Many of you have probably heard the reports of heavy rain, flooding, and mudslides here in Rio. The worst was towards the beginning of the week, and it's mainly settled down now. It's still been raining to varying degrees every day, but the flooding has been gone for a few days. The flooding and damage was bad; the city was pretty chaotic and basically stopped on Tuesday and most of Wednesday. I arrived back in Rio early Tuesday morning after my trip with Rachel, and the city was flooding then because of ongoing rain since Monday. It took me 2 and half hours to get home from the airport with a combination of bus and taxi due to traffic, rain, and flooding. When I got to my hood the streets and sidewalks were full of mud and running with nasty, brown water. It was challenging to walk on the sidewalk let alone drive a car. I think other parts of the city were flooded still worse. I still had school that day, and I had about an hour before I would need to leave, so I went home for a quick nap before heading out again. To get to school, I take a city bus. After waiting for a lengthy period of time, I began to realize that the bus I needed wasn't running due to the flooding. Neither was the secondary bus I could take to get to school. Only a couple of the bus lines that I regularly see running through my hood were running then. The others must have been unable to run because of the flooding. I eventually assured myself the bus wouldn't be coming, and I had no way to get to school. So I went home. And school was canceled anyways because the city was chaos.
The next day, rumors were circling that school had been canceled for the rest of the week, and lo and behold, the rumors were true. School was canceled for almost all of last week. It's been very nice and relaxing, albeit a little less to do than normal because there is at least some rain every day. But I went to see a movie, went out a few times at night, went to the big market downtown. But I could have stayed in Central America with Rachel for a whole other week. The sun is shining now, but it's more than likely to give way to rain later today.
Because I haven't had school this week, I've had ample time to update this blog, but I haven't until now. Go figure.
The trip with Rachel was wonderful. It was really, really nice, and we had a great time. I arrived on a Friday evening, and after waiting for a bus for a half hour in the wrong direction, I figured it out and hopped on the right bus. But then I took that bus too far so I had to take a taxi to where we were staying. I met Rachel and we went out to dinner and just had a relaxing evening because early the next morning we left for the San Blas Islands, which are a large group of remote islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama. We had to leave at 5 am and fit 7 of us into a cramped SUV; not the most ideal conditions for a 3 hour drive. We had to make a few stops along the way to buy supplies, passport control, and breakfast, which was fried dough and a slice of cheese, but it was kind of good because it tasted like a funnel cake. I miss funnel cakes. I haven't had a real one in a while. I love those ones at Six Flags; they're amazing. Anyways, the worst part of the trip to the islands was that about halfway there our journey took us through the mountains. Although the road was almost entirely unpaved and very windy and curvy, the driver didn't seem to care and drove with almost reckless abandon, causing us in the already cramped car to rock violently. And we were driving through the mountains for at least an hour. I think at the very least the road could have been paved. I mean, come on. But it would have been nice if the driver went a little slower and more cautiously, too. So, the violent rocking for an hour caused one of us get a bit motion sick and throw up in a bag over the lap of the other (hint: not me). But, the problem was, there was a hole in the bottom in the bag. That was nice.
We finally arrived at the end, but we still had to take a long boat ride to our island. This group of islands, while part of Panama, is run autonomously by a group of Indians called the Kuna Yala. They have control over the territory. First, we made a pit stop on the way to our island at one of the islands densely populated by the Indians. They live in grass huts with dried palm leaves as the roofs. And they are very small people. I'm not a particularly large person myself, but many of them didn't even come up to my shoulders. The women wear beaded jewelry along the entire length of both legs. Their jewelry and artwork is very nice. And their bathrooms are bottomless holes...with the ocean as the bottom.
We stayed on this island for about a half hour before continuing on to the more remote island where we would be staying. The whole archipelago has over 360 small islands. The trip to the island, and the islands themselves, were gorgeous. Turquoise, clear water, white sand, bunches of palm trees. The scene honestly looked like a computer screensaver. It was beautiful. Each island was more beautiful than the last. We finally arrived at our island, and it was like paradise. We spent two days and nights there, relaxing on the beach or in hammocks, swimming, and snorkeling. It was just an incredible setting. The only problems were that large bugs came out at night (cockroaches and spiders) and the food was insufficient. I expected that we would be staying in a small lodge, but our accommodations were an air mattress in one of their grass huts; not what I was expecting. Neither Rachel nor I are big fans of camping, so that was a little unsettling for us. The food was one plate of a small fish, rice, and a small salad, three times a day, but substituting eggs or bread for fish for breakfast. We brought a few snacks with us, but a huge amount of ants attacked them. So I was pretty hungry the whole time. But, on the whole, the islands were a very nice experience.
We returned to Panama City after the islands. The trip back to Panama City was less eventful, although the road, surprisingly, still wasn't paved and the driver was less than careful. Except that the car broke down for about 15 minutes or so. Also, something funny that happened was that we approached another car later on that had broken down and stopped, as though we were going to help the people from that car. But, apparently our driver apparently thought better of it and after pausing for several seconds, just decided to start driving again. It was like we were cruelly teasing them, making them think help had finally arrived before just speeding it off. I felt kind of bad, but I also thought it was funny.
Rachel and I were a bit tired when we arrived back in the city after doing absolutely nothing exerting for the past few days on the island, so we napped for most of the afternoon. Then, in the evening, we went to the Pesach seder with the Chabad Rabbi in Panama City. The seder was nice, and we met some nice, interesting, and funny people, including one admirable woman who retired to India to help victimized young girls. We went to the seder the second night too, but they were VERY long. We read a majority of the Haggadah, plus each paragraph and blessing was repeated in three languages (English, Spanish, and Hebrew). The food was fine, but there was no matzah ball soup, so that was disappointing.
The next day we did a full day of touring in Panama City. First we went to the Panama Canal, which was very cool. We were fortunate to see a large ship passing through, and saw it raised in the locks. There was also a nice museum we walked through at the visitor's center. After the canal we went to the Amador Causeway, which is kind of like a boardwalk I guess but without the boards. It was really just a long, scenic road which connected three small islands close to the city. After the Causeway we went to a part of the city called Casco Viejo, which is the old colonial section. There were some nice buildings and architecture. Then we went to the second seder that night.
We would have liked some more time in Panama; we were very impressed. Panama City was surprisingly nice; it seems to be a bit like Miami. And there are supposed to be many more beautiful spots there as well. Nonetheless, our time in Panama expired and we left for Costa Rica early the next morning. We spent just a few hours in San Jose, the capital, before we had to catch a bus to our destination, a popular beach spot on Costa Rica's Pacific coast, where we stayed for 4 days. Manuel Antonio was certainly nice, but for being one of Costa Rica's premier destinations, Rachel and I weren't overly impressed. It was beautiful, but we also might have been desensitized after Panama. Manuel Antonio has a popular national park, which we went to one day and saw a lot of monkeys and a sloth. We have some cute pictures of the monkeys. The national park was cool and we were rewarded for walking through it with a pretty, exclusive beach at the end. We also spent another day at the beach, and we did a jetskiing tour, which was a lot of fun. We spent a little bit of time in the adjacent town called Quepos, but there's really nothing to do and it's pretty shady. The main disappointing thing is just that our diets were somewhat limited due to Passover. Otherwise, it was very nice and relaxing.
We spent the last night and day in Rachel's town. I met her host family, and they were very warm and friendly. I like Rachel's town a lot. It wasn't what I expected; I had expected it to be a very rural town with a lot of space between houses and pretty quiet, but that wasn't a case. It was a town in every sense of the word, with everything you might expect there to be in terms of shops, eateries, etc. Her school is very small and pretty. The entire school only has about 6 classrooms and is on less than an acre of land. But there is a beautiful garden, and the school's setting is really nice.
I'll post the pictures soon; hopefully you'll enjoy them. We enjoyed the trip very much and it was sad to leave. But I guess there's worse places to come back to.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Buenos Aires (336 photos), by Jared Neuhausen
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Calm
Sorry that I haven't written in a long time, but the truth is it's actually been a bit quiet around here. I've been getting into the rhythm of school, which hasn't been very difficult because I don't do anything. I really only have serious class two days a week, and homework is barely existent. The most school-related excitement I've had was trying to decide a final class to take, which I finally did this past Wednesday. You may remember that I was initially enrolled in a marketing class in Portuguese that meets once per week from 7-11 pm. Well, that didn't go so well. I went to the first class, but I left after 45 minutes because I could barely understand anything. Part of the reason I had signed up for it was because I saw on the schedule that it was a class that international students frequently attend, so I figured that there would be others in the class. But there weren't any; it was all Brazilians and I didn't know what they were talking about. I checked later and the international student designation was gone from the class listing, so that went wrong somewhere. Anyway, after deciding that I wouldn't be taking that class, that created a void in my schedule that I had to fill. The next week I sat in on some finance class in Portuguese that I saw on the schedule was intended for international students. Yet there was only one other of those students, and when he walked into the room he said to me, "you know this is a post-graduate class, right?" Which I didn't. I stayed for the whole time, but that wasn't going to work out either. I perused the schedule again, and sat in on Brazilian Culture in Portuguese a few days later, which has many international students as well as many Brazilians. Although I only understand at select times, I've decided to take that as my final class and am now officially enrolled. I made it a little more difficult on myself, though, because I still wanted to preserve my two free days during the week, which narrowed down the class selection. But it's all good now and I'm content. It was finalized on Wednesday, which, in typical Brazilian inefficient fashion, was the one and only day that all international students could make changes to their schedules. So everyone was trying to do the same thing at the same time. You can imagine how that went.
But besides school things have been somewhat slow, mainly because it's rained quite a bit lately. I'd say since the last post it has rained more days than not, usually starting some time in the afternoon. And when it rains here, it pours. There's no such thing as light rain here. It's either all-out rain or no rain at all. The last few weeks I have seen the hardest rain I've ever seen in my life, as well as a couple of other days that rank in the top 5 of hardest rains I've ever seen. The Saturday night two weekends ago was when I saw the hardest rain I've ever seen. There's a hill/mountain behind my house here, and so there's a road that goes up on an incline. It was raining so hard that that inclined road was flooded. I wasn't aware that was possible. I heard from other kids here that roads all over the city were flooded and that it was just a general disaster. One of my Brazilian teachers even said he'd never seen anything like that. And it rained that hard straight for 3-4 hours, without letting up at all. It really was unbelievable. It hasn't rained now since Thursday, but before Thursday it had rained really almost every day for the past two weeks. One night last weekend I got caught in that pouring rain and storm walking near Copacabana beach, it was a little out of control.
Other than that I haven't done too much out of the ordinary for the past few weeks. The frequent rain precluded trips to the beach. On Wednesday I went to the Museu da Republica here, which is in the former presidential palace/residence. That was a very nice building, and admission is free on Wednesdays for whatever reason. Some of it was closed to the public for renovation, but in general it was very pretty. Last night I met with my teacher and some other people at a street fair in an area called Sao Cristovao. Sao Cristovao is in the north zone of Rio, which doesn't really have any tourists and is generally a less safe part of the city. It's not somewhere where you want to walk around alone. The fair's theme is Brazil's Northeast, and it was a nice time. I had some very good food.
The most exciting thing I've done is that I planned a trip to go see Rachel. I leave this Friday and will be gone for 10 days. The timing is convenient, because Rachel has spring break, and although I'll be gone for 10 days, I'll only miss 2 days of class (only one important day). The university gives school off the Thursday and Friday before Easter, and since I don't have class on Monday or Wednesday, I'll only miss one Tuesday and the Friday that I leave, but the only class I have Friday is Portuguese. We're going to rendezvous in Panama and spend the first half of the trip there before returning to Costa Rica for the second half. I was able to get a nice deal on the airfare; originally I didn't think it would be possible because all the airfare I had been seeing was very expensive. But suddenly one day I saw prices to Panama that were much cheaper than I expected, and so a flight to Panama and then to Costa Rica became much more reasonable and realistic. We're very excited for the trip.
That's about all I have for this post, sorry I don't have much more. As you can see above, the pictures from Buenos Aires have been posted. Sorry I took so long to get those up, but I hope you enjoy them.
But besides school things have been somewhat slow, mainly because it's rained quite a bit lately. I'd say since the last post it has rained more days than not, usually starting some time in the afternoon. And when it rains here, it pours. There's no such thing as light rain here. It's either all-out rain or no rain at all. The last few weeks I have seen the hardest rain I've ever seen in my life, as well as a couple of other days that rank in the top 5 of hardest rains I've ever seen. The Saturday night two weekends ago was when I saw the hardest rain I've ever seen. There's a hill/mountain behind my house here, and so there's a road that goes up on an incline. It was raining so hard that that inclined road was flooded. I wasn't aware that was possible. I heard from other kids here that roads all over the city were flooded and that it was just a general disaster. One of my Brazilian teachers even said he'd never seen anything like that. And it rained that hard straight for 3-4 hours, without letting up at all. It really was unbelievable. It hasn't rained now since Thursday, but before Thursday it had rained really almost every day for the past two weeks. One night last weekend I got caught in that pouring rain and storm walking near Copacabana beach, it was a little out of control.
Other than that I haven't done too much out of the ordinary for the past few weeks. The frequent rain precluded trips to the beach. On Wednesday I went to the Museu da Republica here, which is in the former presidential palace/residence. That was a very nice building, and admission is free on Wednesdays for whatever reason. Some of it was closed to the public for renovation, but in general it was very pretty. Last night I met with my teacher and some other people at a street fair in an area called Sao Cristovao. Sao Cristovao is in the north zone of Rio, which doesn't really have any tourists and is generally a less safe part of the city. It's not somewhere where you want to walk around alone. The fair's theme is Brazil's Northeast, and it was a nice time. I had some very good food.
The most exciting thing I've done is that I planned a trip to go see Rachel. I leave this Friday and will be gone for 10 days. The timing is convenient, because Rachel has spring break, and although I'll be gone for 10 days, I'll only miss 2 days of class (only one important day). The university gives school off the Thursday and Friday before Easter, and since I don't have class on Monday or Wednesday, I'll only miss one Tuesday and the Friday that I leave, but the only class I have Friday is Portuguese. We're going to rendezvous in Panama and spend the first half of the trip there before returning to Costa Rica for the second half. I was able to get a nice deal on the airfare; originally I didn't think it would be possible because all the airfare I had been seeing was very expensive. But suddenly one day I saw prices to Panama that were much cheaper than I expected, and so a flight to Panama and then to Costa Rica became much more reasonable and realistic. We're very excited for the trip.
That's about all I have for this post, sorry I don't have much more. As you can see above, the pictures from Buenos Aires have been posted. Sorry I took so long to get those up, but I hope you enjoy them.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Back home for...school?
Boa noite. I am back in Rio again after my trip. What a shame, right? I arrived late last night; my flight was delayed a bit, and then by the time I landed the correct bus I needed to take to get home had stopped running, so I hopped on another bus that took a very roundabout way to not even get where I needed to go, and then I took a taxi after giving up on waiting for the final bus. Didn't get home until almost 2 am, and I had school today. Not to worry, though, because my first class wasn't until 1 pm.
So school finally started. By this time, after an exciting month of February, I've kind of lost sight that a main reason I'm here is to study. There's a "study" in study abroad, after all. It felt a bit weird to have class, but the campus was bumping today. There were people everywhere. It felt like, well, the first day of school. During the language course it was pretty much just us international Portuguese students on campus plus a few others taking summer school. But it was sparsely populated. Today was hopping, though.
The classes I had today were Brazilian foreign policy and Portuguese. I have the same teacher for Portuguese that I had during the language course, and I think he's really cool, so I'm happy about that. And that old guy that I wrote about previously is in my class again, too, which of course is awesome because he made the language course. There are many new international students here for the start of the semester; students who weren't here for the language course, but arrived for the semester. Many are in the Portuguese class, including students from Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Ireland, France, and England. It will be good to meet them and have class with them. And there are also several other students who were in my language class before. So that is set up well. The foreign policy class seems like it will be good for the most part, too. That class is in English. It was introductory today, just went over the schedule and syllabus, but the content seems very interesting, which is a bonus. The teacher seems very young; he really doesn't seem much older than me. He's very enthusiastic, but maybe too enthusiastic. He was basically screaming at us the entire time today, and he was just explaining the schedule. It could get a bit overwhelming. My other classes are marketing, which I don't have until Thursday, and soccer. Marketing is the only class that actually means anything; I could potentially get credit for it for back home. It's taught in Portuguese and is 4 hours every Thursday night. It seems to be a formidable setup, but it's for mostly international students, so hopefully I'll be able to get some help. Not sure if I'll end up sticking with it, though, but I'll go this Thursday and we'll see what happens.
Now, for my trip. It was very nice. If you recall, first I went to Iguazu Falls, on the border of Brazil and Argentina. They were unbelievable. You hear people say such great things about them, but you really can't understand until you see them. There are so many waterfalls covering a great area, with so many different beautiful pictures, backdrops, and landscapes. It was really incredible. The falls are a national park, and you can enter both the Brazilian and Argentine side, but you have to do them separately. I saw the Brazilian side first, and the Argentine side the next day. They're both very, very nice, but I'd say the Argentine side is slightly better because you can get closer and see a bit more. That's not really important, though; the point is that the falls are spectacular from wherever or however you see them. The second day, from the Argentine side, I rode in a boat under the falls where I got drenched. That was cool; I tried to look up to see what was going on, but there was so much water falling that I could barely open my eyes. There were just so many beautiful views throughout the entire park. It is without a doubt one of the coolest and most beautiful places I have ever been.
In Iguazu I also went to see a large dam called Itaipu Binational Dam. Itaipu is on the border of Brazil and Paraguay and is a joint project between the two nations. I had a short excursion there, which involved a 20-30 minute movie followed by an hour-long panoramic tour of the dam and its grounds. I hadn't realized there was anything else to do in the area besides see the waterfalls, but I was pleasantly surprised by the dam. It was quite cool. It's currently the largest dam in the world, if I remember correctly, although it is about to be surpassed by a dam currently under construction in China. But Itaipu will remain the world's largest hydroelectric energy source/project. The tour and information given about the dam were fascinating; as well as the dam, Itaipu consists of a wildlife refuge, center for science studies, social/environmental responsibility and conservation projects, among other things. The project provides 25% of Brazil's energy consumption and an astounding number like 90% of Paraguay's energy. Enough from me, go look it up on Wikipedia now. The point is that the dam was also very cool.
After seeing the dam and before seeing the waterfalls, I stopped at a bird park just outside of the national park. The bird park was pretty much a zoo of birds, but it was nice as well. There were many brightly colored and huge parrots, toucans, flamingos, and other exotic birds. I also saw a peacock, but unfortunately I couldn't use my charm to provoke it to open its tail. The toucans were my favorite. They're cool and funny-looking in real life. The bird park had birds in cages but also several aviaries that you could walk into and have birds flying, walking, or sitting right next to you and you could even touch them if you desired, although probably not recommended. I enjoyed that as well.
Here's the bad news: I lost all my pictures from the waterfalls, dam, and bird park. All of them. I was a bit depressed for a while. I had tried hard to take nice pictures, and I bothered people at several points to ask them to take a picture of me in front of various different waterfall backdrops, but now they're all gone. I apologize that you won't be able to see them; I really thought some of them were quite nice. I'll get some pictures from a friend for you to see, but they won't have any of the dam or birds. I had needed to clear some space on the memory card for Buenos Aires because the memory card was full, so I deleted some old and unimportant pictures and videos. Then I went to check how much space I had cleared, and, satisfied, I clicked ok on the camera. Well, the ok gave the go ahead to then clear the entire memory card. I sat, stunned, for a few minutes, but I tried to get over it because I was about to take a city tour of Buenos Aires. So again, I apologize that you won't get to see them. I wish that I still had them.
There is good news, too, in that that did not ruin my trip to Buenos Aires. It was wonderful. Buenos Aires is a very nice city. I think the best word to describe it is pleasant; it's a very pleasant city to be in and walk around. It's calm and aesthetically pleasing, with many nice buildings, neighborhoods, and streets. Buenos Aires is very European in style; there's much European architecture, and it's called the Paris of South America. There are also statues and monuments all over the city.
I saw most of the important sites in the city, but I got most of my feel for the city just from walking around the various neighborhoods. I did quite a bit of walking, actually. I tired myself out a few days. I remember talking about how much walking I've done in other posts, too. I don't know what's gotten into me. Any way, my first full day in Buenos Aires I took a city tour by bus that drove past or stopped by most of the major sites and neighborhoods. It was a nice tour. A few places we saw were the Plaza del Mayo, home to the Casa Rosada, or Pink Presidential House, from where Eva Peron made her famous addresses from the balcony. Also Buenos Aires' obelisk, an old, very colorful neighborhood called Caminito where Italian immigrants settled and is now a hotspot for tango, a Buenos Aires soccer stadium, and two upscale areas called Recoleta and Palermo, plus more.
In subsequent days I mainly walked in depth around several of the places we had driven past. I visited a museum dedicated to Evita. It was relatively simple, but all that I learned she did was remarkable. I walked around the Jewish area of Buenos Aires, which was cool. A lot of Jews walking around and many various kosher restaurants and different food shops. It was cool to see the Jewish area, that there's a vibrant Jewish population integrated in the middle of the city. I enjoyed that.
For the final few days of the trip, I switched hostels, and unbeknownst to me before arriving, it was virtually an Israeli hostel. The owner was Israeli, and 95% of the guests were Israeli. I was the only non-Israeli there for the last two days. Really, I had no indication that anything about it was Israeli. But when I first got there I saw Hebrew on the door and the first thing I saw after opening the door was an Israeli flag hanging in the hallway, so I thought, this is sweet. The worst thing, though, was that since it was an Israeli hostel there were a minimum of 5 people smoking at all times. That was a bit hard to bear, but I was still happy to be there.
Purim was just this weekend when I was still in Buenos Aires, so I celebrated there. It was a lot of fun. There was a Chabad just two blocks away from the Israeli hostel, so I went to hear the Megillah, eat, and party Saturday and Sunday. There are Chabads all over the city, but it was nice that there was one so close. And it was nice to be able celebrate Purim with a Jewish community.
My last day in Buenos Aires I visited the grand cemetery where Eva Peron, among other famous Argentines, are buried. The cemetery has large stones/monuments/small rooms or houses that are dedicated to those buried there. I read somewhere that it's one of the 3 most remarkable cemeteries in the world, along with the Jewish cemetery in Prague, which I have also seen, and the last I can't remember. But there were many statues and carving, long row after long row of monuments hovering over you as you walked around. It was quite a cemetery. Then I stopped by the site of the Israeli embassy bombing in 1992. I guess a bit of depressing way to end my trip, but I'm glad I saw them.
So now I'm back in Rio de Janeiro and have had one day of school. To celebrate, I'm taking the day off tomorrow from school and going to the beach. That's only half true; I don't have class on Wednesdays, or Mondays either for that matter. So I'm just going to the beach. I've been away from Rio for 10+ days, so I kind of miss the beach. Rough life.
I'll try my best not to lose the pictures from Buenos Aires.
So school finally started. By this time, after an exciting month of February, I've kind of lost sight that a main reason I'm here is to study. There's a "study" in study abroad, after all. It felt a bit weird to have class, but the campus was bumping today. There were people everywhere. It felt like, well, the first day of school. During the language course it was pretty much just us international Portuguese students on campus plus a few others taking summer school. But it was sparsely populated. Today was hopping, though.
The classes I had today were Brazilian foreign policy and Portuguese. I have the same teacher for Portuguese that I had during the language course, and I think he's really cool, so I'm happy about that. And that old guy that I wrote about previously is in my class again, too, which of course is awesome because he made the language course. There are many new international students here for the start of the semester; students who weren't here for the language course, but arrived for the semester. Many are in the Portuguese class, including students from Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Ireland, France, and England. It will be good to meet them and have class with them. And there are also several other students who were in my language class before. So that is set up well. The foreign policy class seems like it will be good for the most part, too. That class is in English. It was introductory today, just went over the schedule and syllabus, but the content seems very interesting, which is a bonus. The teacher seems very young; he really doesn't seem much older than me. He's very enthusiastic, but maybe too enthusiastic. He was basically screaming at us the entire time today, and he was just explaining the schedule. It could get a bit overwhelming. My other classes are marketing, which I don't have until Thursday, and soccer. Marketing is the only class that actually means anything; I could potentially get credit for it for back home. It's taught in Portuguese and is 4 hours every Thursday night. It seems to be a formidable setup, but it's for mostly international students, so hopefully I'll be able to get some help. Not sure if I'll end up sticking with it, though, but I'll go this Thursday and we'll see what happens.
Now, for my trip. It was very nice. If you recall, first I went to Iguazu Falls, on the border of Brazil and Argentina. They were unbelievable. You hear people say such great things about them, but you really can't understand until you see them. There are so many waterfalls covering a great area, with so many different beautiful pictures, backdrops, and landscapes. It was really incredible. The falls are a national park, and you can enter both the Brazilian and Argentine side, but you have to do them separately. I saw the Brazilian side first, and the Argentine side the next day. They're both very, very nice, but I'd say the Argentine side is slightly better because you can get closer and see a bit more. That's not really important, though; the point is that the falls are spectacular from wherever or however you see them. The second day, from the Argentine side, I rode in a boat under the falls where I got drenched. That was cool; I tried to look up to see what was going on, but there was so much water falling that I could barely open my eyes. There were just so many beautiful views throughout the entire park. It is without a doubt one of the coolest and most beautiful places I have ever been.
In Iguazu I also went to see a large dam called Itaipu Binational Dam. Itaipu is on the border of Brazil and Paraguay and is a joint project between the two nations. I had a short excursion there, which involved a 20-30 minute movie followed by an hour-long panoramic tour of the dam and its grounds. I hadn't realized there was anything else to do in the area besides see the waterfalls, but I was pleasantly surprised by the dam. It was quite cool. It's currently the largest dam in the world, if I remember correctly, although it is about to be surpassed by a dam currently under construction in China. But Itaipu will remain the world's largest hydroelectric energy source/project. The tour and information given about the dam were fascinating; as well as the dam, Itaipu consists of a wildlife refuge, center for science studies, social/environmental responsibility and conservation projects, among other things. The project provides 25% of Brazil's energy consumption and an astounding number like 90% of Paraguay's energy. Enough from me, go look it up on Wikipedia now. The point is that the dam was also very cool.
After seeing the dam and before seeing the waterfalls, I stopped at a bird park just outside of the national park. The bird park was pretty much a zoo of birds, but it was nice as well. There were many brightly colored and huge parrots, toucans, flamingos, and other exotic birds. I also saw a peacock, but unfortunately I couldn't use my charm to provoke it to open its tail. The toucans were my favorite. They're cool and funny-looking in real life. The bird park had birds in cages but also several aviaries that you could walk into and have birds flying, walking, or sitting right next to you and you could even touch them if you desired, although probably not recommended. I enjoyed that as well.
Here's the bad news: I lost all my pictures from the waterfalls, dam, and bird park. All of them. I was a bit depressed for a while. I had tried hard to take nice pictures, and I bothered people at several points to ask them to take a picture of me in front of various different waterfall backdrops, but now they're all gone. I apologize that you won't be able to see them; I really thought some of them were quite nice. I'll get some pictures from a friend for you to see, but they won't have any of the dam or birds. I had needed to clear some space on the memory card for Buenos Aires because the memory card was full, so I deleted some old and unimportant pictures and videos. Then I went to check how much space I had cleared, and, satisfied, I clicked ok on the camera. Well, the ok gave the go ahead to then clear the entire memory card. I sat, stunned, for a few minutes, but I tried to get over it because I was about to take a city tour of Buenos Aires. So again, I apologize that you won't get to see them. I wish that I still had them.
There is good news, too, in that that did not ruin my trip to Buenos Aires. It was wonderful. Buenos Aires is a very nice city. I think the best word to describe it is pleasant; it's a very pleasant city to be in and walk around. It's calm and aesthetically pleasing, with many nice buildings, neighborhoods, and streets. Buenos Aires is very European in style; there's much European architecture, and it's called the Paris of South America. There are also statues and monuments all over the city.
I saw most of the important sites in the city, but I got most of my feel for the city just from walking around the various neighborhoods. I did quite a bit of walking, actually. I tired myself out a few days. I remember talking about how much walking I've done in other posts, too. I don't know what's gotten into me. Any way, my first full day in Buenos Aires I took a city tour by bus that drove past or stopped by most of the major sites and neighborhoods. It was a nice tour. A few places we saw were the Plaza del Mayo, home to the Casa Rosada, or Pink Presidential House, from where Eva Peron made her famous addresses from the balcony. Also Buenos Aires' obelisk, an old, very colorful neighborhood called Caminito where Italian immigrants settled and is now a hotspot for tango, a Buenos Aires soccer stadium, and two upscale areas called Recoleta and Palermo, plus more.
In subsequent days I mainly walked in depth around several of the places we had driven past. I visited a museum dedicated to Evita. It was relatively simple, but all that I learned she did was remarkable. I walked around the Jewish area of Buenos Aires, which was cool. A lot of Jews walking around and many various kosher restaurants and different food shops. It was cool to see the Jewish area, that there's a vibrant Jewish population integrated in the middle of the city. I enjoyed that.
For the final few days of the trip, I switched hostels, and unbeknownst to me before arriving, it was virtually an Israeli hostel. The owner was Israeli, and 95% of the guests were Israeli. I was the only non-Israeli there for the last two days. Really, I had no indication that anything about it was Israeli. But when I first got there I saw Hebrew on the door and the first thing I saw after opening the door was an Israeli flag hanging in the hallway, so I thought, this is sweet. The worst thing, though, was that since it was an Israeli hostel there were a minimum of 5 people smoking at all times. That was a bit hard to bear, but I was still happy to be there.
Purim was just this weekend when I was still in Buenos Aires, so I celebrated there. It was a lot of fun. There was a Chabad just two blocks away from the Israeli hostel, so I went to hear the Megillah, eat, and party Saturday and Sunday. There are Chabads all over the city, but it was nice that there was one so close. And it was nice to be able celebrate Purim with a Jewish community.
My last day in Buenos Aires I visited the grand cemetery where Eva Peron, among other famous Argentines, are buried. The cemetery has large stones/monuments/small rooms or houses that are dedicated to those buried there. I read somewhere that it's one of the 3 most remarkable cemeteries in the world, along with the Jewish cemetery in Prague, which I have also seen, and the last I can't remember. But there were many statues and carving, long row after long row of monuments hovering over you as you walked around. It was quite a cemetery. Then I stopped by the site of the Israeli embassy bombing in 1992. I guess a bit of depressing way to end my trip, but I'm glad I saw them.
So now I'm back in Rio de Janeiro and have had one day of school. To celebrate, I'm taking the day off tomorrow from school and going to the beach. That's only half true; I don't have class on Wednesdays, or Mondays either for that matter. So I'm just going to the beach. I've been away from Rio for 10+ days, so I kind of miss the beach. Rough life.
I'll try my best not to lose the pictures from Buenos Aires.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Good news
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.
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.
Brazil (312 photos), by Jared Neuhausen
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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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