May 16th or: oh god why, part 2

next level excitement

During the morning, we always have some free time. You can use it like Daniel above, or you can use it wisely. After getting up, I watched the excellent performance of our Enactus team at the regional competition. Then I hit the supermarket. Fruits of any sort, limes for 70ct the kilo and personnel for every job possibly existing. Someone who weighs fruit for you, two guys who put your stuff in bags (even the single bottle of water), one who pushes the cart to your car at each register. I wonder how there are still people who have no job. 

Apparently, 11am wasn't the best time to do shopping. Anywhere you went, you saw carts loaded up to the max -- probably housemaids doing the everyday shopping for their families. Also, these people were insanely slow putting their stuff out of the cart; it looked like this: one carton of milk, a kilo of meat .. hey, a WhatsApp message .. the cashier is waiting .. ok, here's a couple bananas .. wait, somebody is calling me, better answer that .. . You get the idea. As a german who's always in a hurry, it drove me crazy. Absolutely inefficient. 

Then, training started. The heat was blasting (it was, according to our brazilian friends, "cold" = 28°C and sunshine). We got some decent improvement with the trainees and even acquired new ones!

brazilian supermarket

At night, I did something for the first time in my life. I have seen many things, experienced good and bad stuff, but never this: a vegetarian restaurant. Some of us felt like they had had too much meat (didn't know that's possible) and our vegetarian Deniz wanted to eat "more than just side dishes". I do understand that, life as a vegetarian is really tough in Brazil since you're mostly stuck with rice and beans. Well, after a legitimate 2 hours of waiting and starving, we finally got our food -- I had red risotto with shitake, gorgonzola, pears and walnuts. While the food was delicious aside from its lack of meat, it was by no means enough for anybody. So we basically paid a ridiculous amount of money for basically nothing; however, it was an absolutely enjoyable dinner. 

Day over? No. Complaining isn't gonna get you anywhere. We headed out to a real brazilian bar, and this is how it works: you get your beer and you're free to take it outside, stay inside, whatever you want. Everything is really relaxed. That was great, I could do that again any day. Something I noticed: the beer in Brazil is so cold it's actually freezing. Now I understand why people think we drink "warm" beer in Europe -- because 6-8°C is different from -4°C. Brazilian beer wouldn't taste good at that temperature. Along with beer, a midnight snack seemed appealing. Hot Dog with mashed potatoes, pickles, cheese and some more stuff I can't really tell? I'm in. And it was great.