O balde de Ubiratan

Written last nite before we went out.

Today´s vocabulary word is: balde - bucket (pron: bal de)

People are getting ready to go out, to a bar and sit with other people and listen to the noise and laugh. This is a great thing about Brasil and Brazilians. They like to get together to talk and to laugh amidst a lot of noise, preferably three televisions, some live music, a large video telão... if it is not noisy enough and crowded enough, it can´t be a good place. It’s called movemiento.

The last night we were in São Paulo, our mentor Ubiratan D'Ambroiso invited us to his home for dinner. After a few drinks, Maria José his wife, asked him to tell us about an exam he had to make, you know the kind, a fecal exam. He called the lab and someone there told him to get a balde and to “colocar tudo ate o final” which for those poor souls who cannot speak the world's most beautiful language means "put all of it in until the end.”. He asked the person how he was supposed to do it and they told him to go the 99 cent store and get a balde and bring it all to the lab. Everyone was laughing, and I was thinking, and deep in translation “this is a bit much, but then there are certain exams that are different here than at home. I, being meio disligado, sometimes fail to see the humor in things. Well when it was time for him to take all the things to the lab, he went, with out the balde, and told them that he didn't have time to go get the balde. The nurse asked him what he was talking about, and he explained, and they called everyone in the lab together, apparently someone was playing a joke... of course, like in the states you have to have a small sample, in a tube... balde... 99 cent store... very good.

Tonite we are all preparing to go out, the prerequisite asking of who is going to take a shower, telephone calls are made to the same people numerous time back and forth confirming who is going and who is not. When we arrived from São Paulo, Milton´s' mother was sitting in the dark as she does to watch TV. She told us how much pain she was in, then when we asked her if she had gone to the PT, twice as promised, she said yes, and so we said she won caipirinha for each visit,. She immediately sat up, and with in 40 minutes Barbara was there painting her toenails. So off we went, my sogra back from the dead, and all of us looking good. I can assure you, that after living with this family for many years, we do this just to go out. The production is part of the dance, and the dance is part of the production. I was told that there are cups a meter long that hold beer at this place... gawd help us all.

How I love these crazy people.