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.

Hi

Hello again. I wanted to provide a few updates since a couple days ago. I have had two full days now here in Rio. They have been pretty long; the last two days I've needed to be at the University at 9, so I've gotten up at 7:30. Both times were pretty worthless, but it's ok. Yesterday we had orientation. First we went through the whole room of about 140 of us and introduced ourselves one by one. It took pretty long, but there are people from all over: France, Germany, Denmark, Mexico, as well as all over the U.S. After that they talked to us for about two hours or so, but I don't have much to report about that because I fell asleep for part of it and didn't pay much attention. I was pretty tired but they also gave us all the same information in a brochure. After lunch, the only other event at the University was the oral Portuguese placement test. That was a huge waste of time; only a few people went at a time, and everyone else waited in line in a very hot corridor. As I don't yet speak any Portuguese, taking the oral test to begin with was pointless. So I waited for over an hour in an extremely hot corridor to take a two minute test that was more of someone asking me questions while I stared blankly and said I don't speak Portuguese.

Finally when that was over, I tagged along with a group of people to get a cell phone. We found an electronics store in a mall to get them. That whole process took way longer than it should have too. We let the people with us who spoke some Portuguese do the talking for us, and I'm not sure what the issues were but we were in the store for a while and I just wanted to go the beach. It was getting into late afternoon at that point, so then we left and went to get some drinks.

I apologize that absolutely none of this has been exciting so far. The next part is a little more interesting. After leaving the restaurant we walked back to the University to catch a bus back home. The bus took a kind of circular route, and I was going to be the last one to get off. So everyone eventually got off but me, and the bus continued on. The bus came to Laranjeiras, which is the area I'm staying in, but it didn't look familiar to me. So I thought I would wait another stop or two until I thought I saw familiar. Well, before I knew it, the bus was off and on its way out of Laranjeiras and towards downtown Rio de Janeiro and beyond. So, I missed my stop. I rode the bus to the end, which luckily wasn't that long, and then got off, got right back on and rode back towards Laranjeiras. This time the bus assistant indicated where I should get off, and it was the place I didn't recognize the first time around. So, I got off the bus and I didn't know what to do. It's about 9 at this point, dark, and I don't speak Portuguese. So I can't ask anyone for directions. I just picked a direction to start walking, but that direction was pretty dark. So I turned around after about 30 seconds and started walking the other way towards lights. I don't know what direction I'm walking or where I'm walking towards; all I know is that I'm somewhere in Laranjeiras. I walk for probably 10 minutes or so, and I get to a highway along the beach in an area called Botafogo. So I walked the completely wrong way and out of Laranjeiras. I turned around again and started walking, not exactly where I came from, but down other streets back in the direction of Laranjeiras. My strategy was to just stick to lit roads and try to stay by other people and where there were crowds. I walk and explore for several minutes, but nothing is getting familiar. There were a lot of people out, and I just kept walking. I was pretty nervous about being alone, not speaking the language, and being lost, but I also didn't want to give any kind of impression of being nervous at all that anyone might be able to notice. I didn't want to stop and pull out a map so people knew I was lost. Basically I just kept walking pretty quickly so that it would appear that I knew what I was doing and where I was going. My mission was now twofold: trying to get home and now trying to find an ATM so I could pull out some money for a taxi. I didn't have enough Brazilian currency for a taxi right away; that's why this adventure ensued. I didn't think that finding an ATM would be a problem because when we walked around Laranjeiras the night before with Maria, there were ATMs/banks all over the place. But it took me about 20 minutes to find one, and it didn't accept my card. So I went looking for another, but it took me about another 20 or 30 minutes to find a bank with ATMs in the foyer, and this second one didn't accept my card either. Now I'm even more flustered, but finally after walking some more I found an HSBC which accepted my card, and I got some money. Then I just took a taxi home. I walked way far the wrong way, and we drove past much of what I had walked by. So, after first boarding a bus home at about 7:15 ish, I arrived home at about 10:15. While that paragraph probably didn't capture the excitement of the adventure, it was a pretty exhilirating first night in Rio.

I'll keep today short. The only official event on the agenda was a tour of the campus. But that turned out to be useless, because the tour guide decided that the only people on the tour were the seven people immediately in front of him and not all 40 of us in the group. So that was a waste of time too.

After the tour I went with some of the people the previous day back to phone store because there were problems with the phones. Again I stood idly by as one girl talked to the store representative in Portuguese, but I guess we eventually got it figured out. I'm able to use it if I choose now.

We walked back to the University again, where we boarded a bus and met with some other students on the program. We took the bus to Copacabana, where we ate lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon on Copacabana beach. It was really great! It was very hot, but the water was warm and felt very nice. We were at the beach for 4-5 hours, and it was perfect. The four other people I was with all lived in Copacabana, so once we left the beach at about 6:30 I was on my own to get home again. I found a bus that went to Laranjeiras, and this time I actually got off there. But the place I got off was again unfamiliar. This time I had enough money though, so I knew if I had any problems I could just get a taxi. After walking in a circle, I found some kind of security guard and asked him directions to one of the few streets that I knew. I knew that I would have no idea what he was going to say, but I just wanted to him to point. Luckily, I got the point I was looking for, and I walked for several minutes (I was a bit far) and found my way home. Slowly but surely things will become familiar. I'm trying to orient myself based on where the big, famous statue of Jesus is, but that's hard because Jesus is often obscured by tall buildings. So I will learn streets and directions, and eventually everything will be great.

I haven't taken many pictures yet, because I am a bit concerned and paranoid about giving myself away as a tourist in a place like this. I don't want to just whip out my camera whenever I get the urge. I will post pictures tomorrow, and I also think I will have many more pictures tomorrow because we are taking an organized city tour, which I think will be for most of the day. I think it will be great, and I'm looking forward to it. It starts at 8am tomorrow, though, so I should go to bed as it is starting to get late here. Good night

Day 1

Hello from Rio de Janeiro. It is currently 6:15 pm local time here. I arrived at the airport around noon local time, and the heat and humidity were immediately overwhelming. It was a great feeling, however. I'm now situated at my host home; I haven't unpacked yet, but I've been here for about 4 hours now. I'm staying in a neighborhood of Rio called Laranjeiras. Just driving through it seemed like a pretty nice area, but I haven't been out yet. I hope to maybe explore a little later. My host is Maria; she has a nice little apartment that I will post pictures of soon. She is very nice and friendly. She was actually born in Venezuela; her mother is Venezuelan and her father is Brazilian. She speaks Spanish too, which is helpful to me because I still know some Spanish and not any Portuguese yet. Communication is a bit awkward so far, but because of the Spanish we are at least able to communicate without a tremendous amount of difficulty. She speaks some English too, which is nice, and she's not bad at that either. I couldn't understand entirely, but I think Maria works in the film industry. She is a writer and a manager and I think she writes scripts, although I may not have understood. I think she said she works with actors and actresses. She also said she travels a lot. Maybe she'll invite me? She's great so far.

The trip to Rio was underwhelming. I made sure not to sit next to any Nigerians on either of the flights. My itinerary changed a bit, so I ended up with a 9 hour layover in Houston. I took a short excursion into downtown Houston to check it out and gave myself a self-walking tour, and by walking tour I mean walking aimlessly around Houston for about 2 hours. I visited the former location of Enron, which was exciting. It's now home to Chevron, and it's a pretty magnificent center downtown. That's about all that was exciting, though.

I don't know what I'm going to do for the rest of the night. I'd like to walk around the area a little, but it's almost dark and I'm not sure how good of an idea that is. Maybe I'll ask Maria to show me around, but I don't want to intrude. There haven't been any instructions or anything at all from the University, nor any advice.

As I write this I just got a roommate. I was kind of hoping I might, so it's a good thing. His name is Wesley. I guess it's good that I picked the room with the big bed. He speaks Portuguese, though. I hope Maria doesn't start playing favorites. It's good that I'll know someone who knows Portuguese that I can walk around with, but he'll probably make me feel stupid. I should probably go hang out with him.

Tomorrow there's an orientation for us at the University. I have no idea how I'll get there, however; Maria said it's 20 minutes away. That should be fun.

Well I'll go hang out with Wesley now. I hope you all are well.