so i finally made it to the southern hemisphere. it didn’t feel that weird at all, even though i was walking upside down. sao paulo really isn’t the most remarkable city. however. i will always be impressed by a city where the banks are guarded by men who fit my image of a south american storm trooper to a tee, in particular the huge, rambo-style guns.

i was wandering around town with another american i met at the hostel, bob. we came across this sort of gallery of old toys. they were the coolest toys possible, transformers, g.i. joe, heman, etc. i was very tempted to buy the complete brazilian set of a-team figures including that van! in any case, we started chatting a bit with some of the dealers and when we told them that we were from the us one said to the other, “something, something … saddam hussein,” then made the that throat slashing gesture. fortunately we didn’t then have some sort of stilted conversation in pidgin spanish with portuguese speakers about politics. nevertheless, we were pretty curious as to what the deal was. later on i found out that earlier that day saddam hussein was captured. goofy.

i should also point out that as the two american backpackers in the hostel everyone got a kick out of referring to us, collectively, as “jim-bob”.