After sleeping for what seemed like an eternity, we awoke to a gorgeous day here in Parnamirim. Parnamirim (´little river´) is a town just outside of Natal. We´re actually just down the street from the local airport/military airbase. As Jade noted in my previous post, Parnamirim appears to be a very poor municipality though our host´s house and grounds would be considered well off in most parts of the world. The house is very nice and reminds me of a Spanish villa. Many areas of the house are open air or are covered by the roof, but have ironwork open air designs in the walls. Almost all of the common areas are like this.
For breakfast we had the typical Brazilian fare of coffee, bread, cake, juice, ham, cheese, and many different types of fruit. Afterwards Jade and I went to the market to purchase a few items, including ingredients to make caipirinhas later (cachaça, limes, and sugar). I also bought some havaianas, or flip-flops, and a nice t-shirt.
Pretty much as soon as we got back the maid was preparing lunch which was yet another feast featuring chicken with chiles, beef stew, rice, beans, egg & cucumber salad, suco da goiaba (fresh guava juice), and much, much more fruit. Then it is nap time. I think it is like this most days. 
Oh, and check out these photos of Rio de Janeiro posted at Boston.com´s Big Picture – http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/scenes_from_rio_de_janeiro.html. We´ll be there in 3 days!
