Brazilian Barbequeueueue!

Dinner was an exciting event. There was a new squash sculpture in the shape of a sailing boat. The tables were set up banquet style, so everyone got to talk to everyone else. The samba players were back, with the projector screen behind them.

I sat with Marie-Pierre and Annike from Quebec, Sharon Doty from Washington State University (who works on bioremediation and soil microbes living with poplar and willow), and Julie Plummer from Australia and her husband Greg. Later Margie Gowan joined us, and Mattie from an NGO (who will speak tomorrow).

It was very loud and very fun. Annike ordered a bottle of Chilean wine for the table, and we discussed what all we would do on Thursday. Sharon, who looks meek and wussy, has already used the pool, gone walking around the resort campus, and gone horseback riding. She said the riding went very well, they got to gallop through a stream and in the eucalyptus forest. Maybe I will try that tomorrow morning.

When I went for dessert, I decided I would try to eat a guava. They reminded me of when I tried to make quince edible. The guava has hard, rock-like seeds throughout the inside, and hot pink flesh. It looks like a small hard Bartlett pear. So there is not much flesh once the seeds are taken out, and I suppose these were ripe or they would not have been served, but the flesh itself is hard and there is not much to recommend about it. However, at the dessert table was also guava candy and queso fresco, and Julie recommended that we try them together. She read about it in a travel book. It was very delicious. The cheese by itself was much better than the guava candy, which may have contributed the majority of the deliciousness.

Also I talked to Greg (who is American) about Colorado, and the wedding, and traveling to places like Greece. He had a lot of advice and was very silly. Once Greg and Julie went to bed, though, the conversation turned to Canada, because everyone left but me had lived there. We had a long discussion about winters. Margie, from Saskatoon Saskatchewan, let us have our say but I could tell she was being quietly proud of her real winters.

Meanwhile, a couple danced the samba and was applauded when they were done (the room was too crowded for everyone to dance, but we all wriggled in our seats a little).

I told her how the talk of the Canadian climate reminded me of Robertson Davies, and she said also another good Canadian author is W.O. McNeill. I will look him (?) up. Somehow she got to talking then about the university in Saskatchewan, and how they are establishing a place there in the curricula offered etc. for the aboriginal people. She told all about a student who had worked for her who is now defending a master’s thesis about the changes in the caribou migratory patterns, and the changes were documented by talking to elders throughout the aboriginal communities in the province. It sounds like a pretty interesting and difficult thesis project.

But once she had her diatribe the light conversation was over and so we departed for bed. I laughed a lot this evening. Being with French-type people (those Kanucks!) helped a lot. They will try anything since they are in Brazil.