48 horas em Brasil....

...que nunca olvidarei. Brazilians really know how to make an awesome first impression :) Here we go!

Me at the airport, feeling naïve and righteous about proving my survival abilities to my parents. So excited. After 9 hours in the air (red-eye flight) my plane stopped in São Paulo before heading to Rio, and I was officially on Brazilian turf! My favorite part about the plane ride was actually the view coming into São Paulo's airport... I don't have a picture, but it wouldn't have done it justice anyway. It's HUGE. It looked like an Amazon forest of high rises, in the middle of green Brazilian mountainous terrain. That view was the epitome of everything I've heard about Brazil's industrialization and economic rise.  My friendly fellow passenger pointed out that São Paulo's executives are the highest paid in the world... don't know for sure if that's true, but I wouldn't doubt it. I'm planning to travel there in the next few weekends and see this urban jungle closer up.

Hopefully by then I'll be able to aggressively flag down buses and navigate streets without names (or with tiny signs on the sides of corner buildings), like my friend Heitor. He is in charge of reception for interns at my host university in Itajubá, UNIFEI. I have never been so glad to see someone that I've never met before in person. I was feeling anxious now that I had landed and officially needed to figure out how to get to the bus station and from there to Itajubá (with my big ol' bright green suitcase and without getting lost or walking around alone or speaking too loudly in an American accent), and I wasn't sure if Heitor was in Rio to meet me. But he was!!! And even after one minute of half-English and half-Portuguese conversation, I could tell that he is an easygoing and caring person.

(Customs, for the record, was much more relaxed here than it is in the states. Even the flight attendants seemed more informal and joked around with each other.)

The first words out of Heitor's mouth were along the lines of reading my mind's wishes: "We're going to take the night bus to Itajubá, so let's explore Rio for a day!" We set out for Copacabana Beach, where I had my first meal in Brazil--a sweet, slightly nutty, delicious fruitshake at an open air corner shop. It was made from a fruit called mamão, which I figured out later means papaya. He had an avocado shake, which was weird and exactly what I thought it would taste like and equally delicious.

To navigate Rio you must know the bus system. The bus route from the rodoviária to Copacabana took us winding through the city for about 40 minutes, from the periphery (where the favelas spread over the hills) to the ocean (in fact, the nicest beach in Rio de Janeiro). The other people on our bus weren't talking much, but the buses are loud from the roaring engines, the traffic sounds coming through the open windows, and the grind of the bus over un-manicured roads. It was pretty bumpy, even roller-coaster-like at times, but mostly just exhilarating.

Of course, since I picked going to the beach, it started to rain. But it was still stunning! The fog here is really thick--thicker than San Francisco--but you can see the islands/mini-mountains out in the middle. I got to run my hands through the water as the tide came in :) After roaming around Copacabana, we got back on the bus and off in Lapa, which is a neighborhood of Rio with the best places for a balada which is anything fun that you do with friends. Lapa has a lot of quaint, historic buildings and apartments and narrow streets. Its most famous landmark is the white arches, which look a lot like a massive roman aqueduct. In the picture there's another part of the city in the background. Since it was early on a Monday night, the streets were pretty quiet (minus the occasional flower or foodcart vendor). But Lapa has a secret: Heitor lead us down one alleyway with tons of crazy, artistic graffiti and at the end there was a staircase completely covered in mosaics. I read on a plaque that it was made in 1990 (even though it could pass for way older).


It felt like we were ascending the steps to a sacred temple, but it actually ends at the start of a favela. Even the most broken parts of Rio have beauty at their fingertips. Also, cultural note: I noticed that there were broken glass cups lining the window sills of the apartments flanking the staircase... it's not for decoration. Apparently it's a common way to deter robbery here.

To continue, from Lapa we grabbed a bus back to the rodoviária and hung out in a food court until the night bus to Itajubá arrived. And I understand now why buses are a popular form of

transportation here: this bus had the most spacious, comfy seats I have ever experienced on a bus, but I couldn't sleep. I didn't get a picture but I just watched the scenery from inside the dark bus... whenever the fog cleared I could see AMAZING stars. You know how the stars in the US look 2-D? Here, it's 3-D, like you can differentiate between the distances. Like the fog and the clouds, the entire sky seemed closer than usual. I took it as a good omen.

HERE ENDS PART ONE of the start of my journey... sorry (I'm not sorry) it's long.