Samba and snakes!

Last weekend, I had the chance to see a samba band, live. The first week here, Lindsey stayed with a host family, and she made friends with their daughter, Mariella. Mariella introduced us to her friends, and we all went out to see MONOBLOCO!! They are an awesome samba group from Rio de Janeiro.

We were pretty excited after exchanging our tickets for VIP passes.

We were up front with the other party animals dancing the night away!

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, people here don’t go out until very late at night. We arrived around 11pm, and we were one of the first to arrive.

A local band was on stage, but the venue seemed pretty empty. People didn’t begin to arrive until almost midnight.

The band that opened for Monobloco was Seu Chico, a Chico Buarque cover band made up of young guys from Recife. Their songs are pop versions of Chico Buarque’s music who is one of Brazil’s more famous musicians.

He is an artist who is politically active through his music and literary works. I wish I had seen Mr. Buarque in concert rather than Seu Chico—the crowd died down a bit when they went on. Not my favorite, but they were fun to watch.

When Monobloco finally went on at 2am, the people went wild!! It was so exciting to be up front and center for the craze! The band was insane! I am obsessed with drummers, and I love everything percussion, so seeing this band was amazing!!

It was like being at a Carnaval party all over again. The band mixed up the samba with some forró, carimbó, funky, and other popular Brazilian music.

They went on for some time, and the crowd jumped, danced, and partied the night away! It was such a good time, and it didn’t end until almost 5:00 in morning! Check them out--I recorded some of their performance :)

On Sunday, my students invited us out to the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi. This place is called a museum, but it’s more like a zoo with exotic animals and plants from the Amazon region. From the outside, you would never guess that such creatures live inside.

The museum is located near the middle of the city and is surrounded by a fence with a very pretty building at the corner. You can see the large trees peaking over the walls, but it looks more like a historic building or a barrack of some sort. Because it is called a museum, I thought we would be visiting an indoor building with artifacts and exhibits. I was close...there were exhibits, but it was all outdoors, and the scene was more like that of Jurassic Park! It was really cool!

Some of the animals were roaming freely, and they would come close enough to snap their picture. Most of these creatures were rodent-like and a little scary, so I didn’t dare touch. I can’t even begin to describe some of the animals we saw. They were very different to say the least, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Some of the animals were a little too close for comfort. The Jacaré (neither an alligator nor a crocodile but similar to both) lay just below the bridge that visitors had to cross to reach the other exhibits. This bridge had wood panels that were separated about 2 inches apart and a child’s hand could have easily fit through the cracks. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but the Jacaré’s head was right there—a foot from snatching a limb! This is the view of his head between the panels...scary!

I thought I was camera crazy, but my students are maniacs about taking pictures. I loved every minute of it!

It was interesting to me that many of them have lived in Belém their entire lives, but had either never visited the museum or hadn’t been for more than ten years! This place is just too cool to go that long without visiting or to have never been at all!

The plants and trees were another sight to see! Some of the trees were just enormous and signs had to be put up to warn of falling fruits.

There was a beautiful pond covered in lily pads, and my students stopped to take pics for Orkut (their Facebook). They say, if you’re not on Orkut, you don’t exist. It’s actually more popular than The Facebook.

I had to include the following in my blog because it is a recurring theme—women in high heels and fancy clothing for every occasion and me, feeling underdressed all the time. Haha! Many women dress so well here. It is very common in Brazilian culture for woman to dress up even if it’s just to go out for a leisurely walk, to the grocery store, or to the zoo with the children.

I am impressed by their ability to keep up with the rough terrain of the city sidewalks, the sandy walkways and the wild rapids after the rainfall in their stilettos! Of course, not everyone can or does, but many can and do!

As for the snakes, we didn’t see any—thank goodness! And, the aquarium was empty, but we will be back I’m sure!