For a while I was convinced that the Brazilian-Portuguese way of saying that one was hungover directly translated to “having the taste of an umbrella handle in one’s mouth.” I vaguely remember hearing it in a hostel in São Paulo, probably from another backpacker and those people’ll say anything.

Yesterday someone who was actually from Brazil and was actually hungover said, “estou numa ressaca lascada.” When I entered that phrase into babelfish it translated as, “I am in a splintery undertow.” Now, babelfish, like backpackers, will say anything [1] too but, whatever, it’s still rad.

[1] For example, let’s say you wanted to find out what the song “Sexy Boy” is about in English, you’ll find that babelfish thinks that the “French” phrase “sexy boy” translates to the English phrase “sexy servant boy“.

travelling abroad is always marked with someone, at some point, counting all the different nationalities represented in whatever group you’re in and saying, “we’re like the un!” my trip to iguassu falls was no exception. and it’s neat. i’ve now met my first liechtensteiner (two!). i played barefoot soccer on a concrete “pitch” with all kinds of people, including some brazilians, swedes, and israelis.

now. iguassu falls straddles the border between argentina and brazil and just a little upstream there’s a point where you can overlook the point where the borders of brazil, argentina, and paraguay all meet. the perfect icing on the “hey! we’re like the un!” cake.

not so. the height of mixing cultures came a few hours later when i watched a 27 year old dutchman eat his first bowl of jell-o. he spent ten minutes carefully removing it from the styrofoam cup in order to spend another ten minutes watching it jiggle.

while on a local bus in foz do iguacu, brazil i met this australian girl.

“so, where are you from?”
“boston.”
“oh, i lived there. in allston.”
thinking she said austin, “no, boston. in massachusetts. not texas.”

“yeah, allston.”
“no, boston.”
“it’s the accent.”
“yeah, i’m sorry. b-o-s-t-o-n.”
“no, my accent. a-l-l-s-t-o-n.”
“oh shit!”

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”.