Trevor's South America Trip: Gol!!!

Day 24 - 22 de Junho: Manaus

The mornings are becoming quite similar to write about lately. I get up, go with Jeffson to buy breakfast food, then we eat and go over portuguese. I like these mornings - I really feel like I'm becoming Brazilian... Im just a lot less tan and have a canadian accent. After breakfast, we took a drive to the ice cream parlour from last night - Jeffson is considering starting up an ice cream shop under their name and wanted to work out some numbers with them. While he talked with the owners, myself, my host mom and a family friend sat at a different table. They asked me a few questions in Portuguese, which was great practice for me. My biggest challenge now is understanding them when they speak - as almost all their words end in vowel sounds, and almost all english words end in consonants, it seems like they never complete words when they talk. That then makes it seem like every word blends into one big mess of conversation that i cant follow, however I'm sure I'll get better with practice. Once Jeffson had finished, we made a brief stop back home. Later on in the morning, the family and I took a drive into town to visit their little clothing store - named J & M clothing which stands for the names of Jeffson's two daughters Jessica and Maisa. Of course, with a seasonal business like jungle tours, he likes to have a secondary source of income to supplement it. Unfortunately, it's not located in a great part of town for a clothing shop and gets very little business. So, to try something different, he may put the ice cream parlour here instead. It sure would be cool to have your own ice cream stand (yes, I saw the pun immediately after I wrote that sentence - "cool"). He first showed me the workshop where they fabricate all the clothes and accessories. It was a neat little place - apparently a lot of the clothes are made by Jeffson's mother in law. She was there today too, so we said hello, then went to a place for a quick lunch. It was buffet style and so far, every self-serve place i've been to doesn't charge by plate, but by weight. I enjoyed the lunch, especially because they had lasagna. Jeffson and I returned to the shop, leaving the rest of the family behind. We were going to run the shop for the next little bit, but because business was slow, we took the opportunity to watch the first part of the Brazil vs Italy soccer game. Soccer is a big deal here, so everyone gets into it. I guess it helps to have such a good team! We hung out watching it until the rest of the family returned, then we made our way home. The family didn't stay long at all since they had choir practice, however since I actually wanted to see one of these games to completion for once, I opted to stay behind and chill out. It was a good relaxing afternoon. Every time Brazil scored though, the neighbours would all throw ear-deafening fire crackers into the street. It was an amusing accompaniment. When the family returned, they made their version of hot dogs - basically a chili dog without the hot spices. It was really good food for something that would typically be considered fast food. The last activity of the night was checking out Manaus' new shopping mall. Manaus has apparently undergone major infrastructure projects over the last 3 years, completing their enormous, Amazon river spanning bridge, their boardwalk and beach, and this enormous shopping mall. We took a walk around and compared prices at the tech shops to those back home - cell phones, laptops, they're all around double the price! (Yes, and that's with the conversion). However, i've noticed their food is around half the price of ours so i guess it all works out for them. Since i'm pretty tired and not much else happened today, i'll cut the post short today. We'll see what kind of adventures I take part in tomorrow, big or small!