A Day in the Park

We've had almost a full week in Brazil now, and we're very close to having a place to stay! After enrolling at the Universidade de Brasilia (UnB) last Wednesday I received some contact info for a few housing places. One of them is in the South Lake District and we visited it yesterday, only to discover that it is amazing, and even has a swimming pool! The landlady, Dulce, is sooo nice and came and picked us up in her car, then took us for a tour of the city and out to eat at the weekend market, which is quite close to our hotel. We also met Tina, a German student who is also going to be studying at UnB and has moved in to Dulce's place. She told me that there are only 10 (!!!) international students on campus. Wow. Popular place. . .


As for the rest of the past week, we've been learning to use the bus system and touring the three malls near the hotel, while I worked on getting registered for classes at UnB. I also met an awesome herpetologist, Guarino Colli, who invited me to help out with his collection, hang out in the lab, and go collecting! Tomorrow I'll start working with the collection once I've finished registering for classes. Marshall has teacher orientation tomorrow at the American School of Brasilia (EAB), so it'll be an early start for the day! Tomorrow will be the last day of our buffet breakfast at the hotel, pictured to the right. I also have learned since our first day of breakfast that the strange fruit with berries on top is called mamao and the 'berries' are actually seeds of the fruit. It tastes like papaya, but less sweet.





At the weekend market near the bottom of the TV Tower (we can see it from our hotel, pictured in the previous blog), we also had a sampling of new foods. The first thing yesterday was caldo de cana, or sugar cane juice.


They take big pieces of sugar cane and run it through a crushing machine, which makes a liquid that is filtered then served. It was almost too sweet to finish! Today we tried the agua de coco, coconut water, which was as bland as the sugar cane juice was sweet.My favorite drink is guarana, basically pop made from the juice of a fruit of the same name, which has caffeine in it.











Tonight we're heading back to the market for dinner, maybe corn on the cob if we can find butter for Marshall, or more pasteis! Delicious fried bread packets with different fillings, like cheese or meat, but I want to try the banana and cinnamon one tonight.




This morning after breakfast (during which I finally noticed the interesting translation of 'turkey breast,' left), we decided to check out the city park. It's a short walk from the hotel and is supposed to be bigger than Central Park in New York. Here are a few pics from our lengthy walk.

















I would say it's one of the few places in the city that has a properly maintained sidewalk! Everywhere else potholes are more frequent than actual sidewalk. We also got to see our first capoeira group, which was really fun to watch (see the video clip below!), before we headed back to the hotel for a break from the sun.