Catch up on my sleep - all these late nights and early mornings were catching up on me. I was certainly feeling a bit dozy in the afternoons, particularly with the heat - it's been in the high 20s Celsius most days and seems to get warmest in the late afternoon.
Catch up on my breakfast - the past few days has been rush in, grab whatever and run. Today I was able to take it at a more leisurely pace and try a few things I hadn't tried before. There is lots of fresh fruit - a fruit salad, bananas chopped and covered with cinnamon and grains of some kind, pawpaw, mango, melon, strawberry and probably others I've missed. I'd half a mango today - delicious. There is a hot dish which is the same each day - scrambled eggs and chopped sausages (sort of frankfurters) in a tomato sauce. I tried that today - it was OK. Lovely crusty rolls, cheese slices and ham and similar meats - that's what I've been eating most of this past week. And lots of small cakes and sliced cakes - I tried a few small ones today, they were OK. I managed a "proper" tea in the first couple of days but that box emptied and hasn't been replaced so I've been getting used to matte, the South American herbal tea. The first few cups taste like grass clippings but you get accustomed to it. Carin made us a sweet matte on Friday.
Catch up on my shopping - off to the mall this morning with Jill and Hazira. Having circled it a few times I selected the pair of shorts I wanted, thinking they looked about my size as I couldn't work out the sizing quoted on the ticket. it seemed to run from 36 to 52 but that couldn't be centimetres or inches. Having failed to get them past my knees I decided I hadn't quite grasped the sizing intricacies and ended up getting what seemed to be the only pair in the store my size, a choice of one but they look OK. Well, I think so. I also picked up a Brazilian-style hat for tomorrow's outing as we'll be out in the open for a while. As I found out from Joel last night "Slip, Slop, Slap" is in wider use than just NZ. I stayed on for lunch at a kilo restaurant, where they had black pudding (or blood sausage if you are on the continent). So what is a kilo restaurant - as it says, you load up your plate from a buffet and pay by weight. Depending on the range and quality of the particular restaurant they'll set the per kilo price appropriately. All of the ones we've been to so far have been very good, with a wide range of meats of all types and styles of cooking - roast, stewed, in various sauces, with pasta, and so forth - and a large range of salads and vegetables. And the black pudding? Very nice indeed - very tangy (I was going to say you could almost taste the blood but that might upset some gentle readers). Also salty - food here seems to often be quite salty. I picked up some more water and a few other things from the supermarket and then spent 30 minutes trying to find out where the taxis were. Finally I asked a security guard who gestured towards an entrance 50 metres away - doh!
Catch up on my sleep - again. Oh the luxury of a quick afternoon nap!
Catch up on my blogging - I was warned (thanks, Karla) that I'd find it hard work to keep up and it certainly has been difficult to keep up to date, I've been running a day or two behind all the time. I am at last current. For now.
Catch up with my wife - because of the timezone differences the best time for us to catch up on Skype is 6 - 9 pm Brazil time which translates into 9 - 12 noon NZ time. With all that has been going on we've only managed one other call since I got here so it was nice to be able to spend a relaxing time catching up with each other.
Catch up with others on the team - maybe that's something we've been doing a bit of but it was still very pleasant to have a relaxing dinner with most of the team tonight at a local churrascaria without any rush to get somewhere else. And even better to get back in time to finish this blog and get to bed before midnight, ready for tomorrow's early start - more of which tomorrow (or the day after!).
#ibmcsc brazil
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