend Evandro came to pick me up. We headed to the nearby mall called "Shopping ABC". I later discovered the meaning of "-ABC," which is an abbreviation for the three cities around São Paulo city: Santo André, São Bernardo do Campo, and São Caetano do Sul. At the mall, I looked for some jeans. Evandro helped me figure out my size, since the United Staes uses inches as opposed to centimeters, and I tried-on several pairs. None fit quite right.

Evandro works with USB flash drives. His job requires him to travel. Thus, he has visited 
several countries around the world, including the United States and China. Laura works for IBM. 

For dinner, we had pizza! We went to a restaurant called Vienna where they had a rodízio food service. Rodízio is a style of serving food that is found in churrascarias, where the servers come by your table every few minutes, offering different types of food each time they pass by. In this case, rather than grilled cuts of meat, the waitresses were offering a varied selection of pizza. I tried several new types of pizza. One of the tastiest was called "Levissima." It had turkey, corn, catupiry, tomatoes, and oregano (or another green herb) on it.

Nifty idea!

Evandro and Laura explained to me how the food-service worked, and showed me a triangular-colored piece of wood that was on the table. I learned that each of the three different colors meant something different. It is used by customers as a signal for the waiters to indicate at which stage of the meal they are at. For example, the green-side up means that one is ready to be served. The yellow-side up signifies that one is ready for dessert. Red means "STOP! I'm about to burst!" [haha] or simply that one has finished the meal and ready for the check.

For those who aren't familiar with pizza in Brazil, it is most commonly found in the thin crust variety. Having a very thin crust with toppings, makes it tricky to eat with one's hands, thus pizza is commonly a fork-and-knife type of food. I have yet to try a pizza that contains tomato sauce (or a noticeable amount). I have heard that pizza with tomato sauce does exist here... somewhere. Tomato sauce is fundamental to pizza in my opinion, so I'm sure some restaurants put it on their pizza. Up until this experience, I did not think too highly of Brazilian pizza. But the quality and freshness of the pizza that night changed my mind. It was a good pizza night.

I even had a slice of banana pizza for dessert!

When I returned home, I conversed with Paulo Vinícius, Ana's brother. He was at work when I had arrived earlier that evening from the airport, so this was my first time meeting him. Paulo enjoys video games and is a journalist for a website that publishes articles and news on different video games and online tournaments. I found his job to be very interesting! Paulo interviews professional video gamers, their teams, and he watches them compete. That night, he was actually watching the final round of a League of Legends tournament online, via the company he works for: http://cup.selecter.com.br. Paulo told me that he watches different gaming tournaments from around the world. League of Legends is now the most popular MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game in the world. Online gaming is on the rise, and the tournaments get pretty serious, especially when money is on the line.