She filled the cuia halfway with tea, placed a plastic plate on top, and flipped the cuia upside down! she shook the cuia to move the tea to the top, and then carefully slid the plate off so that part of the tea fell back down to the bottom. That made room for the bomba. Then, she added another kind of tea and some hot water, about 75 degrees Celsius. Do you know how many degrees that is in Fahrenheit?
After adding the water, Sandra drank the first chimarrão through the bomba and filled the cuia with more water. She passed it to me. I drank my chimarrão, refilled the cuia and passed it to the next person. We kept passing the cuia until we did not want to drink any more chimarrão.
Drinking chimarrão builds community here. When we drink chimarrão, we share the same cuia and bomba. That might sound strange to you in the United States, but drinking from the same cup is an important part of drinking chimarrão. When people drink chimarrão, they stop what they are doing, join the group and talk together until they finish.
Poeple drink chimarrão in all kinds of places. They have special bags to carry water, a cuia, bomba, and tea leaves with them if they are going out. At a park, the mothers might drink hot chimarrão while their children play. At the university, people keep a cuia and tea leaves for making chimarrão. People sit and drink chimarrão as they work.
