Oh! Some dogs have come closer. They're mutts, black or caramel-colored.
There had to be a
caramelo.
"What if he's an alien? They've already visited Minas Gerais, so maybe they want to visit Bahia too."
The "ET of Varginha". Our very own Roswell incident.
Someone got the right idea, but Bahia got a more famous alien.
“Good,” the man replies. “The last thing we need is a crazy guy bothering us on what’s probably one of our last days alive.”
Uh-oh.
I look at him, startled, trying to figure out if it’s some kind of joke, or what he meant by that. But apparently my blank expression shows just how confused I am, because before I can open my mouth, he says, “Oh, right! If you’ve lost your memory, you won’t remember the asteroid!”
Nightfall is one of my favorite stories in the series.
Hmm, no, you're too polite to be from Rio de Janeiro.
Hehe.
That's where my familiarity ends. I was amazed that a lot of things feel like reading a story set in a different country.
Nuno laughs. "Cuscuz peitinho, you've never had it?"
I've never eaten cuscuz. And I'd never heard that name.
It was funny!
We eat while watching the sunrise, glorious above the hills and the great imposing rocks that tower over us.
There are mandacarus and cacti everywhere
A very different landscape. Here, we have more fields and plains and we only see cacti in little flowerpots.
"It's Bahia's jersey. And the team's mascot is Superman, so it's for good luck."
I only found out about that when the movie came out last year. I thought it was so cool! I'll root for them as long as they're not playing against Grêmio.
I decide to read the Monica's Gang comics, and they're quite fun.
It would be still funnier if he was reading this story, which came out in 1993:
![[Linked Image]](https://i.ibb.co/5WzdhbBx/Tirinha-MN-82-1993.jpg)
At least this time it's nothing as heavy as the cuscuz, just boiled plantains and avoador, or “flying” cookies, which are very light and have a cheese-like taste.
I've never eaten boiled plantains, either. After looking it up on google I found out we have "avoador", but here we call it "biscoito de polvilho".
The doors of most of the houses I can see swing open, revealing residents in different stages of readiness to start the day. From what I gathered yesterday, there must be about twenty houses here in total. They’re small and colorful, some surrounded by fences and banana, orange, and lemon trees, as well as flowers of all kinds. The flour mill is opened up, and a few workers head over there carrying buckets of cassava, but not without greeting us and stopping for a quick chat to ask how I'm doing.
It feels very cozy. And very different. As I told you, here people tend to keep to themselves. I only know the names of the neighbors living next door, and my interaction with them is limited to saying "Good morning" and "Good afternoon." My mother sometimes stops and talks to some of her neighbors, but they don't visit each other. If someone needs help, everyone pitches in, but that sense of familiarity exists only with family and close friends. Now I understand why people from some states think people here are cold. I’m just as amazed as Clark.
“Polite,” seu Conrado teases, shuffling the cards with mastery. “They’re just a bunch of gossips, that’s what they are.”
Haha.
I'm loving this story and learning a lot. Fanfic is culture, too.
Andreia
