Between The Lines

Brazil Craziness

Ok...check out this guy in the lower left corner of the picture. You can just barely see his head.

So, we are standing on the street corner in downtown Porto Allegre waiting for our bus driver to come and pick us up. So we are just chillin...taking pictures, making small talk, and just kinda hangin out. All of the sudden, (i don't remember who) but one of us says "hey thomas i think this guy is talking to you". Now I had seen this guy a little earlier yelling but I had no idea he was yelling at us. I though he was just selling stuff on his corner and trying to sell things to people walking by. So thomas turns around and we see this guy charging us with a wooden crate in his hand. When thomas turned towards him the guy turned back around quickly and ran back to his corner. Now at this point we are all just kinda like "what the heck is going on". Thomas is just as confused as we are and is standing there looking at us and back at him and back at us again. About this time, i hear grant scream "thomas look out" and see the wooden crate being hurled in the air at thomas along with crazy yelling in portuguesse. The crate comes crashing down on the ground as the guy chucks a trash back in our direction. Luckily the crate did not hit anyone even though i think the trash bag may have caught either Kristi or Amy's foot. So, once again we are left standing there...in a foreign country...with a crazy Brazilian guy throwing stuff and hollering at us. All the while three police guards are standing about 30 feet away watching this unfold. A few seconds later, the guy comes running back towards us to get his crate back. Here is where the story gets a little interesting. Seeing the guy coming to get his crate back, Grant gets the brilliant idea to kick the crate away from him and try to explain in english to the guy that he can go tell the police about it but that he isn't getting his crate back. Now this never occured to me at the time but thinking back on it, this could have gotten kinda crazy. haha I mean, what is going through your head right before you kick the crate away..."i'm in brazil with a crazy guy yelling and throwing things at us and i'm going to take his crate away." yeah...great idea. haha Now of course none of this was going through my mind at the time and I'm sure it wasn't going through Grant's either. However, in the end it turned out ok. The police that had been watching for a while finally decided to come over and make the guy leave us alone. The funniest part of the story to me was that the whole time this was happining, thomas is standing there doing absolutely nothing. haha i mean, he is the only one that could mabey understand this guy and he stands ther like a confused little kid for about 10 minutes. it was really pretty funny. Well that concludes my crazy brazilian story which i may or may not have altered in any way, shape, or form.

posted by Derek @ 10:14 PM