I spent yesterday packing after my great trip to Brazil, which I will now briefly summarize. First, Lauren and I arrived in Rio and safely found ourselves at our hostel on Ipanema Beach. I woke up the next morning to Lindsey waking me up and we had our roomie r
eunion. We spent a few days in Rio going to soccer games, dancing in Lapa, walking around and running. The weather wasn't so great though so we headed to Minas Gerais (the place where Lindsey was doing research) a day earlier. We took an overnight bus to Ouro Preto, which is a goreous mountain town with amazing portuguese architecture. We toured a gold mine and spent the day just wandering around and shopping for gemstones. It was definitely cool. The next day, we took a bus to Vicosa, where Lindsey went to school and met her friend Louisa and her family. It was our first real experience with being around a lot of very friendly Portuguese speakers. We ended up spending quite a bit of time doing this so it was a good little break-in session. They were so nice to us and fed us really great cake before we took another over night bus to Itatiba, Sao Paolo, where Lindsey is living with her boyfriend, Adalto's family.It was really great getting to meet Adalto. It was fun staying with his family even t
hough it was a little overwhelming with all of the people speaking a language that Lauren and I didn't really understand. I got to spend my birthday with my best friends and it was a definite up-grade from last year. I also got cake and happy birthday sang to me about 10 times in Portuguese and English. My birthday happened to be a night of Adalto and his brother's show so I'm showing a video of that. We spent most of the week visiting and seeing what Lindsey's life is like. Definitely, different from anything that Lauren and I are used to here. But Adalto is great and Lindsey is happy!! We just hope that Adalto and his brother can become famous singers so that she can spend more time in the US!!Lauren and I left Itatiba 2 days before leaving Brazil so that we could see the Christo in the Sun and spend a day or 2 at the beach. We took another lovely overnight bus during which we did not sleep. (Lauren and I are way too short for these special seats so we spent a lot of time being thrown forward every few minutes). We spent the first day at the beach and relaxing. We both got pretty burnt, Lauren more than I and I went running all along Copacabana beach. The next day we did this awesome hike up to the Christo in Rio. Everyone kept telling us that we couldn't do it without a guide, but we did. Of course, when we got to the to the top we
were disgustingly sweating and then we were told that we had to take a bus back down to buy tickets. it was pretty funny but totally worth it. That day we did a little more beach and then got ready to head home. We slept in the airport and began our journey home.So that's a nice little summary. Overall the trip was awesome! It was so great to be with Lindsey and Lauren again. It was amazing to see Lindsey's life down there. And everyone we met was so welcoming and warm. Plus, we got the opportunity to practice out Portuguese at dinner and by watching the Olympics!!
Ciao ciao,
Sarah
