I finally beat the system and successfully uploaded my pictures. If you check immediately below this posting, you should see a separate posting with the photos. I used the website Snapfish, which wasn't overbearingly slow. You might actually need to create an account to view the album if you don't already have one, but that really only takes about 30 seconds. Unless you really have absolutely nothing else to do you won't be able to go through all the photos in one sitting; since I was barely ever able to upload them previously, I uploaded all of my pictures since about January 15th or so, and there are over 300. I captioned some of them, and usually a caption denotes a change in the subject or area of the photo, and all subsequent photos are from the same place until the next captioned photo. I wasn't able to upload my video clips on Snapfish, however; they are mainly from the Carnaval parade. I'll have to figure out how to do that a bit later.
The next bit of good news is that my next travels begin today, in a few hours. I'm flying down to Iguazu Falls, which is a spectacular series of waterfalls on the border of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. It's supposed to be magnificent. I'll spend 3 nights there, including tonight, and on Sunday I'll head down to Buenos Aires for about a week. I'm very excited, and hopefully it will be a great trip.
Carnaval was incredible; it was a lot of fun. The main celebration was from Saturday until Tuesday, though of course there was pre-partying and now post-partying. I was a bit partied out, so I took yesterday to recover. It was definitely way more partying than I've ever been used to, especially on consecutive days, but it was very fun. There were people everywhere; a main feature of Carnaval is blocos, which are street parties in various areas and neighborhoods in town. There were multiple blocos in different places every day throughout Carnaval, and that's mainly where I went. Some were absolutely packed to the point where it was difficult to move through the crowd. It was a really cool atmosphere to have so many people out with music and dancing everywhere; definitely an unforgettable experience. And the aforementioned parade was spectacular. Thousands and thousands of dancers in incredibly elaborate costumes danced continuously, and the floats were unbelievable. The effort put into this parade blows my mind; one costume must take hours and hours to assemble, let alone tens of thousands. And the dancers practice for months to perfect their parade. Plus, the bleachers were packed with people, all dancing and singing and cheering for hours. Spectators literally stay all night. I left very, very late, but there was still not a seat to be found. It was really amazing.
Not sure when I'll post next. I might have an opportunity during my trip, but if not, maybe not until March! Stay safe.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Brazil (312 photos), by Jared Neuhausen
I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.
Click here to view photos
Friday, February 12, 2010
Back in Rio
Some of you seem to have become quite impatient that I haven't written on this blog in a little while. I apologize for that; I have been traveling for the last week and at the hostels I couldn't really take an extended period of time to sit at the computer and write a post since there was only one computer for the entire hostel. Now I am back in Rio and will do my best to update you on the past 2 or so weeks.
First, though, Rachel's brother and sister-in-law had a baby girl last Saturday morning. Her name is Eleanor. Mazel Tov to them and to the entire Rubin family.
My trip began last Thursday, February 4th. That day was the last day of my intensive Portuguese course. Wednesday we had a written exam, and on Thursday we had a speaking exam. We also watched an old, Portuguese version of Sherlock Holmes that was quite entertaining. Overall, the intensive course was pretty helpful. It definitely got me going in the right direction and gave me a nice start. However, I felt that I could have gotten even more out of it; while the class was intensive, it was intensive in terms of the daily hours spent in the classroom and not in terms of the pace of the material. The class was brutally slow at times, and we definitely could have covered more than we did. That was really my biggest issue, and I just wish we would have picked up the pace. But at least now I can communicate with people somewhat. I often still don't understand what people say to me, and of course my vocabulary is still quite limited, but there are some random, brief times when both speaking and understanding simultaneously are working well.
I spent the last few afternoons before departing on my trip at the beaches in Ipanema/Leblon. I needed to prepare for traveling, you know. I couldn't and shouldn't have done anything too strenuous.
So after the oral exam on Thursday, I went home to pack and left for the bus station to catch my bus to Sao Paulo. I think I mentioned in my last post that I was traveling with two guys from California and a Norwegian. The bus left at 5, but one of the guys from California missed the bus. We did our best to stall the bus, and we stalled it for about 10 minutes, but the guy still wasn't there and we left without him. The bus ride to Sao Paulo took about 7 hours with a stop in the middle for dinner. That probably seems long, but it was a pleasant ride. We arrived late and took a taxi to our hostel.
For those of you who may not have known, Sao Paulo is the 3rd biggest city in the world behind Tokyo and Mexico City with something like 17 million inhabitants. The city is really huge; it encompasses a huge area as well as containing all of those people.
Friday we walked around a nice pedestrian area in the downtown of Sao Paulo for a little while. I left the group a bit early, however, to go meet in person with a representative of a firm down here who I had been corresponding with over email about the possibility of some kind of internship this summer in Brazil.
Saturday we slept in and then decided to go to some kind of soccer museum, which was at one of Sao Paulo's soccer stadium. When we got to the stadium, however, we saw that there was a game that afternoon and we ended up buying tickets. The main attraction was that one of the teams playing was the club team of Ronaldo, who some of you may be familiar with, but for those who aren't Ronaldo is one of the best and most famous players in Brazilian history. He's past his prime now, but he used to be a spectacular player. The game was fine, but it started storming and raining hard just after the game started. We left at halftime because we were soaking and there was no sign of letting up.
Sunday I went around the city alone for a while because the other guys had been out until 6 or 7 am and I can't do that. I spent a few hours at Ibirapuera Park, which is Sao Paulo's equivalent of Central Park. It's very nice. Then I took what was actually a very long walk through some adjacent neighborhoods to the park and took the subway to Liberdade, which is Sao Paulo's Japanese town. Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese population of any city outside of Japan. There were a lot of people walking around because there was some kind of Japanese/Chinese street market. It was pretty cool and I got some good food.
Found an Irish pub to watch the Super Bowl at Sunday night. It was really, really crowded actually, and there were a surprisingly high number of Brazilians there, too. Brazilians are weird football fans; nobody in the States watches football like Brazilians do. They make loud cheers or grimaces after every single play depending on what team they're supporting, and I get the feeling that they don't really know what's going on. I don't know why there were so many there.
Monday I met with a representative from another firm that I had been talking to. This guy gave me the VIP treatment; he picked me up in a taxi from the hostel, took me out for a light lunch, and after the meeting insisted on giving me the money to cover a cab ride to the airport, which was not that cheap. I was very flattered and humbled, but needless to say I enjoyed my first taste of the corporate world.
Took the cab to the airport where we flew to Florianopolis Monday afternoon. Florianopolis is a very pretty place. I'm pretty tired now so I'll sum up our activities in Floripa a bit more quickly than Sao Paulo.
After arriving in the general vicinity of our hostel in Floripa, it took quite a long time to actually find the hostel. We had forgotten to find the hostel's whereabouts the night before, so we found an internet cafe quickly to look up the address and map it out. Then we set out to find it, but we actually walked past it about an hour before finding it again. It didn't help that all the streets were named pretty much the same thing; they were all variations of Silveira. The street the hostel was on was something like Antonio da Silveira, and the street next to it was something like Joao Antonio da Silveira. There were like 5 other streets in the neighborhood also named Silveira, it was quite confusing. So we actually walked past the hostel, then up and down some of the wrong Silveira streets a few times before we were finally able to find it. This hostel was much nicer than the hostel in Sao Paulo; the Sao Paulo hostel had really thin, uncomfortable mattresses, smelled terrible, charged for internet, and was quite hot at night. The Florianopolis hostel was the opposite of all of the above, and was very pleasant. They ran a good hostel.
Among the activities I participated in in Florianopolis were surfing, hanging at the beach, walking at the beach, hanging around town, etc. Kept it pretty low key. It rained kind of often while we were there, which dampered our plans a little bit, but it was still nice. Florianopolis is a cute and pretty place; it's mainly composed of a large island. This morning I traveled alone to a part of the island that we hadn't seen earlier in the week and I took a really long walk on the beach. I didn't mean to walk for as long as I did, but I just kept going until I started running out of time and had to find a bus to the airport. It was very peaceful, though.
The trip was very fun and pleasant. I'm definitely glad that I did it. Traveling with the others was both and good and bad. It was of course nice to have company at times, but I also felt that it limited me and prohibited me from doing some things that I would have rather done. It wasn't too big a deal, because I went off on my own quite a bit anyway to do what I wanted rather than travel in a pack. But, as mentioned before, the other guys were interested in going out every night until about 6 or 7 am, whereas I neither can nor want to do that. I was more interested in just hanging out and eating well, which I did by the way. I followed some suggestions from my guidebook, and I was very pleased with the results. Sao Paulo is the culinary capital of South America, and you can bet I took advantage of that. That was actually one of the main incentives for taking the trip to begin with. So, I guess that it would be nice to still travel with other people in the future, and I can just do my own thing whenever I wish. I wouldn't hesitate to travel alone, though.
Now that I'm back from my successful trip, I'm back in Rio just in time for Carnaval, which is the highlight of the year. Carnaval happens all over Brazil, but it is most famous in Rio. You can parallel it somewhat with Mardi Gras, although I believe it's on a much bigger scale. People anticipate Carnaval for months and I've heard some crazy and cool things. The celebration is formally from tomorrow through Tuesday or Wednesday, but informally continues for several days after that and there has been pre-partying for weeks. I'm very excited, although I don't really know what I'm going to do yet. Basically, the point is that Carnaval is a very big deal and it will be awesome.
I've got 2 more weeks of break from school after Carnaval, so I'd like to plan another trip if possible. I've looked into a couple of options, but I haven't made any decisions yet. Stay tuned. The way this semester is scheduled has 4 weeks between the end of the language course and the start of the regular semester, which enabled my recent trip, coming back to Rio for Carnaval, and hopefully a trip after. Pretty sweet deal.
I've got quite a few pictures piled up, but I'm discouraged from trying to post them based on what happened last time. I'll try to work something out soon and I'll let you know.
Excited for Carnaval! Boa noite.
First, though, Rachel's brother and sister-in-law had a baby girl last Saturday morning. Her name is Eleanor. Mazel Tov to them and to the entire Rubin family.
My trip began last Thursday, February 4th. That day was the last day of my intensive Portuguese course. Wednesday we had a written exam, and on Thursday we had a speaking exam. We also watched an old, Portuguese version of Sherlock Holmes that was quite entertaining. Overall, the intensive course was pretty helpful. It definitely got me going in the right direction and gave me a nice start. However, I felt that I could have gotten even more out of it; while the class was intensive, it was intensive in terms of the daily hours spent in the classroom and not in terms of the pace of the material. The class was brutally slow at times, and we definitely could have covered more than we did. That was really my biggest issue, and I just wish we would have picked up the pace. But at least now I can communicate with people somewhat. I often still don't understand what people say to me, and of course my vocabulary is still quite limited, but there are some random, brief times when both speaking and understanding simultaneously are working well.
I spent the last few afternoons before departing on my trip at the beaches in Ipanema/Leblon. I needed to prepare for traveling, you know. I couldn't and shouldn't have done anything too strenuous.
So after the oral exam on Thursday, I went home to pack and left for the bus station to catch my bus to Sao Paulo. I think I mentioned in my last post that I was traveling with two guys from California and a Norwegian. The bus left at 5, but one of the guys from California missed the bus. We did our best to stall the bus, and we stalled it for about 10 minutes, but the guy still wasn't there and we left without him. The bus ride to Sao Paulo took about 7 hours with a stop in the middle for dinner. That probably seems long, but it was a pleasant ride. We arrived late and took a taxi to our hostel.
For those of you who may not have known, Sao Paulo is the 3rd biggest city in the world behind Tokyo and Mexico City with something like 17 million inhabitants. The city is really huge; it encompasses a huge area as well as containing all of those people.
Friday we walked around a nice pedestrian area in the downtown of Sao Paulo for a little while. I left the group a bit early, however, to go meet in person with a representative of a firm down here who I had been corresponding with over email about the possibility of some kind of internship this summer in Brazil.
Saturday we slept in and then decided to go to some kind of soccer museum, which was at one of Sao Paulo's soccer stadium. When we got to the stadium, however, we saw that there was a game that afternoon and we ended up buying tickets. The main attraction was that one of the teams playing was the club team of Ronaldo, who some of you may be familiar with, but for those who aren't Ronaldo is one of the best and most famous players in Brazilian history. He's past his prime now, but he used to be a spectacular player. The game was fine, but it started storming and raining hard just after the game started. We left at halftime because we were soaking and there was no sign of letting up.
Sunday I went around the city alone for a while because the other guys had been out until 6 or 7 am and I can't do that. I spent a few hours at Ibirapuera Park, which is Sao Paulo's equivalent of Central Park. It's very nice. Then I took what was actually a very long walk through some adjacent neighborhoods to the park and took the subway to Liberdade, which is Sao Paulo's Japanese town. Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese population of any city outside of Japan. There were a lot of people walking around because there was some kind of Japanese/Chinese street market. It was pretty cool and I got some good food.
Found an Irish pub to watch the Super Bowl at Sunday night. It was really, really crowded actually, and there were a surprisingly high number of Brazilians there, too. Brazilians are weird football fans; nobody in the States watches football like Brazilians do. They make loud cheers or grimaces after every single play depending on what team they're supporting, and I get the feeling that they don't really know what's going on. I don't know why there were so many there.
Monday I met with a representative from another firm that I had been talking to. This guy gave me the VIP treatment; he picked me up in a taxi from the hostel, took me out for a light lunch, and after the meeting insisted on giving me the money to cover a cab ride to the airport, which was not that cheap. I was very flattered and humbled, but needless to say I enjoyed my first taste of the corporate world.
Took the cab to the airport where we flew to Florianopolis Monday afternoon. Florianopolis is a very pretty place. I'm pretty tired now so I'll sum up our activities in Floripa a bit more quickly than Sao Paulo.
After arriving in the general vicinity of our hostel in Floripa, it took quite a long time to actually find the hostel. We had forgotten to find the hostel's whereabouts the night before, so we found an internet cafe quickly to look up the address and map it out. Then we set out to find it, but we actually walked past it about an hour before finding it again. It didn't help that all the streets were named pretty much the same thing; they were all variations of Silveira. The street the hostel was on was something like Antonio da Silveira, and the street next to it was something like Joao Antonio da Silveira. There were like 5 other streets in the neighborhood also named Silveira, it was quite confusing. So we actually walked past the hostel, then up and down some of the wrong Silveira streets a few times before we were finally able to find it. This hostel was much nicer than the hostel in Sao Paulo; the Sao Paulo hostel had really thin, uncomfortable mattresses, smelled terrible, charged for internet, and was quite hot at night. The Florianopolis hostel was the opposite of all of the above, and was very pleasant. They ran a good hostel.
Among the activities I participated in in Florianopolis were surfing, hanging at the beach, walking at the beach, hanging around town, etc. Kept it pretty low key. It rained kind of often while we were there, which dampered our plans a little bit, but it was still nice. Florianopolis is a cute and pretty place; it's mainly composed of a large island. This morning I traveled alone to a part of the island that we hadn't seen earlier in the week and I took a really long walk on the beach. I didn't mean to walk for as long as I did, but I just kept going until I started running out of time and had to find a bus to the airport. It was very peaceful, though.
The trip was very fun and pleasant. I'm definitely glad that I did it. Traveling with the others was both and good and bad. It was of course nice to have company at times, but I also felt that it limited me and prohibited me from doing some things that I would have rather done. It wasn't too big a deal, because I went off on my own quite a bit anyway to do what I wanted rather than travel in a pack. But, as mentioned before, the other guys were interested in going out every night until about 6 or 7 am, whereas I neither can nor want to do that. I was more interested in just hanging out and eating well, which I did by the way. I followed some suggestions from my guidebook, and I was very pleased with the results. Sao Paulo is the culinary capital of South America, and you can bet I took advantage of that. That was actually one of the main incentives for taking the trip to begin with. So, I guess that it would be nice to still travel with other people in the future, and I can just do my own thing whenever I wish. I wouldn't hesitate to travel alone, though.
Now that I'm back from my successful trip, I'm back in Rio just in time for Carnaval, which is the highlight of the year. Carnaval happens all over Brazil, but it is most famous in Rio. You can parallel it somewhat with Mardi Gras, although I believe it's on a much bigger scale. People anticipate Carnaval for months and I've heard some crazy and cool things. The celebration is formally from tomorrow through Tuesday or Wednesday, but informally continues for several days after that and there has been pre-partying for weeks. I'm very excited, although I don't really know what I'm going to do yet. Basically, the point is that Carnaval is a very big deal and it will be awesome.
I've got 2 more weeks of break from school after Carnaval, so I'd like to plan another trip if possible. I've looked into a couple of options, but I haven't made any decisions yet. Stay tuned. The way this semester is scheduled has 4 weeks between the end of the language course and the start of the regular semester, which enabled my recent trip, coming back to Rio for Carnaval, and hopefully a trip after. Pretty sweet deal.
I've got quite a few pictures piled up, but I'm discouraged from trying to post them based on what happened last time. I'll try to work something out soon and I'll let you know.
Excited for Carnaval! Boa noite.
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