The Cowboy Way

Today’s PWOD: Sangue bom = good people. Literally it means “good blood” but it’s a common expression to describe real good, nice, cool people. If you meet a cool person, a hospitable family, or an awesome professor then you can classify them as sangue bom.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday shout outs. It was real thoughtful of you to remember and send along your wishes. It’s already Wednesday and I am still trying to post the recap of the past weekend before the next one creeps up. Apologies for the delay between posts. Hopefully it’ll be the longest delay between entries of the trip. In addition to the apologies, more thanks go out to all who have expressed support and a liking for the blog. It means a lot. You have lent me your shoulders to stand on as I reach for the stars. Dahahaha, it does mean a lot but I’m not trying to get that corny on ya’ll!!

OK, so this past weekend I went to a little tiny town 5 hours north of São Paulo called Barretos. Why go there you ask? Because each year it is the host city to Brazil’s largest rodeo festival. Yes, rodeo. Bulls jumping around trying to shake cowboys off their backs, double and triple lassoing competitions to round up poor innocent baby cattle, leather boots, cowboys hats, and country music (in Portuguese). Up until this past weekend the closest I’ve come to a rodeo is a toss-up between (1) a Burger King rodeo burger – really nothing more than a burger with a soggy onion ring on the patty which I lived off of for the last third of my trip in Spain (because I was running out of funds and they only cost 1 euro, roughly equivalent to one dollar at the time) and (2) a crazy party called Stomp held each year at the American Legion in DC hosted by the Idaho congressional and senatorial offices. But from what I’ve seen on TV, this festival is about as legit as you can get for any rodeo. It’s just like the ones I see in Texas or the wild west USA only everyone was speaking Portuguese. Literally, you could have picked up any rodeo in the US west and dropped it in the middle of Brazil and it would be the same thing. I guess cowboy culture is cowboy culture no matter where you are.

In addition to the today’s PWOD, there’s a little grammar lesson. In Portuguese any word that begins with an “R” and any word that has two “Rs” in a row, the R is pronounced like the letter “H” in English. So Rio de Janeiro in Portuguese is really pronounced “H”io de Janeiro. Ronaldinho the soccer player is “H”onaldinho. Car in Portuguese is carro and is pronounced ca“h”o. Etcetera, etcetera. So when I say in Portuguese that I went to a rodeo in Barretos (fui a um rodeio em Barretos), it is pronounced a “h”odeio em Ba“h”ettos. Get it? If not, nevermind.

So on Friday night we caught the midnight bus up there and arrived around 5am Saturday. My roommate Eduardo’s girlfriend lives in Barretos and we spent the weekend at her parents place. Real great, warm, friendly people (sangue bom) who typify the accommodating spirit of Brazilians. They opened their house to us and wined and dined us with delicious bbq, traditional feijoada (stewed pork and beans), and a cinammon based cachaça which was the best I have ever tasted called canelinha. Saturday afternoon we cruised around the rodeo grounds and hit up the city which comes to life for these two weeks each year with flooded street parties and festivities. I bought my very first cowboy hat and shamelessy sported it around town. Saturday night we went to the rodeo. Only come night it was less a rodeo and more of a party that didn’t end until well past sunrise. The ring was opened up to the public and became a dancefloor for live music concerts and jamming out to Brazilian country. The entire complex was a huge fairgrounds with the rodeo stadium surrounded by dozens of tents with food, live music, games, and uumm….beer. Basically it was an open air party for tens of thousands of people.

Sunday was a day of rest and recovery chilling out by the pool, feasting on more bbq and cachaça. We again caught the midnight bus back to São Paulo and I got in a little past 5 am on Monday morning leaving me just enough time to catch a quick nap and finish up some finance homework for my class later that morning. I was cutting it down to the wire but that’s what being in Brasil, traveling, and hanging with the native roommates is all about right?!?!