Final Stop - BRAZIL!!!!

Wow, last port, Brazil!

Day 1 April 21 2010
Today everyone on the ship pretty much hung around Salvador because trips did not start until day 2. When we got off the ship we were in a pretty sketch area. But, close by was a place called upper city where the historic district was. It was kinda weird because we had to take an elevator to get to this ‘upper city’. But, if was pretty cool up there. The buildings were all very colonial looking. There were a bunch of shops and restaurants up there too. I wasn’t too in love with Salvador so it is hard to express enthusiasm towards it, but I did have fun there so I will do my best.
All day Chloe and I walked around and just checked out the scene. Chloe speaks pretty fluent Spanish so she was my translator for the week. People in Brazil don’t even speak Spanish, they speak Portuguese, but Chloe’s 5 years of Spanish were more useful then my 1 year of German since at least some Spanish and Portuguese words are similar. I can’t say the same for German. Anyways, We did a little shopping but knew we would want to buy stuff when we go to Rio (day 2) so we didn’t want to buy too much here. There was a music video being taped for the Brazilian soccer team so that was way cool to watch. Everyone is Brazil has a ton of spirit. I would say like 3/4 of the people I saw while is Brazil were wearing yellow and green.
It was raining all day but luckily it wasn’t very cold so we just sucked it up and enjoyed our day even though we were soaked. We ate lunch with Sarah, Greta, Olivia (Minnesota), Kristin, and Katie (Virginia). They had bread and oil at the restaurant, I liked that. I got eggplant something or other which was really a butt ton of cheese with eggplant on top. Cheese is a big item on the menus in Brazil, it is actually kind of strange. (You will know what I am talking about as my entry goes on.)
We headed back to the ship to get cleaned up before dinner/going out. Around 7 we headed out to dinner - Tolan, Sarah, Chloe, and Carson, and I. We had heard that the ‘place to be’ was down by some light house so we took a taxi there. Well, you could say that there was absolutely no other Sasers in like a 15 mile radius. But, we made the excuse that it was still early and they just didn’t go out yet (which was actually not true at all). We checked out about 15 restaurants until we found one that suited all of us. It was kind of hard to figure out whether there was stuff we liked on the menu because 90% of the menus were in Portuguese. Eventually we chose a little Italian place. There was some deal on the menu that we couldn’t really decipher but Tolan, Sarah, and Carson got it anyways. It pretty much was like endless pasta and pizza for 14 bucks. I, on the other hand, thought I would play it safe and order bruschetta with mozzarella (picturing bread with fresh mozzarella and bruschetta on it). Wrong. I pretty much got bread with five pounds of cheese on it. It was good but I was pretty positive I had my serving for the week in cheese at lunch.
After dinner we walked around for a little while to see if we saw and familiar faces. We didn’t. And, FYI, we don’t normally search for where all the other Sasers are but we figured staying in a big group was probably not a bad idea considering the danger level in Salvador. (we had already heard of several muggings and theft). We headed up taking a taxi back to the upper city. We had avoided that initially because it didn’t seem like a super exciting place at night and we also had heard that it was very dangerous up there at night. We went anyway because we had not a clue where everyone else on our 800 passenger ship was.
I swear I could hear the crickets chirping when we got to the upper city. I could not fathom the fact that we still had not seen one person from our ship. Where we were was super shady and we didn’t even want to get out of the car. I saw a few white girls sitting at a restaurant across the street and I was pretty positive they were on our ship so we decided to get out. Our plan was to walk for like 5 minutes, if we don’t find anyone then we just go back to the ship. Well, Weirdly enough, we started walking and some man I had never seen before in my life was like, “Hey you, all your friends are in here!”, as he pointed to this outdoor club. Chloe and I looked at each other like PLEASE let our friends ACTUALLY be in there but we knew the possibility of him knowing who we were looking for was very slim. But some how, not only were there Sasers in there but there we our friends - Scott and Stacy, that we were suppose to meet up with later on. I have never let out a bigger sigh of relief in my life, well except when I reached the ship after traveling India for days.
That night ended up being really fun. We stayed at the outdoor club for a while until the band left and then we headed, as a large group, to a Samba club. The Samba club had a live band and a mix of locals and a ton of other Sasers. Everyone was dancing and having a ball. There was one local guy leading us all in a line dance that consisted of some very strange dance moves. I enjoyed it though.
Chloe and I had plans to head back to the ship early because we wanted to creep around the ship and see what goes on after people get back on the ship in port. We had heard it gets pretty crazy and dramatic. Eventually we did head back to the ship and get our video camera. Let the adventures begin! Nothing too exciting actually happened. There were two other guys running around with a video camera and we literally ran right into them which was really funny. We interview some drunk people and played ‘knock knock ditch’. The night was pretty uneventful but we had a good time. We eventually ran into our friend Danny (Chicago) and just hung around with him and continued to watch people stumble around the ship.

Day 2 April 22 2010
RIO HERE WE COME! Today was the day we were flying to Rio De Janeiro. My group consisted of Chloe, Kristen, Jeremy, and I but a ton of other Sasers were going to Rio also on the same flight as us. The flight was only like two and a half hours and of course I slept the whole time. I actually got my own whole row of seats, hollla.
Okay so Rio is divided into two main beaches (as far as I know) Impanema and Copacobanna. The majority of Sasers were staying in Copacobanna but we chose to stay in Impanema because we had heard better things or something, Jeremy made the plans. Either way, we really lucked out with our hostel. It was called Impanema Beach House and it had a rooms, a pool, a bar, and an outdoor eating area. We dropped our stuff there and decided to find some food and take a look at the beach. The beaches were pretty but not as pretty as Vietnam and Mauritius. Although, the people were a whole nother story. I have never seen a place with better looking people in my life. I think that I may have been the fattest girl on the beach and I may have gained a few pounds on this trip but I’m not that fat. Every girl had the perfect body, every guy was ripped. And, to top it all off they ALL knew how to play soccer. People were just juggling the soccer ball with their friends for hours. Some people were even playing soccer-volleyball.
That evening we had plans to go to a Brazilian Futbol game. There was a big group of us going which made it fun. It was not too big of a game but it was in the big stadium. The game was the quarter finals of the Brazil cup, Rio vs San Paulo. Not that this was a big deal but an interesting side note is that there is no alcohol sold in the stadium at all. It is also not sold in places within a certain circumference of the stadium three hours prior to the game. Apparently they are tried to ease the crowd in preparation for the world cup in a few years. Just thought that was an interesting fact.
The game ended up being really fun. The fans legit never sat down or stopped cheering at any point in the game. Like they didn’t just cheer where there was a good play or a goal they cheered for everything - a throw in, a pass, a time out, ANYTHING. I was excited because I officially had been to a soccer game and heard fans cheer OLE OLE OLE OLE!!
That night Chloe and I had planned to just go back to the hostel but we found a really cool looking outdoor sushi place and decided to stop by. It was so good. They had like hand rolls which were super delicious. I got mine with Salmon and cream cheese. YUM. While we were sitting there we were approached by some guy from LA. Now, let me just tell you something real quick - In places like Brazil, where very little english is spoken, people that speak english tend to get excited when they hear other people speaking english, its kind of like a sigh of relief because having a language barrier can get exhausting. So, anyways thats why those guys had come over to us, because they heard us speaking english. We talked to them for a little while and it ended up that we were kind of in like a backpackers going out area so we walked down the street to a ‘happenin’ place with them and just relaxed for a while. It was actually really funny because the one guy we met acted like he was a pro at interacting with the Brazilians even though he didn’t know Portuguese. So, his friend asked him to order him some bread because he didn’t know how to do it. Well, the guy ordered some ‘bread’ and about ten minutes later the waitress came back with a plate of cheese cubes. Like a full dinner-sized plate of cheese cubes. First of all, the guy looked like a fool for acting like he knew what he was doing. And, two, what kind of place has a huge plate of cheese cubes on their menu? hahaha BRAZIL DOES because they love cheese (TOLD YOU!). After that restaurant the guys were heading to a place called a silent club where you go in and are provided with headphones and everyone just dances to your own beat. Chloe was too tired so we didn’t go but I was kind of interested in what that could of possibly been like.

Day 3 April 23 2010
This morning we had a guided Favela tour. The Favelas in Brazil are kinda sorta comparable to the Townships in South Africa. I don’t really know exactly how they got set up but they are essentially the cheapest way of living in Rio. They are a bunch of apartments built next too and on top of each other in a certain area. Basically they have the system beat on everything. They don’t pay taxes, they break into the pipes to steal fresh water, and they some how get free cable too. It was cool to go through and see the different people that live there and the different stuff they own. There are schools, churches, stores, and restaurants there. They have a motorbike company, rather than taxi service, that gets them around the favelas and even out into the city.
After the Favelas we had planned to get our stuff from our hostel and move over to Copacobanna because a group of our friend were staying in a hostel called Mellow Yellow and we wanted to check it out. Long story short they didnt have enough beds there and we liked our hostel better so we went back to Ipanema and just checked in there for another night. We ran into Kristin when we got back to the beach house (because she had left us the night before to go with some other sas people) and ended up getting Sushi with her and Chris. For the rest of the afternoon Jeremy decided to walk around on his own so Chloe and I decided to head to the beach.
We walked along the beach for a while and just creeped. We stared at all the guys wondering what they are doing or taking to get such perfect bodies. Then, we looked at the girls and wondered how not one of them had small boobs or cellulite on their bottoms. Like, these bodies had to be computer generated. After walking for a while we decided to sit on the beach and watch everyone play soccer. Two guys came up to us and decided to have a chat. however, they only spoke Portuguese so I had absolutely no way of communicating with them. Chloe was able to hold a pretty solid conversation with them but i had not a clue what they were talking about so I just sat there and looked pretty. They ended up being kind of awkward and weird, so we ‘had to go meet our friends’ and got out of there.
That night there was a BBQ at our hostel that we stuck around for. My goodness was the food good. We hadn’t had grilled meat in decades so it was like heaven to us. We made friends with a bunch of people at the hostel from all over the world - Australia, Denmark, Chili, and England. We all hung out at the BBQ for a while and then decided to go out together that night. The one girl had been living in Rio for a few weeks so she knew of an outdoor concert going on. The concert was huge. Some of the songs started in English so that was fun but the majority of it was in Portuguese, which was still fun. It was funny there because I guess Rio’s famous drink is the Capoeira, its like a limey sugary drink, and thats what was being served everywhere there. I was getting tired and ready to head back to the hostel after a while which was a bummer because I really wanted to stay out later but oh well. One of our friends actually feinted so we took care of her and then some of us went back to the hostel and other went out to the night scene.

Day 4 April 24, 2010
Today was our last day in Rio. Jeremy and I wanted to see one of the scenic views but the Holy Redeimer was under construction and we heard Sugar Loaf Mountain was a better view anyways so we headed there. We had a very limited amount of time because it was about 10:30 and we had to be back at the hostel by 12:30 for to get picked up to go to the airport.
We got the the mountain with plans to take the gondala to the top and then just take it back down. However, the gondala was ridiculously expensive so I vetoed that idea. There was a hiking trail around so we figured we’ll just hike that for a little and then hike down and leave, better than nothing. We started hiking and figured we couldn’t be too far from the top. However, we had no idea what time it was or how far we were because the one guy we passed was German and said it was only ten minutes to the top and the time was currently 12:20. We had started at like 11:45 and only hiked for no more than 15 minutes so we assumed that he was not very good at english. **This was my ONE CHANCE to speak German in Brazil and I blew it, I was so mad!!!
Anyways, eventually we ran into someone that said we are not far at all from the top so we decided to just go all the way. We eventually got up to the top and it was so worth it. We walked around and relaxed for about a minute and a half until we realized that it was 12:06 and we had about 8 minutes to get back down the mountain. So what did we do? We RAN. All.the.way.down. This was no run in the park, it was like running from boulder to tree stump to branch. Not really, but it was tough, and I am really surprise that neither of us ate it hard.
Blah blah blah we rushed back to the hostel, met up with Chloe, went to the airport, and headed to Rio.
That evening we ate dinner on the ship to save a few dollars. That night was frustrating. We heard that everyone was going to this club called Dolce. Max, Ryan, Me, Chloe, and Sarah headed there. like 40 dollars later via taxi we arrived at this swanky club. I don’t feel like explaining the rest of the night but basically we got some food and drinks then realized Dolce was too expensive. Some people went next door to the cheaper club but Sarah and I headed back to the ship and had a sleepover :).

Day 5 April 25, 2010
Today was our last day in Brazil. We wanted to spend our last money and have an enjoyable last day in port. I really wanted to get my hair braided so we headed right up to the upper city to the ladies that had been sitting up there up everyday waiting for us to come back. I got my whole head cornrowed with colors braided in. It looked...sweet. Afterwards, we walked around for a little while and bought a few random things. We ate some lunch, one of the best lunches ive had, and then I headed back to the ship.

Sorry this blog entry was so boring but I am writing it during my last couple days on the ship - I can’t say its exactly what I feel like doing.

May 4th 2010
We had the ambassadors ball the other night. Everyone got dressed up and we were provided with a really nice dinner. I sat with Tolan, Sarah, and a few guys we got placed with but enjoyed sitting with. I originally planned on keeping my cornrows in until I got home, which would mean i would have had them in for the ball, but I ended up taking them out which I was happy about because I would have felt really goofy.
Finals were stressful but they are finally over. I did pretty well I think. We also finally finished our Global Studies project. Our project was within the top 20 projects so that was exciting. I hope to have gotten all A’s and one B but I have not yet found out.
Right now is so bitter sweet. I have been so excited to get home and see my family, friends, and dog for the past month. But, now that I realize I am about to be in the real world with out all of my semester at sea friends it is sad, really sad. Sarah and Tolan are two of my closest friends and they live in San Diego. Thats across the country. Chloe lives in Colorado..who knows when i will get out there! It is just so crazy to think about. Sarah lives in Cape May for the summer so I really hope to get to the shore to see her. And Greta actually works in Collegeville for the summer which I could quite possibly working too if I have to resort to working at BS for the summer. (no offense marm).
Well, I do want to write more of a reflection but I am going to go lay out and hang out with my friends for our last day on the ship.

I GET TO SEE MY DAD TOMORROW MORNING!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHH

Thank you to everyone who read my blog. I did enjoy writing it for the most part :).