Brazilian night

So after my last post where I perhaps wallowed a bit in misery, only a few hours after putting it up my fate changed. So if you remember a post from September when I mentioned some people I had already met, including one Brazilian maid named Fernanda. Well I decided to text her to see if she was free, and she called me back. Our conversation (translated for your convenience) went approximately like this:

"Hey Jenny! I am so glad you called, me and a friend are going out tonight! Want to come?"
"Sure! When and where?"
"Well, where are you?"
"I'm at home near Campo di Marte."
"Oh, well can you do [garbled stuff I didn't understand]."
"Huh? Speak more slowly, it is hard to hear."
"We're doing [lost in the background noise]."
"Sounds fun. Where should I meet you and when?"
"What do you think? She keeps asking the same question, why don't you talk to her?"
"What?"
"Okay, here, you try."
[new voice] "Hi, Jenny? Do you know where St. Jacob's piazza is?"
"No, but I can find out. Is that where you are?"
*"No. That's where she lives. [More stuff in fast Italian blotted out by background noise. Clearly asking me a question.]"
**"I can't hear, I can't understand you, what do you want me to do already??????"
We went back and forth between lines * and ** until they gave me instructions to get ready to go out and leave now for the stazione, and then call them. Well I didn't know what kind of going out was going to happen (it was still way before dinner time even), and so I just threw some makeup on, threw the bread that I had rising in the kitchen into the fridge, along with a prayer (cinnamon buns, they turned out fine and my whole family really liked them, they're almost gone only a day after I baked them! More on baked goods after the story), and I ran out the door.

I got to the statzione and asked where they were, they told me, but because of the noise again I heard wrong, and so while I kept asking everyone where the Sabaionni was, apparently I was supposed to be asking for the Baglioni (a hotel). I even asked the doorman of the Baglioni where the Sabaionni was, and he said that he had no clue. The girls could have told me that I was looking for a hotel. That would have helped a lot. Stupid cell phones. Anyway I did eventually find them. We took a bus from the stazione to Fernanda's house, and she called lots of people and we all ate dinner together.

Then they decided that I wasn't dressed appropriately for dancing (I wasn't, I didn't bring clothes for that) and so Fernanda pulled a suitcase full of dressed out from under her bed and picked out an outfit for me. They dressed me, did my hair, did my makeup, and at the end I was in an all-black getup with my hair down and extra curly and lots of volume and eyeliner and glitter and perfume and I thought I looked like a jersey girl. They told me I looked like I could be from the south of Brazil, where people are white and pasty like me. I'm waiting for the facebook photos to go up, I will add them to this post for sure!

After finally getting ready we got into a car with some of her friends and drove about a half hour to the other side of the city to this place called Otel Varietie (or something near that). It was a dinner/theater variety show for the beginning of the evening, and at midnight they remove all the tables and turn the place into a giant discoteque. We caught the end of the show, which included dance acts, a woman with lots of hula hoops, someone singing aretha franklin who clearly didn't have an idea of what the words meant and hardly knew what the words were, and the charming announcer. Then when the club started they revealed that the stage actually had a gigantic bar behind it, and they opened the disco part by lighting the bar on fire while the barmen did crazy tricks and spit fire and juggled flaming bottles. It was pretty cool. Apparently all the bartenders in the club did those kinds of spinning tricks, or at least mine did. He was tossing ice into the air, spinning glasses, pouring from an arm's distance away, shaking with extra flourishes, and all sorts of fun stuff.

The disco played American top 40 hits for the beginning of the evening, which I enjoyed because I knew them, and then slowly transitioned into the stereotypical Eurotrash house stuff. By that time my feet were starting to hurt because the shoes weren't quite right for me and had no padding, so I was perfectly happy to sit a few dances out, enjoy my caipirinha (I was with Brazilians, after all), and watch the festivities. Of course I was in one of the most scantily-clad groups of the whole club (again, I was with Brazilians, after all), but luckily I had borrowed a big, bright, flashy ring which happened to fit right on my ring finger, and showing that off was an easy way to keep the casanovas at bay.

The night ended with us stopping at a roadside truck for hamburgers (or at least ground beef on bread with condiments) and I spent the night at Fernanda's house since we got back after 3 and I didn't want to make my way home at that hour. I got up the next morning too early and made my way home.

When I got home, after a long, hot shower I finished the cinnamon buns I had started the day before. They turned out terrifically, and my host mom told me twice that she liked them and needed the recipe. So after the success of the banana bread and now this, I've decided I will keep up a rotation of baked goods to keep around, at the very least so I have something to eat for breakfast, and also because it seems to make people happy. So I'm taking advice and suggestions for what to make! Vote in the poll on the right, and use the comments section or email me with other ideas.