Shopping in Sao Paulo

Well, this blog is about travelling and new experiences, and boy did I have an interesting travel experience the other night, not necessarily a great one, but certainly very funny and interesting in retrospect.

So, on Thursday night, my host Thiago had to work for about 5 hours, so he had his friend Bruno, from the neighborhood, who speaks no english, take care of me. He told me that I'd stay with Bruno for a few hours then meet up with another of his friends from the neighborhood, and this girl speaks English.

Well, Bruno brought me to his place. Nice guy, I spoke to him in Spanish, he spoke back in Porguese. Basically, he understood me, and I understood about 10% of what he said back. Fantastic combination for understanding each other and having intelligent conversation.

After watching a bit of soccer at his families place, we go out in his car. I figure we're just killing time and he is showing me around. He tells me we are going shopping. Great, I can understand that, not how I would kill time, but hey, I was just following along.

Well, shopping has now brought a new definition to my dictionary. We pulled into a house driveway, and I figured we were stopping at Thiago's friends house who spoke english. Well, a bouncerlike guy opens the door, and a few words are muttered, then kinda of here, 'American' haha. So we enter. It is somewhat dimly lit and I am confronted by 7 or 8 women lying, scantily clad, on couches, chairs, and watching TV. Well, this was not what I expected 5 minutes ago from 'shopping'.

Bruno essentially started asking me in Portuguese, of course which is mostly impossible for me to comprehend, if I'd like and of them that he would pay. So, over the course of the next 45 minutes, we had a few beers at the bar, and I had to discuss, in Spanish, how and why I do not want to be here, don't want to pay for this, and how this is not part of American culture. I endured the next 45 minutes, laughing internally to myself about how ridiculous the whole scenario was. He finally go the point, and we left.

After that, the evening got much better. We really did go shopping, at a real shopping mall. Imagine that. However, I was glad to have 'Shopping para mujeres' as Bruno calls it, over.

Unbelievable.