On the very important difference between churrasco and parilla

We’re now nearly three weeks into our internships here in Porto Alegre and I am hard at work to complete my assigned task. I’m in the midst of one of my favorite aspects of the engineering design process, so it doesn’t feel much like work! The past week, I have spent nearly 18 hours in my natural habitat, Solidworks, as happy as a clam. I’m creating and examining various designs, 3D-printing scaled models, and fixing flaws I find. I break things down until I can identify individual entities and sketches to adjust, then attack each problem one at a time. The makerspace here at TechnoPUCRS, Free Zone, has been a lifesaver, allowing me to 3D print prototypes rapidly and frequently so that I can see problems not readily apparent in the assembly.

There’s something immensely satisfying about taking design that just doesn’t work and fiddling with it until it all slots together perfectly.

But anyways, three weeks in, so naturally it was time for another barbecue. June 15th was Corpus Christi, a Roman Catholic feast day and national holiday in Brazil. As a result, we had the day off and my coworkers invited myself, Nathalie, and Latane to a barbeque at the CEO’s apartment. However, unlike the traditional churrasco, we were treated to parilla, a traditional Uruguayan barbeque. The main difference seems to be the method used to hold the food above the fire and the cuts of meat (swords and steak for churrasco, a grill and lamb/ground beef  for parilla).

Regardless, both styles are delicious! It is no meal, but rather a long, drawn out social event. The barbecue master (in this case, my boss, Eduardo) took cuts of meat, bread, potatoes, stuffed peppers, and fried bananas off the grill whenever ready and cut them into small, appetizer sized cuts so that all of us standing around could grab a small bite. It facilitated conversation as we only had to take very brief pauses to chew. Eat, talk, eat, talk…this went on for three hours (!!) and everytime I thought we were winding down, Eduardo would bring out another cut of meat and throw it on the grill! I swear some dark magic was involved because I kept trying to see where this endless supply of food was coming from and could never quite pinpoint it. Latane, Nathalie, and I got a chance to flex our newly learned, very basic Portugese as we struck up a conversation with two of my coworkers’ girlfriends who spoke no English whatsoever. They slowed down their speech patterns and occasionally mimed words as I listened carefully and Googled a word or two when stumped. When I stumbled my way through a complete, understandable sentence, they threw their hands and shouted “Parabens!” (Congratulations!). Towards the end, my boss turned on his multicolored disco ball, turned up the music, and broke out his DJ turntable. He gave Latane a lesson in DJ-ing, the two of them huddled around the turntable as the lights flashed around them.

All in all, it was a perfect way to spend the day off, eating my weight in beautifully cooked food and getting to know my co-workers!

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