The first day at my Portuguese language class I encountered Leelou, tall, thin, muscular, and very beautiful, with an air of mystery about her. She was from Austria and had been traveling for ten years already with no end in sight. She detested her Northern European background and said she had a Latin soul, wishing she were Brazilian or Cuban. Soon enough she enrolled in a Capoeira course [a Brazilian martial-art/dance form] and got involved with her instructor, a handsome black Brazilian nicknamed Bomba ["bomb"]. Awhile later she began working with street kids and changed her name to Lua ["moon"], which is what the kids called her. I lost touch with her and recently went to find her, when I was back in the same city; apparently she was still there, but had moved, and the doorman in her old place didn't know where.