Eating

We will be moving into our apartment tomorrow. It is fully furnished, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, laundry room, living room and dining room. It is really perfect for what we need right now and even has a washing machine. We have been staying in the Brasilian Imperial Hotel for the last week as we searched for apartments and jobs and work visas and CPF (the Brazilian Social Security type card). But tomorrow, finally we get our own place. The hotel that we have been staying at is right across the street from the mall. We have eaten almost every meal at the mall food court. It’s a little expensive, especially for every meal. Occasionally we tried to explore for a cheaper dinner, but we usually just got lost, or tired of walking and ended up paying more for just rice and beans. There are both McDonalds and Burger Kings in the mall, but for just a burger, fries and a coke it costs around $10 (and that’s for the smallest burger on the menu.) Plus the service is so slow. We are just starting to get used to it, but speed is just not a priority in this country. It’s funny, because it’s not as though we have been super busy and we need our food immediately. But for some reason it just takes a lot of patience to watch someone carefully and leisurely scoop fries into the container, and then walk to the soda fountain and then oops, forgot the cup, slowly walk back to the other side of the counter hold the cup the whole time that it is filling, then walk all the way back to where they just got the cup and get the lid, come back, set it on the tray, then go all the way back and get the straw (which is sometime too big for the whole in the lid, so that’s a little funny too.) The other thing that is really popular in Brazil are these “self-service” restaurants. They are set up like all you can eat buffets, but they are not. They are weigh your plate places. After you go around helping yourself to everything that you want you have to go and put your plate on a scale and pay per kilogram. At first it is a little tricky because your head still thinks that you are in an all you can eat place so you fill your plate as full as possibly…but then your wallet isn’t too happy. By now I have figured out how to take just what I want. Also, it is a good idea to try to take the lightest food that is also the most filling. I had a really great sushi meal last night that would have cost the same as a plate of rice and beans. There is also a fabulous build-you-own-weigh-your-bowl ice cream place in the mall. Well tomorrow the adventure of cooking in Brazil begins.