I ate a manta ray today. The thing that killed Steve Irwin. I thought it was fish, but it was sort of a strange texture that I didn't recognize, more like pork. But I have a new philosophy not to ask, which I'll explain below, and so I just ate. It wasn't bad or anything. Jango asked me if I knew the fish, if I had had it before, and I said no. And I'm not having a very good Portuguese day, but eventually I understood that he was talking about Steve Irwin who was killed by the tail, and that that was what I was eating. Hard to believe.

I've stopped asking because, A - it just gets old; B - it's hard to phrase things in a new language so they don't sound rude; and C - they've told me about borchada, a dish consisting of stomach, intestines, blood, I can't remember all what at the moment, and I just have this feeling that someday I'll be eating it, and at that moment I'd prefer not to know.

(Okay, to be honest, it probably won't show up without warning on my plate-- Sandra and other women say they don't like it, so I'm sure they'll have a heart for me. But last week Jango-- who does like it-- prepared lunch with a meat I didn't recognize, and reason C was foremost in my mind. But it turned out just to be sort of a ground sausage meat. Whew. It was good, actually.)