So this is how the other half lives

When you're backpacking around, and come from a third world country with a third world currency, you don't normally have allot of money to spend. So you end up eating in the cheap places, getting the cheap seats on the bus and sleeping in places that resemble an army barracks. This gives you a pretty skewed picture of the place your visiting and up until now this is exactly the experience we've been having. But yesterday we got to see a whole different side of Brazil, or less euphemistically, a whole different class of Brazil.

We've been staying with Eduardo, a friend of Warren's, in Vitoria. Vitoria is the capital of the state of Espirito Santo and is about a 8 hour bus trip north of Rio. Eduardo recently graduated as an environmental engineer. Each year there is a party for all the engineers in the state of Espirito Santo, and fortunately for us it happened to be on the weekend that we came. So we got all dressed up, shaved, borrowed leather shoes and put on our best shirt (our only non T-shirts) I think the phrase that best explains the evening was "Enigineer's Heaven". To all the guys that studied engineering to make money and get a pretty wife, you should have been studying in Brazil. I have never seen so many beautiful women in one room in my life, and half of them were the engineers, not the partners. I have to admit I was shocked into complete ineptitude.

It was in a huge waterfront club (club as in country club, not night club), with waiters constantly bringing around more beer, wine, cocktails and food. There was a big Italian dance demonstration (Yes I know, we're watching Italian dances in Brazil, but apparently there are allot of people of Italian descent in this part of Brazil) and later in the night a live band played Forro.

Forro (pronounced for-hor) is a type of "romantic samba". Apparently the name comes from the originator who when speaking in English claimed that this was a a type of dancing for all people. So the name is a Brazilianisation of "For-all". Apparently though I am not a apart of the "ALL" that can dance to it, even though even I could figure out that this should be the easiest dance in the history of moving feet. At its simplest you only really need to learn one step, a really easy one, but even that proved to difficult for a slightly drunk and uncoordinated James. Well win some you lose some.

I think I came away from the whole experience with 2 things. Firstly that being wealthy in Brazil is awesome, as is being wealthy everywhere else. Eduardo is on to a good wicket. Secondly is something which I have obviously suspected this for a long time but have never seen such stark empirical evidence. Beauty follows money, or maybe money creates beauty. I'm sure that the beauty genes slowly aggregate in the wealthy classes, for obvious reasons. I think if there is any good reason to get rich it is so you can enter parties with these sorts of women.