Because my love life is more interesting than stories of kids misbehaving...

I just ran into R- again. I like this guy. He's got kind of that new-wave American Christian look, with the soul patch and quasi-nerd glasses. He's the sort of person you meet and are almost instantly comfortable with; my insecurity about language was almost non-existent when I was chatting with him. For sure we could be friends. And I'm dying for some amigOs. Emphasis on the masculine! This is the third time we've chatted; once at my church, once at his, and now here he is in my internet cafe. He just invited me to a luau praise thing his church might be doing tonight. Sweet.

There's just one problem. His church? The Assembly of God in Manguinhos, where I sang at the youth conference last weekend. The church where one of my most insistent pursuers is also a member. And I have almost complete assurance that the pursuer, G-, is expecting that I will go out with him after the service...but he's going to lose out because the only thing I said yes to was going to a missions service. If he'd come out and invited me to do something, I would have given him a definite no. But he's the sort of guy who orders instead of invites...and assumes that I'm playing hard to get instead of honestly not being interested.

I've met a lot of interesting and not interesting guys recently. There was R2, the hot surfer college dude with whom I spent 45 fabulous minutes conversing on the street, only to find out later that he is 19 years old!!! Argh. That's a bit young for me, but he might end up being a friend: we talked about everything from families and missions to the pros and cons of mega-churches, the surfing beaches of Peru, and the differences between colleges and cultures in Brazil and the States....

The most not interesting ones occured last night, when on a whim, we decided to go to the Feira Nordestina, a sort of Brazilian country-and-western party. Two stages with live music and dancing, plus karaoke, food, and stands selling everything from clothing, cheese, dried meat and jewelry to large, dried cow penises and wooden models, saddles, and various country remedies for coughs, colds, and impotence. I think the cow penises have something to do with the latter...that or they're for good luck!

There were ten of us: my friend Noadia (23 on Monday), her mother (?), great-aunt (age 77), aunt (40), cousin (22) and his girlfriend (30), plus us four twenty-somethings. So here we are, with an age difference between the youngest and oldest of 55 years, all heading out at 11 pm for a night of dancing and goofing off.

If you are thinking this is late, you're wrong. This is Rio de Janeiro! Of course, the older women only lasted until about 12:30 before taking a bus back home. But the rest of us stayed until about 2 am, with stories you will hear in the next installment...