Brazil Part I

A little back ground before I begin this post: Ryan and Diego work together at Rain and have become really good friends. Diego is from Cabo Frio, Brazil and his family still lives there. He is married to an American, Melissa, they have been married for three years. Melissa served her mission in Rio and met Diego when she went back to visit after her mission. Ryan served his mission in southern Brazil and still speaks fluent Portuguese ....which means I was the only who couldn't speak the language. Diego and Melissa invited us to come with them to Brazil, they were there before Christmas and we met there later...end of back ground.
Leaving Hudson was way harder then I could have imagined! My mom and dad came and stayed at our house while we were gone, so I knew he was in excellent hands, I was only concerned about myself. We had a layover in Dallas and Ryan caught the scent of that fried chicken he loves so much(that's not true he had researched before we left and knew exactly where it was) so we had to make a pit stop.
After a 10 1/2 hr flight from Dallas to Rio de Janeiro, we found a man holding a piece of paper with our names on it and found out he was our ride to Cabo Frio,which is about a 2 hour drive. We arrived at Diego's grandmas house, they call her Vovo-zinho (granny in Portuguese)and she had a GIANT lunch prepared for us. She made rice, beans, chicken, beef, sausage, fried porkchops, and vegetables. It was delicious! All the food we ate while we were there was incredible, we did not have one bad meal. I knew at the this meal I was in trouble.........big trouble. Then we took a much needed nap. This is the room we stayed in. The living conditions were better then I thought they would be, I think Ryan had prepared me for the worst.
It is summer in Brazil right now, and Cabo Frio is where the Brazilians go on vacation, so the city was packed. That night around 11pm we went out. There were a ton of out door shops set up along the beach and tons of little restaurants. This is Melissa and Douglas, Diego's cousin who actually spoke a little English. For dinner we had lots of chicken, beef, rice, farofa(a ground up tapioca flour with butter and garlic that they eat on their meat...and everything else), and some kind of Brazilian tatertot! For dessert we had my new favorite.....acai(kind of a smoothie with acai and guarana) with granola and honey, and a churro with dulce de leche.
After dinner we went to concert on the beach and to say it was crowded would be a gross understatement.
This is Diego, Melissa, Ryan and I at the concert. The music was fun to listen to,even though I couldn't understand it. I guess I thought Portuguese would be easy to understand because I can understand a little Spanish, but they aren't even a little the same! We got home around 3 am.
The next afternoon we woke up around 11 and headed to the beach....us and everyone else in the Southern hemisphere.

Ryan had a sweetened condensed popsicle, which I was skeptical about, but it was delicious.
I was a little shocked at the amount of speedos and G-strings and the types of bodies wearing both. But I'll give the Brazilians one thing....they love and are very proud of their bodies, no matter what the size!
Ryan enjoyed lots of Coconut water.
This is Melissa and Diego's little girl, Madalena. She is two months older than Hudson, and it was her first time meeting all of Diego's family.
For lunch that day we ate at a restaurant on the beach and we had chicken stroganoff, it wasn't anything like what we have here, it was made with creme de leche and served with rice and it was delicious!.....a successful day at the beach.
That night was New Year's Eve! Diego's cousin had reserved a space on the beach for a party. It was roped off and they had a DJ and food. There were people everywhere! Everyone wore white and a huge firework show went off at midnight then we danced the night away!

This is Ryan in line for another Churro, I think I had at least one a day.
Ryan and his dance moves were the hit of the party!!! It was fun to hear some songs I recognized from Zumba,so I had some sweet moves myself. People loved that we were Americans, people came up to us and asked if they could take pictures with us. We never saw any other Americans while we were there, except for a missionary from Payson at church the next day( more about that in the next post)

And this is the Vovo-zinho! Melissa, Diego, and Ryan would translate most things for me. But Vovo-zinho didn't care that I didn't speak or understand the language. She would talk to me as if I had learned Portuguese in the 5 minutes since the last time she tried to talk to me, and it's not like she would use simple words or act out what she was trying to say, or point to things, she spoke to me just like she spoke to everyone else and then just looked at me waiting for a response. But we loved her! She is quite the character. Everybody we met was so giving, generous, loving, and so willing to help us out. We met a lot of Diego's family- aunts, uncles, cousins, and you would have thought by how they treated us that we had all been friends for years. They would have given us everything they had, if we would've let them.