Going great

Hi everyone. Things are going great here. I had an eventful weekend. I'll let you know what I did and then I'll post a bunch of pictures with captions.

I think I last wrote Friday after hanging out at Copacabana beach. If not, now you know what I did on Friday. On Saturday I got up very early to go on a city tour with most of our group; it started at 8 a.m. First we went to a national forest called the Floresta de Tijuca; the guide said it is the largest urban forest in the world. It was nice, but all we saw was one waterfall and then we left. The waterfall was nice I mean, but I was surprised we left right after that. Our next stop was the famous soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro, called Maracana. It was built for the 1950 World Cup and used to hold 200,000 people. Now it holds 89,000. That was pretty cool, we went down to the field and walked around the locker room.

After that we had lunch at a Churrascaria, which is a place that serves all-you-can-eat meat, in Copacabana. It's like Fogo de Chao and the other Brazilian steakhouses that are in Chicago, for example. It was incredible; that lunch made me very happy for the rest of the day. And the price was incredible too. It was the equivalent of about 14-15 U.S. dollars for the meal and a drink, a quarter of the price of Fogo de Chao. Definitely made my day.

Our next stop was downtown Rio de Janeiro. The downtown area isn't really anything spectacular. We saw a few historical sites and learned some history.

Then we went to an area called the Sambadrome. The Sambadrome is like an alleyway kind of; it's the main site of Carnaval. It was nice to see empty, but come Carnaval time it will be full and crazy.

Our last stop was the Sugar Loaf mountain. That's the mountain that you can see in the center of the picture on top of the page. We took a cable car to get up, and it offers terrific views of the whole city. It's a must-do in Rio, and it was very nice. We spent way too long up there. Our group took 2 hours total on Sugar Loaf when it really required about a half-hour to take pictures and soak up the view. I'm learning that a favorite pasttime of Brazilians is waiting around. Normally I like waiting around; I'm very into that. But it was kind of frustrating during the tour because I was exhausted. All in all the tour didn't end until after 6:30, after starting at 8 am. It was exhausting. The whole tour was scorching hot; we would get off the bus to go see something, and then get back on the nice air conditioned bus and all was good. Then we'd go off again and sweat like hell, and then feel good on the bus.

I took a nap when I got home, and later that night I went to a popular nightlife area of Rio called Lapa. It's a hot spot for bars, nightclubs, and young people. I eventually found a few other students and hung out for a few hours. Lapa is nice area, and it was very crowded.

The next day I finally got to sleep in; all previous days I had gotten up early. I didn't leave the apartment here until around 3, and then I went to the beach at Leblon and Ipanema. At one point I stopped on the beach and was going to call someone to try to meet them. But these Brazilians approached me and asked if I was Dennis. I have no idea who that is, and at first I said no but then I played along and said, wait, I am Dennis. They invited me to come sit with them and their friends, so I said why not. Their group was an eclectic mix of people. There were 3 others close to my age, a guy from Texas who had to be at least 50, and another old American probably at least 50 with his Brazilian wife/girlfriend. It was a good time, though, just relaxing and having fun. The guy from Texas even paid for my drinks. No one's ever done that for me before.

My intensive Portuguese language course began today at 8:30 this morning. I'm not a big fan of these frequent early wake ups. It was very basic today, nothing much. The intensive course goes until the beginning of February; it's Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 1 with a 20 minute break. I think it will be very helpful, though, and I'm excited to learn. Knowing Portuguese will go a long way.

After the class I ate lunch and then went to the beach at Ipanema for a few hours. The water is absolutely perfect; the heat is intense, and going in the water is amazingly refreshing.

It's been extremely hot here each day, and it hasn't rained yet, which has surprised me because it was raining often before I arrived and this is the rainy season. It's just been beautiful and hot. It's also very humid. Most people think it's too hot, but I'm not complaining. I love it.

Without further ado here are some pictures:

Ok, scratch that. I've been trying to upload photos for 30 minutes but it's not working at all. It's maddeningly frustrating. I think the internet connection may be too slow. I apologize, I'll keep trying. I might try to upload them tomorrow from the University if it still doesn't work.

Boa noite.