Andrea has arrived, she woke me up quite early Saturday morning which was painful because on Friday I was out at a samba place until 3 am. Before going out, Tula took me to a roundtable discussion of sorts about the origins and current state of samba music. The participants were a bunch of musicians and journalists and it was slightly exhausting to pay attention to the debate, but from what I gathered they all agreed that samba is at the heart of all Brazilian music, and that those bossa nova musicians who are dismissive of samba are stupid. Evidently, samba is the music of the people, which I found to be true also, because at all of the samba places I have been to so far the audience was quite mixed in race and age as well. On Saturday we gorged ourselves to death on an unbelievable amount of seafood, at an all-you-can-eat seafood place on the beach, which was packed with package tourists and was the most expensive meal that I have had so far, but was very tasty nonetheless. Afterwards, Andrea´s first night in Rio ended in the same place where mine ended over a month ago: at Rio Scenarium, the cool samba bar/antique shop. We went with Christopher, the Swiss guy, and his friends, and Robin, my friend who used to live here and is now visiting for a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, I have become ill, and I am not sure if it was one of the little Williams, Douglases, Jennifers or Ryans from the creche or just a simple cold, but I am feeling quite miserable today. (It is true, the Juans and Pedros are few and far between, almost all the kids are called one of these English/American names, except that the way they are pronounced makes them sound completely different.) I was in bed all day and only ventured out to the internet cafe to check emails, but I think I am going back to bed now.