Mick Jagger

Today’s Portuguese Word of the Day (PWOD): Laricar = to get late-night eats. If you roll out of a club at 5 am with an extreme case of the munchies and grab a jumbo slice pizza, a Julia’s Empanada, or an all you can eat buffet of roasted eggplant falafel from Old City Café then you are late night eating (Você esta laricando).

The search is over! For the past week I have been consumed/stressed out with an apartment hunt. My friend Gleidi, out of the kindness of her heart, has been letting me crash at her place until I get squared away with one of my own. It’s a comfortable place but, unfortunately, sort of a logistical hazard because she basically lives in Argentina. Well, not really. And not that living in Argentina is a problem because as previously written, I loved it there. But she lives on the opposite end of the city from my school and it’s more than an hour commute on the bus each way (depending on traffic it can be worse). My strategy has consisted of emails galore to apartment ads listed on Craigslist-equivalent websites, networking thru Gleidi and her friends, and knocking door to door on apartment buildings talking to the doormen if there are any vacancies. The latter strategy is actually quite useful. A lot of places aren’t listed in the ads but if you talk to the doormen they show you the place and give you the owner’s contact info. I skipped a couple of my Portuguese classes to go door-to-door. My rationale was that I’d get a hell of a lot better language practice begging and pleading doormen for places to live than reciting from a textbook. But most apartments that I saw were being renovated and ready by earliest next week. Given the commuting costs (time and money) and the perils of what to do if I miss the last bus going back to Gleidi’s place at night, I was sort of hitting a point of desperation.

Alas, on Monday I finalized a place with a guy whose online ad I responded to. It’s a sick place with great perks. It’s beautifully furnished, right off of Paulista Avenue (a main commercial street in São Paulo), 6 easily walkable blocks from my school, a few blocks from the city’s largest park, down the street from a 24 hour grocery store, and shared with 4 Brazilians (2 guys, 2 girls) which should be great for my Portuguese. All this for a bargain price – even for Brazilian standards given its location. Two guys are from different states in Brazil and go home once a month and have offered open invited to their cities whenever they head back. So it’s a comfortable place to live which lends itself to travel opportunities with native guides. I really lucked out and I’m stoked for what’s to come. The apartment has been affectionately dubbed "The Mick Jagger Apartment" because of the picture of him jamming out in concert that’s hanging right outside our entrance door. Not really sure why it’s there. I asked Samir (my roommate) and he went on a lengthy explanation that I didn’t really understand but was just going with the flow.

So…….yeah, I feel a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I was feeling a little bit scattered in getting settled. The week in Argentina was fabulous, but it put me a little behind with classes, I lost a couple leads on apartments, and frustration was weighing in on the lengthy commute to and from downtown – all of which made it a little tough to focus and enjoy my surroundings. So now with priority number one squared away I can plan my attack of São Paulo and the rest of Brazil. As I told my sister, it’s as if a brick wall has been knocked down in front of me and I can clearly see all the activities and opportunities ahead of me that I want to get involved in.