Not a good time to be sick..

Nope, it's not the brown bottle flu, trust me.  But it's not terrible either.  I have a bit of a cold which I felt coming on Tuesday night and kicked in on Wednesday.  I'm alive and don't feel TOO bad, but I'm taking it easy today trying to get over this cold before the Carnival festivities happen this weekend.

Wednesday my friend Rangel was supposed to pick me up early in the morning and we were going to head out on the Rio Negro in his friend's boat. Well, the weather was not the best for boating yesterday.  It rained pretty much nonstop all day. I am in the middle of the rain forest and it is the rainy season, this is what I keep telling myself.  So Rangel picked me up around noon and we headed over to his parents house for lunch. 

After lunch we headed to another house, one of Rangel's friends, to drink some beer, eat some BBQ and watch the Brasil vs England friendly. Ah, but according to Rangel, I shouldn't call it a friendly.  Any soccer game that the Brasil national team plays is not a friendly, even if it doesn't count for anything. Yes, soccer / futebol is extremely important to Brasilians.

But to get back to talking about the BBQ. We had one of my favorite meats here in Brasil, Picanha. The Wiki link doesn't have a picture, so here's what it looks like.

I'm pretty sure it's what us Americans call Brisket, but the way it's cooked here over an open flame BBQ with just a basic salt rub gives it a different flavor compared to what you would taste, say in Austin Texas. And to tell you the truth, I think the Brasilian style is MUCH better. It's cooked over the fire on a spit for about 30 minutes, turning every 10-15 minutes. Then you cut off the outside inch or so that has finished cooking, serving it up to eat, then put it back over the fire to cook some more. You keep repeating this until the last few inches of meat at the center has finished cooking. This meat, with a simple bread roll and no BBQ sauce to take the flavor away, is pure heaven to eat.

As for the futebol game, Brasil lost to England 2-1. Brasil's back line could hardly get the ball out of the backfield without lobbing it to their forwards.  Brasil looked lost most of the time and England did a good job pressuring them on all fronts to make sure they stayed lost. Maybe it was the cold, they were playing in England.  But I recognized a 1/4 of the Brasilian players from English Premier League, they play in the cold all the time so that shouldn't be much of an excuse. At least Brasil doesn't have to worry about qualifying this World Cup since they are hosting the event, but they better pick their game up by the big games in 2014 otherwise there are going to be some not very happy people here in Brasil.

By the way, the U.S. did not do much better today against Honduras and it was NOT a friendly, but a qualifying match for the 2014 World Cup. That doesn't make me too happy since they are now crawling out of the bottom of the bracket to start off.

Well, I'm going to go back to taking a nap.  My head is stuffed up and I could use another aspirin or two.  No worries, I'll be well soon enough.  At least I better be, there's a little party starting this Friday called Carnival!