Well, things have been still pretty real down in this neck of the woods. Back in the day when we were living in Assis, we used to eat quite a bit of ice cream (see previous post about ice cream every day). But we've discovered our new favorite treat. Acai (pronounced Aw-sigh-ee). So basically if I understand it right, it's this palm berry thing that they crush up and freeze and then top with all sorts of things. The original way to eat it is with fruit and granola, but you can order it with just about anything on it. Plus. It tastes healthy! So you can order this health food topped with nutella, sweetened condensed milk, whipped topping, chocolate sprinkles, other sugary things and sugar and still feel really good about your life. Anyway, there's quite a few places here that sell it and I'd like to be able to visit all of them (seems like it's unlikely cause google maps says there are 7 and two of the places we've been to didn't come up on google maps.)
We went to this place that was called "American Shopping" I think, to try to go clothes shopping. See, I brought all of my bug-collecting clothes and not enough of my "I don't look like a scuzzdog" clothes. But, they didn't really sell stuff that was my style. But we found this really yummy acai place.
Back when we were just learning to say "liquidificador" our friend Lucas told us about this delicious thing made of maracuja, sweetened condensed milk and cream. We put it in the freezer and then ate it. It was really good.
Sam and I were watching a movie when this huge grasshopper came leaping into the room. I think it had a broken wing so we rescued it. And it was staying so still nicely for my picture.
We took this picture in front of the church while we were waiting to get picked up by a bus. We were really happy when other people finally came--we were waiting by ourselves there for a while.
There was a huge bee on these flowers:)
Junior is such a good guy. I'm glad we haven't embarrassed him too badly yet and he still wants to be our friend.
We've been learning how to draw. This is a baby damselfly that I sort of traced using a microscope. Drawing is hard. I am trying to have more patience.
I was trying to think of foods that are "Utahn" and I couldn't think of anything better than funeral potatoes. They thought it was a very strange concept so I made some. Unfortunately we couldn't find cream of mushroom soup. And I thought we found sour cream, but it was actually vanilla yogurt. So that was awkward. It wasn't the best funeral potatoes I've ever had. But, not bad.
So, we went to the stream where all the destruction happened in hopes of finding baby hetearina on their last instar that we could raise in the lab, but we didn't find any damselfly larvae. Hopefully they didn't all get wiped out.
Sam is being a scientist model in this one:)
Turns out she actually found this crazy huge weird spider thing. It was hiding so well. It could have jumped out and eaten my face at any moment.
This is the one final instar Ephemeroptera that we were about to try to raise. But we released it into the wild instead.
I took forever trying to get a good shot of this dragonfly. It stood still for so long like it was begging to be photographed. I need to work on close up shots.
We were almost matching with our white v-necks. Our friends probably think that's what all Americans wear.
We went to one of Ricardo's friends birthday party/churrasco. They gave us these pine nut things that were kind of good but kind of just interesting. You have to bite them at the bottom and then the nut part comes out the top. Very fun to eat.
So after we went to a second barbecue in one weekend, we were a little on the full side I would say. So we went on this walk to try to keep from becoming too fat, and we found this observatory. It was cool cause they had this model of the moon outside that really helped me understand why the moon is backwards from this side of the planet. Awesome.
These were the stained-glass windows in the cathedral we visited. The colors were a lot brighter than other stained glass I've seen in Europe/other places.
I thought that this guy was the actual Saint Carlos, but it turns out he was probably just another guy who knew about Saint Carlos. Ok, I didn't actually read the caption. It was in Portuguese.
We also ended up at the science museum. It was kind of like a smaller, less finished version of OMSI, but I loved it! It had all sorts of hands-on learning about physics exhibits, and I could have stayed there for longer. This may look like a stick, but it's actually an insect. Actually I think there is more than one insect in this picture. Way cool.
And they had a dinosaur. I was happy.
This is us getting Acai at another delicious Acai place.
I heard Sarah made pretzels and I just couldn't get out of my mind how good pretzels sounded. So I finally made some myself and they turned out pretty tasty I think.
There was a bee in my hair! But a very nice bee, and I felt bad kicking it off...
Then we figured out how to take a bus to the zoo. This is an anta (with a cute baby anta next to it). Really cool right?
Antas walking.
A scarlet Macaw! In real life. I've only ever seen these on Amazon Trail before and there they were rare.
Also, Toucans exist in real life as well.
This is an ema. Not an emu. I think in English it's called a Greater Rhea or something. As we walked along the fence, he was walking along next to us and we were pretty sure he wanted to be friends with us.
This is our sad faces after we didn't see the Lobo Guara (some South American wolf that eats fruit). It must have been hiding.
This monkey is about to swing down and steal Sam's phone:)
This bird behind me looked really menacing.
We bought some coconut water and they gave it to us straight out of the coconut! What a life!
We made some avacado shakes that I thought were pretty tasty:)
And then Sam made Swiss Bread. Such a lovely human being.
So, we wanted to dye eggs right? But we didn't have any egg dye or food coloring so we used jello and beet juice.
Happy Easter!!!
We made tapioca with beets and onions and tomatoes and ricotta inside. It was really good.
Something weird happened with the eggs that we dyed with beets... the red didn't stay and it left some kind of green colored residue behind. I don't understand.
Just another lovely tree I've never seen before.
Standing next to the forest in front of the city. Such a lovely afternoon.
I liked this plant because the top part of the inflorescence is still so congealed!
And this flower is just plain weird. Never seen anything like it before.
What a wonderful world.
And this crazy cocoon of some unknown creature.
We always see animal prints in the cement. They probably do it on purpose to make sure pet owners know it's a pet-friendly sidewalk:)
So. Goals for this week: Eat more Acai. Catch more damselflies. Stay Alive.
Also, This is the sound of the big blue macaw in the zoo. It's pretty scary.
