Fortaleza's incredible sweettooth

I haven't taken many photos yet, but I've finally uploaded the ones I have taken:

I learned how to eat an abacate (avocado) properly yesterday. You scoop it out into a bowl, pour an appropriate (read: incredible) amount of sugar on top, maybe some granola too if the mood strikes, and mush it all up with a fork. I told Fatima that in the States we eat it with salty food and she just laughed.

She also laughed when I told her I went out for pizza for lunch the other day. "No one in Brasil eats pizza for lunch!" she said. I then realized why we could only pick from a selection of three when there were 24 different pizzas on the menu. And why we got strange looks when we ordered.

Anyway, I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Fortaleza has a serious sweettooth. Everything here is consumed with sugar. When you make coffee, you heap the sugar into the coffee pot and then turn on the coffee maker. If you fancy more, it's completely acceptable to heap in more afterwards as well. Suco is sugary too, as are many desserts. I ate kettle corn the other day with condensed milk poured on top of already sugared popcorn. All over the place, street vendors sell Juice made from sugar cane.

It makes sense that sugar would be popular here--it's cheap and it is what a lot of people in rural places make their living doing, in some form or another. Like I said before, at least it's not refined, so I don't feel quite as awful.