A Sneak Peek at Brazil

Want to visit an exotic country for a minute or two? Okay, here you go.

Last week, my grown-up son returned from Brazil. He's been living there for several years. Boy, did we miss him! He's the fun, adventurous type, and so Brazil was the perfect place to go.

Yup, he ate blood sausage. (Luckily he didn't know until he was done, but believe it or not, he liked it.)

He learned to clap instead of knock when he went to visit anyone. He learned to speak Portuguese, and to shake everyone's hand every time he went anywhere.

And, yup, he took a million pictures, (well, actually only several thousand) so you get to share a few of his adventures today. Ready?

Picture one. All right, obviously he didn't take it. His brother did. This is my newly returning Brazilian son when we picked him up at 1:30 a.m. at the airport. (Just a side note, but when he was a toddler he got in more trouble than a barrel of Dennis-the-menaces, and the only things that kept him alive were those awesome dimples.)

He sure chose a heck of a time to come back. He left Sao Paulo's peak summer temperatures just in time to meet the rocky mountain's most frigid gusts.

And he kept smiling. (He said it was a nice change from all that sweating.)

Okay, okay, onto the cool stuff. Here's one of his pictures. I had no idea snails came this big. Did you?

Yes, he was there when all the flooding and landslides hit. Luckily, his area escaped with minor trauma, but the skies were definitely scary. I merged two pictures he took so you can see what I mean. Ay-yi-yi . . . yi yi!

Storms aside, I think Brazilians might be onto something. They've trained their ants to be garbage men. Really.

It's a good thing they have lots of ants, because this is what happened at election time. Wow.

Yeah. But it gets better.

                               
                       Mm-hm. There will be no bored ants for a very long time.

Now back to my son. And food. He ate lots of rice and beans. He tried new fruit, some of which I've never seen or heard of before. This is the jaca. He said it had a limp noodle texture, and tasted sort of like a mix between a banana and a graviola (I have no idea what that is), and that it tasted good.

And yup, *shudder*, he saw some crazy spiders.

That'd be enough to make my tan (if I had one) leave permanently. Luckily, he's made of hardier stuff. His tan is still very much intact.

So if you're from Brazil, I'm jealous. Enjoy your warmth and fresh fruit, but I won't mind a bit if you keep your spiders.

And if you're not from Brazil, I hope you enjoyed this little trip. I know I did.

But you'll have to excuse me, because his next batch of pictures has parrots and I can't wait to see them. Tchau!