Rio de Janeiro

Oi, como vai?!

Hi and how are you?! My Portuguese is improving slowly... quite slowly but I have learned to say some basic things like what/how much/thank-you/sorry/excuse me and I can ask someone's name and how they are doing and say I don't understand or speak Portuguese. Even when I get the words right the pronunciation is quite difficult but it's good to be learning something new! It did take a few days to settle in, not because of the big city, or sharing a room with a bunch of people, (males included in my "all-girls" room) or even the heat (and it's been up to 39 degrees probably) but mostly the language barrier.

Municipal Theatre - downtown Rio

Luckily on Saturday a new girl, Elena, joined my room. She's from Spain and speaks really good Portuguese and English (she lives in the UK). So last week I went to the famous Ipanema Beach, where people sell everything from cold drinks to bikinis on huge umbrella stands. And the bathing suits people wear are definitely not for the prudish types... Friday I went downtown to see some of the tourist scene, including this beautiful pyramid shaped church. In my attempts to find the Cultural Centre of Brazil, a huge multi-floored building with white columns and marble that is an art gallery/museum, I ran into a guy from Norway looking for a hostel to stay in. Jan came with me to the Cultural Centre, where we saw a floor on the Brazilian Revolution as well as a floor with pictures and film around love - Amour, Amour, Amour - and the top floor with all different types of South American money (and a partially clear floor full of coins). I really enjoyed the Revolution floor that had a dark room with a black screen and people's names - who had been killed or disappeared - in white scrolling past and falling in a pile.

Stained glass windows inside church

Saturday I went with Elena and another girl from the northern Amazon region, Lorena, to a pre-carnival party in Flamengo Beach, where everyone dances to drums and musicians and there are people selling drinks and home-made vodka freezies all over the place. There was also a fruit and veggie market right outside our hostel doors, where I got the most delicious juice-all-over-my-face mango, and the avocado in the picture below - twice as big as ours!

 

Yes that is a VW van in the background - they're everywhere!

Yesterday, Sunday, Elena and I came across a huge Sunday market in Ipanema and never made it to the beach. I was tempted to buy everything, but this is only the beginning. Later we walked to Copacabana while it started raining and we came across a Portuguese reggae band playing on a stage to a big crowd. We got soaked hid on the covered steps of a church on our way to dinner and to see some Casanova music. I definitely had to ring out and hang all my clothes by the time we got back to the hostel!

Obrigada for reading and for the messages!

My first caipirinha on the deck at my hostel