So, here we are, another Friday. One of my favorite memories of when we spent 5 months in Chile was our date nights. They give us like a sabbath reset button for our marriage, so great to be together and have time for uninterrupted talk and also fun to have a new experience. The kids look forward to it too - usually cause it means pizza and a movie. As we went out tonight, we both said to each other "Wow, Friday again already?!" We usually don't plan them out, we just get in the car and go. Tonight we drove over by the temple. One fun new experience we had was that we followed the GPS's directions to the temple (and didn't take our usual way, the way we learned in 2007 by taking the exit...) The GPS said to NOT take the exit and to just keep going straight. So we did. We think the GPS just wanted us to take what we think has to be the nicest "RETORNO" in Campinas, possibly in the whole state of Sao Paulo!
So, we come to the temple from the North. We come to the exit. Now, if this were the US, that little yellow star there by the exit would be the most obvious place to put a light for a left turn. But this isn't the US. So if you take the exit, you have to in the wrong direction for half a mile or so and then find a retorno to turn around and go the direction you wanted. Some freeways have retorno exits too. We've driven on some, and they are like little one way tunnels that go under the freeways, some make ya feel kinda claustrophobic and scared. So when the GPS gives us directions to the temple, it never tells us to take the exit - always to go straight. Tonight we accidentally did, and after a mile we got to turn around - they had made a two lane exit that wasn't an exit, it was just a weird artery in the infrastructure of the circulatory system that is the streets of Brazil, and it takes that road artery and turns it right around and puts in in the vein going back to where it came from (wouldn't that mess things up in a human body?) We thought it was fascinating! And it was a really nice retorno, two nice wide lanes! Seems like left turns would be more efficient and less expensive to make. This one probably cost quite a bit of $$. Corey pretended he was in the pitch meeting where they made the proposal and were trying to justify the expense... "Well, we feel it is necessary, cause our research shows that 29% of the cars on the freeway are just trying to turn around..." (I'd believe that statistic too!) and we laughed and went back to the temple, to take the exit, and have no option to go left, only right, always right. So we took a retorno and then headed away from the temple to see if we could find a place to eat.
We saw an advertisement for sushi and then we saw the restaurant, Temakeria it is! So adding to the retorno excitement, we also went to a sushi restaurant that we've never been to before! Well, I guess it's easy to go to places we've never been before right now in Brazil, cause most restaurants are falling into that category. But this was also a kind of food I've never had before. Sushi is big in Brazil - there is a real Japanese culinary influence here. I'd never had temaki before. kinda fun
