Christmas

"Shit, did I miss my alarm? was I dreaming that I missed my alarm? Did I even set it last night? Yeah, of course I set it, I remember seeing that it would go off in four hours. But I think I missed it anyway. Maybe I should check, then I could set it right if it was wrong and can see what time it is now." I open my eyes. It's dark, there's no sound except for my father's snoring. I reach around for my phone and see that it's currently 4:13a.m. "Well I didn't sleep through it, and well, it's set for

6:30a.m. I must have been dreaming, I guess I can go back to sleep for a couple hours..." I close my eyes, relax, and my mind goes blank.

4:30a.m. "Fuck, can't get back to sleep"

4:45a.m. "I wonder what the snow is going to be like over there."

5:00a.m. "I suppose I could pass the time with some phone games if sleep isn't going to happen"

5:30a.m. "God I'm bored, what time was he planning on waking up? isn't this his normal time to be up by now?"

6:00a.m. "Fuck it, I'm taking a shower." I get up quietly, go to the bathroom, and as soon as I'm in the shower, I hear my father get up. Once out of the shower, I sit down at the table with my dad and we sip tea in the dark silence of Christmas morning.

6:45a.m. Two shirts, a sweater, a ski jacket, boxers, a pair of shorts, a pair of ripped up pants, a pair off not ripped pants, belt, bandana (spare in the pocket), goggles, two gloves, two over-sized socks, two shoes. I don't know the conditions out there nor have I even been on a board for two years but hopefully this costume of mine will suffice.

7:10a.m. Panattoni in my mouth, we leave the house. It's dark, it's cold, it's snowing. No one except an occasional snow plow is in the streets. We get to the train station as we begin to see the first signs of dawn. After a complicated exchange involving a 'pain ou chocolat', we finally get our tickets and go wait for our train.

7:41a.m. We board the train, the excitement grows, the snow stops but the temperature remains much to low for comfort.

7:51a.m. We arrive in Aigle. It almost feels like it's getting colder. Less than ten minutes later and we're in the next train.

8:24a.m. Leysin: our destination of the day. A small ski resort town that seems to of forgotten to advertise themselves. We walk the empty streets looking for the ski station. Finding it on the other side of the town, the first thing I see is -6ºC on a nearby billboard. I get my rental board, the boots, the card, and I'm set to go up.

9:30a.m. I slide my card through the machine, walk through the gate, walk up the stairs, and pick a gondala to take me up to the first run. No lines of people; I sit alone for the fifteen minute ride to the top. Looking out the window, I see nothing. I am in a cloud with a visibility of a few feet at best. Then, like god put on his defrosters, I could see everywhere. Below me was a cloud, above me was a cloud, but all around me was miles and miles of snow-covered trees, empty ski slopes, powder.

The second layer of clouds doesn't seem to be as bad as the first. When I leave the gondala, I can see maybe around twenty feet. Irrelevant however, the second I'm on my board going down, I can see my destination, the next lift, but inbetween is a depth-less white plane. I bounce up and down, take drops when least expected, and slow down to dreadful crawls for no apperent reason. I could of closed my eyes and still have gotten the same effect. I manage however to make it to the second lift alive (only three hundread yards away). The second lift isn't as plesent as the first. As I climb higher and higher in altitude, the temperature drops and the humidity increases. The vision stays about the same: if it's not white, I can see it, if it is, it looks flat. 2205 meters high, I am at the top of Chaux de Mont. I look around hoping to get some kind of glimpse of a nice view but all I see is white with the ski lift trailing off into the void. There are no trees, there are no shadows, there's only a cliff to my left and one neon orange stake in the ground to show the boundary. In front all I see is VERY bright white gradating into a darker white which is the sky, there is no seeing the intersection.

"Made it to the top... Well, the only way to relearn is to try right?" I cautiously approach the beginning of what I think is the run."Well, it's been snowing all night last night so at least if I fall it should be powder, not to mention, I shouldn't have to worry about ice or choppy tracks since I'm probably one of the first people to go down today. ...Alright..... Okay.... and go." I point the tip of my board in what seems to be the direction downward. Powder, it feels amazing, I cut through it so easily, the snow flies above my head, I'm in heaven, I hit a chunk of crusted ice, my face hits the ground, I'm back on my feet, I don't care. About halfway down the first run I realize that I'm actually on what seems to be a black (hardest difficulty of ski run), I slow down a little from my speed high and start carving the moguls; it's hell on my knees but the serotonin rushing to my brain says "it's okay, just go." I make it to the mid-mountain lift, I want to go all the way to the bottom. I take greens and blues the rest of the way. I cut in and out of forested trails and wide open valleies. It may have taken a good thirty minutes of ski lifts to get where I was but it was well worth it. I have never been on a run that lasted more than 5-10 minutes; these runs never ended. I finally reach the bottom. Mentally lost in the snow, I dismount my board and go through what had just happened in my mind. The smile on my face is un-concealable, I feel like a four-year-old on Christmas morning. "Heh, it is Christmas." I think to myself.


I spend seven hours in a winter wonderland taking the occasional coffee break to warm up. My last run, exhausted from my day, I decide to mimic my first for good spirt. I have a coffee, get in the gondola, ride to the middle of the mountain, board the 300 yard run to the second lift, and decide, "meh, good enough, i´ll just go down from here." In the last mile strench, I feel as if I am about to collapse. I have completly and efficently used every ounce of my energy. I have a quick flashback to the last time I skied; the hot tub that followed. Unfortunatly there was no hotel we were returning to, two trains and our feet back to the apparment. At least I could catch a little sleep hopefully. I drop off the gear at the equipment shop, notice that the temperature has gone down a degree from our arrival and we start our treck back across the city. When we arrive at the train station, a guy calls us over. "Vin chaud?!?" he says with a smile. We stand around a couldren full of wine and fruit heated by a fire as we wait until the next train. #
"Wish this could happen in the states... Only in Switzerland can you find a guy running around yelling at people to give them free hot wine while they wait for their train."

The trip home becomes a bit of a blur from the combination of fatigue, wine, and the peace of mind from being back on a board. We arrive at the apartment, eat dinner, open presents, and I collapse into my dream-world for the following ten hours.

Montreux

As we took the train to Montreux, I continued thinking about the past 72 hours. The sitting in El Paso for 27 hours, the plane to georgia, then Paris, the geneva. I thought about the UN and the complete change of how people acted here. I thought about the snow-covered mountains that now surround me. I thought about what was to come next. I thought about how good sleep sounded.

(not sure why but the resolution looks like crap until you click on it to full size it, SO CLICK ON IT!)

It was already night time when we arrived in Montreux, but having slept half and hour, I was wide awake. The first stop was the apartment where I could drop off my stuff. Almost every block I would recognize something new. I haven't been to Switzerland in over ten years yet I felt that I had already lived my entire life there. I recognized the tree at the park I used to play in, the school that I'd walk by and wonder who those kids were, the escalators in the market, path full of stairs on the way to the lake, and of course the hundreds of animal shrubs lining the lake. After a quick reminder of where things were in the city, we bought some food, some wine, and some cheese, went home, and ate the first real meal I'd had in about a week.
The first two days weren't too eventful; I walked the town relearning all of it's secrets and enjoyed the wonderful flavors of the food, wine and coffee here. On Thursday, we visited the Château de Chillon, a nearby castle on the lake:




Christmas Eve, was spent figuring out Christmas day. We bought food for three days because nothing would be open and went to the midnight mass and a local cathedral (god I missed that smell). Following the ceremony, we walked home as it began to snow and drank a bottle of champagne (from Champagne) and ate Panattoni going to sleep around two in the morning, impatient for the following day to begin.

Progress

I've never been a fan of politics. I see that it is needed but I find it far from perfect. But that is a reality that we must live in. I felt a bit ignorant in my history when I entered the UN in Geneva. I had learned all of my middle and high school history lessons but felt as if it hadn't been enough. This never occurred to me for some reason until I entered this campus of international politics. Sure, I hadn't slept well in a few days not to mention traveling is always tiring but for some reason, for the first time in my life, I felt as if what had and is still happening today, was for the betterment and advancement of the human race. It seemed a little touristy to walk around reading the little history slates around and checking out the museum and gift store but by the end our small tour, as we sat and had coffee in the lounge, I felt reassured that regardless of mankind's flaws, we are generally good people looking towards the future. Leaving the United Nations of Geneva, I already felt a little more at home in Europe. I felt that it was okay to say "good morning" to total strangers and just to make a nice conversation ask them how they were doing that day.

My father showed me a little bit around downtown Geneva and we soon continued onward to Montreux.

Ça Commence

Dec. 20, 6:52 a.m., Paris, France
It’s snowing. I can’t remember the last time I saw it snow, must have been at least a year and a half, two years. It feels good being back in Europe, cold as hell, but good.
Time is a funny thing. When flying through time zones, if timed tight, you can start thinking the sun no longer exists. You get five hour days and twenty five hour nights. It’s seven in the morning local time, shouldn’t it start getting light out at least by now? If the phenomenon of jet-lag were to ever effect me, it would be because of that; living on the moons terms for a day, and maybe the sun’s for a night. I’m not yet at my final destination, but, j’ai déjà commencé à penser en français. Ca me fait du bien de savoir que je n'ai pas tout perdu.

Dec. 21, 12:00p.m., Montreux, Switzerland
I’ve made it to Montreux. After finishing my last entry, I got on the plane to Geneva. Half an hour after I sit down in the plane, the pilot gets on the intercom stating that the Paris airport just closed due to snow and we have a minimum of an hour to wait. Two hours delayed, we finally depart. One hour later, I pick up my suitcase and walk out to the streets of Geneva. After meeting up with my father, he tells me that we’re going to first eat lunch at the UN.

El Paso, flying to, El Paso

Once again I find myself writing about adventuring outside of the states. Has it really just been six months since Brazil? Maybe I should look into some kind of career for all of this.
It's currently 6:00p.m., December 18th. I am in the El Paso Airport; I have been for about fifteen hours. I still have eleven more hours to go before any kind of change in scenery. It's interesting living in an airport. Some aspects are kind of cool; I think it could make some good anthropological research… I find it amusing that people tend to have their family reunions here; you can't wait twenty more minutes to get everyone home? I can imagine the fear and insecurity of sending your boy off to the war but do you really need to welcome them back with twenty 10-to-16-year-old kids in the middle of an airport?
So so far, my journey has been uneventful. It started last night drinking and playing games. Because of the assumed time of departure, we stopped at around eleven and just sat down to watch some semi-boring TV show. Next thing I know, my alarm is going off. it's two in the morning and I'm slightly intoxicated, so i finish packing and wake up my roommate. We get to El Paso around 3:30a.m., say our farewells and I walk in. Uninhabitated by the usual chaos that is an airport, I see that I'm three hours early for the first flight of the day. I set my alarm for 4:30 and uncomfortably doze off to the sounds of pandora
4:30a.m.
open one eye, "still empty", reset alarm
5:30a.m.
open one eye, "what the hell?" open other eye.
The place is packed. Almost every airline company has a line of at least thirty people. I get up, get a drink, smoke a cigarette, and file into place awaiting my turn. When the time comes, I give the lady my passport, she swipes it, only to reveal that I am not on the roaster. I tell her my plans, I give her my info, nothing. Eventually, she finds me. Seems like i forgot to check to check the date change when Expedia sent me those emails. I had the time right, just the day wrong, I was 24 hours early. I proceed straight back to a chair and fall back asleep. At 7:00, I decide to find a much more comfy place to rest; carpeted ground in the back of the airport. By 10:00, the commotion of reuniting families becomes too much to sleep through so I get up and ready myself for the coming day. I spend a good seven hours surfing the web on my phone with the occasional cigarette and Starbucks breaks.

The airport population seems to be dissipating, maybe I can catch a few more hours of sleep. I see a girl next to me already taking over the floor.

Foz do Iguaçu

It was eight in the morning, grey and rainy, and we had no idea where the hell we were or where to go from there. yes, we were in Foz do Iguaçu, but little did we know that that was the equivalent to El Paso with a Juarez on the Argentinian side and on the Paraguayan side. it was a three way international intersection and to think, I just thought it was some quaint small, tourist city… Well, what does one do when they first enter a strange and foreign city wanting to do only tourist activities? TOURISM OFFICE! We actually just asked them for a map of the city and the name of some of the cheapest hostels/hotels in the city. A taxi cab later and we were being welcomed into a small yet nice hostel. We were told that we could each get a bed for R$24 a person, dinner for $10 and a ride to the Iguaçu falls for R$40. sounded good to me so we took it. First things first however, shower time… Half an hour after arriving at the Hostel and saying we wanted two beds however, they told us that someone just canceled and we could have a regular room at a price a little more so we went with that. As we were planning our day (because sufficient sleep is never an option) we met two guys from the Netherlands who also had just arrived. The four of us decided to do the Brazilian side of the waterfalls. So the hostel can us transport there and we were off into what is most likely to be one of the most beautiful places known to man. We paid for our ticket into the park, bought ourselves raincoats (not that it mattered) and got onto the first bus available. We sat on the second story of a double decker bus as we entered the freezing cold and rainy park. After what seemed to be the first part of the Jurassic Park tour, we decided to go it alone by foot for a while. We started along this trail that pretty much went along a cliffside; think forest to our left, hundreds of monstrous waterfalls to our right and wild animals picking at the remains of tourist snacks. When I think of big waterfalls, I think of those movies with Niagara falls in them; extremely tall, lots of water and well, the ability to see them all from one place. This was not the case… When we first saw them, well it seemed surreal they way they were leveled. It seemed as if there were waterfalls stretching for miles all around an island of waterfalls themselves, not to sure how to explain it but it just didn't seem real… As we continued along this trail, we saw different angles of the falls, each showing a new set or a different MC Esher portrayal of them. At the end of the trail, There was a catwalk pretty much into the middle of a giant set of waterfalls. Going out on it was wetter than taking a shower. Surround on all sides by waterfalls, the R$5 trench coat I bought at the entrance of the park started showing it's R$5-ness. I could over bare about 10 minutes out there before deciding to come back out, completely drenched. As the four of us took in all we could of one of these natural modern wonders, I'm sure we all knew that beating this, was not going to ever be an easy task. We took the "Panoramic" elevator to the top for a last angle of the falls and decided to eat lunch. After lunch, we took one final quick look and got back on a bus to head back to the entrance of the park. After getting back to the hostel, the first logical idea was steaming hot shower followed closely by a beer and a smoke. As sleep was running a bit hard to find these days, Susan took a nap while I played around on the internet for a little bit. At around 8p.m. dinner was ready, a nice little, almost family like barbecue. After eating out fill, Susan and I decided to watch Alice in Wonderland and then to no surprise, the party began. I played pool, watched them play soccer on the PS3, drank beer and caipirinhas, and told tales of our adventures around the world. As a first time backpacker staying in a hostel, I couldn't of dreamt of a better way to spend my time, this is truly what a vacation should be for me. As three rolled around, the party started to die, so I went back to the room and watched some South Park until five with Susan.

It's Sunday, the 18th when I wake up around 10a.m. Susan is still sleeping as I let myself our of the room to go get some breakfast. At 11 I wake her up so that we can check out of the hostel. Realizing that all of our cloths are either soaking wet or already dirty, our money is starting to run low and our energy lower, we decide to start on our way back to São João. So, like any journey, we start at the bus station. The people at the hostel gave us a ride there and then we bought our tickets to São Paulo which was leaving about 30min later. So we sit down, drink a coffee, play some cards and then head to the bus when it arrives. This was precisely the moment that i realized that here in Brazil, no matter how well planned out you trip is, or how good your intentions may be, you can always expect the unexpected. They bus driver didn't let me on the bus because I didn't have a visa. Inside I laughed a little at the irony, it would of been too easy and too perfect a trip without getting mugged or loosing luggage or at least being delayed a day in some random city… So here I am, on the border of three South American countries and there telling me I'm an illegal immigrant. Well, on the bright, they didn't deport me on the spot, they just told me that I couldn't get on the bus. After getting our money back for the bus ticket (Susan was nice enough to stay with me) we did a little bit of quick thinking. It was a Sunday afternoon so everything was closed or was closing, including the federal police office. There was no American consulate in the city, so with a little help from a taxi driver, we headed for Paraguay. Right as we were about to cross the bridge and head into Paraguay, we took a right turn and headed to the police station. The idea was to get the police on the border crossing to eater give me a visa or temporary residency to get me at least back to São João. So after an hour of waiting and expelling my situation, they pretty much just wrote a note on a pice of paper telling me to show this to the bus driver and anyone else that asked until i could get to quiz de fora to get the actual visa papers. Because I've gotten used to this whole "always expect to be at least three hours late for everything", I had the bus times written down for the next 12 hours. The next one didn't come for another four hours so we went to the mall. Susan, being the woman that she is, loved it and went on a shopping spree while I drank an espresso. When it was getting to be that time, we headed back to the bus station, bought our tickets and headed to São Paulo (showing my 'super formal' note from the police to the bus driver this time) So we got to Sao paulo around 9am after a good 15 hours of bus, none of which i slept for.we got into Sao Paulo and tried finding when the next bus to Sao Joao was but to no avail. after like half an hour of searching the bus station, I began to notice something strange, none of the busses there were even going to Minas (the state in which Sao Joao is in). So I asked information where I could get the tickets. they told me to go to the other bus station in the city. two metros later, we found ourselves in another huge bus station. At least they had tickets to Sao Joao, we just had to wait seven hours for the next bus. This time however, it was my turn to go on the shopping spree. Across the highway from the bus station, there was a nice 6 story mall and so to kill a little time, we went there. I got a few extra souvenirs, some sandals and some more coffee and before we knew it, back on the bus, the last one of our adventure, back to Sao Joao. seven hours later, we arrived. Called a taxi for Susan and I walked home, getting there at around 330am. I checked my email, and went to bed.

Passos

We arrived about forty-five minutes late, nothing new… As we stood up in the bus to file out of the bus, we saw what seemed to be our welcoming party; Pedro, Pedrinho and a few other people I didn't know. We all got into his car and took off to his place which was only about ten minutes away. It was about one in the morning when we got to his place. Both Susan and myself were very ready for bed seeing how we'd been up since 630 in the morning, partly with a hangover from the night before, and the daily drinking routine of the what I've come to understand as the Brazilian lifestyle. Unfortunately (or fortunately) however, when we arrived, there were probably about thirty people parting at his house. Pedro said that they were commemorating his birthday that night because He wasn't going to be in town the day he actually turned 23. And so, as I've become so accustomed to this, the first thing I did was drop off my backpack and grab a beer. Like most parties with Pedro, the bulk of it consisted of playing songs on the guitar and everyone singing for hours on end. We finally went to bed around 3:30 in the morning as I could barley stay awake any longer.

The following day was easy enough, especially because of the wonderful nine hours of sleep. We woke up, ate some leftovers from the night before and took off. After the usual errands we needed to do like checking times of busses to the next location and pulling out money from the bank, we headed downtown. We walked around a little and went to a nice little cafe. As we walked the streets, we soon noticed that our friend Pedro pretty much knew half the population of this 130,000 habitant city. Making many stops to talk to old friends, Susan decided that she wanted to go off shopping so Pedro and I went to a bar for some beer while Susan shopped there downtown. Later that evening, we went to Pedro's godmother's house for some of the best meat I've had here in Brazil. This, of course, was shortly proceeded by going out to the bars. Getting home around four a.m., we went to bed with plans to wake up early.

I awoke to a bang on the door and the word: "WAKE!" in that familiar Brazilian accent around 1 in the afternoon. Coming out of the room I noticed a big spread of food on the table so I quickly woke Susan up to come eat. We ate(yet another wonderful meal in Passos), we had our coffee, and we decided what our plans were going to be for the day. Pitching R$10 each for gas money, we set off on a kind of mini-road trip within our road trip. 45 minuets from the city is a giant lake and around this lake there are many waterfalls. So we spent a few hours at one; putting out feet in the crystal clear water, rock climbing, skipping stones, and enjoying the general serenity of the place. following our day in the sun and water, we checked the dam. Damn, pretty massive I thought, I think it was probably the first dam I'd ever seen actually. We went to both sides, taking lots of pictures along the way and after the sun had set, we headed back to town. The nights' festivities included playing pool at a kind of trashy yet entertaining place where I learned how to play pool the way Brazilians do it. We went to bed relatively early (3:00a.m.) because we needed to wake up super early the following day. At 6:30a.m., I was already up, clothed, and drinking coffee. We had a kind of last breakfast with Pedro, his brother, and his dad while we packed up our stuff to go to the next place. At 7, we were at the bus station shaking hands and going our separate ways. Pedro was going back to São João for "Inverno Cultural" and Susan and I were heading to Foz do Iguaçu. At 7:10, the bus was off and we were on our way for our little than over 24 hour bus ride there.

The first stop was in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, arriving there around noon. We then waited in the bus station for about three hours for the bus to Iguaçu, sipping espresso and playing cards patiently. Then at three in the afternoon, we got on the bus for the longest bus trip I'd ever taken. kilometer after kilometer, mile after mile, hour after hour, we pressed on. Passing through who knows how many cities, taking breaks maybe once every four hours to stretch our feet and maybe have a snack. it was only after the sun had set and risen again that we had made it to our final destination.

Arcos

So the way I'm going to be posting these blogs is one post per city because the term day or night no longer has any meaning...

It's 7:10p.m. when the bus to Arcos arrives. We get on the bus armed with a backpack, a suitcase and enough cash to get us anywhere in a 1000 km radius in Brazil by bus. After the 5 hour bus ride, we finally arrive and are greeted by Jose in his small 30k people city. As we walk down what seemed to be there main street, he tells us that we won't be able to stay at his place for lack of furnishings and suggests a hotel for us to stay in. As we get settled in, we find that we need a bottle opener so Jose goes to his place (15min away) while Susan and I walk in the opposite direction(15min away) to buy another bottle of wine, some chips, and a bottle of water. It's around 1:30a.m. When we all finally get back to the hotel with all of our party supplies. We drink good (and bad) wine as we talk about the perks and downsides of being an American in Brazil. We talk about funny experiences, shitty times, plans for the future and how peach wine has too much sugar in it and that gas stations need better wine selections. At around 330 in the morning, Jose takes off to his place for the night seeing how we were all going to wake up quite early the following day.

The alarm sounded at around 745 in the morning, not fun when you stayed up until 3 drinking wine the previous night. I quickly smoke a cigarette as fast as possible so that the nicotine will at least sustain my consciousness until I can get my hands on some coffee or some other kind of natural or artificial stimulant. At about 830 in the morning, Jose joins us for breakfast telling us how his first class of the day was. We eat a feast of breads, cheeses, juices, coffees, hams, and I almost ate an entire papaya. The first item on the schedule was to figure out how we were going to get to the next city. So we head to the bus station and get an idea of when the busses were and there cost. We then go to CCAA, the place where Jose teaches English. We meet the staff and hold a conversation class with one of the students. Susan and I leave a little early because we need to check out of our hotel,(regardless of weather or not we stayed another night didn't matter, we were going to at the very least change hotels) on the way, we see Nayara, one of our friends from São João. We "command" her to join us to the hotel for check out. We pack our bags, pay the bill and head back uptown. We meet up with Jose and the four of us go out for lunch. After lunch, we go to the gas station to start drinking (yes, in the middle of the day) We go through something like 10 beers or something and then head back to the bus station to get everything down for sure. We end up buying our ticket for that night to a city called Formiga and then from Formiga, we would go to Passos, the city where my friend Pedro lives. After getting everything set and paid for, Nayara leaves to go back home and Jose, Susan and I start heading in the direction of Jose's place. Along the way, we buy another two bottles of wine, some bread, some cheese, and I stop at a LAN house(almost an internet cafe) to send pedro an email that we would most likely be there around midnight or one in the morning that night. We get to Jose's place, pop open a bottle and start munchin, reading quotes from On The Road. How fitting I thought to myself… We then head back to the bus station and wait to catch our bus. So the way that this bus trip was going to work was a bit awkward… We were to take the first bus and get off about an hour later at this gas station outside of the city of Formiga and wait for about 2 hours for the next bus to come. When it came, we were supposed to flag it down or else it wouldn't stop and then it would take us directly to Passos. Well, unfortunately, as any human being would be, we were a bit tired from having drank all afternoon and only getting a few hours of sleep the night before and so we fell asleep on the bus. Even though I told the bus driver twice that we needed to get off at that stop, apparently we missed it and ended up the middle of Formiga at 9 at night. One of the things I will defiantly miss about Brazil is how friendly and helping the people are here. As I wake up in the bus and ask where we were and if we had gone too far, two other people realized my situation, after I got done talking to the bus driver, they told me that all I would need to do is to wait for one of the city buses named for that place and it would take me there before my second bus. One of them decided that she would wait with us to make sure that we get the right one. As we waited, she told me that she was a law major and she had been visiting a Japanese friend of here's in Arcos. She also talked about the best places in the south of Brazil were to go if we had the time to check them out. So we got on the bus, got to this extremely remote gas station, waited for another hour, flagged down the bus and we were off to Passos.

Preparation

It's been some time since I last wrote… There's many things that have happened in the past few months… I've finished school, two new americans have come to São João, and I've decided to tour Brazil one last time before I go back to the states. I find it interesting that overtime that I preemptively write for my blog, I'm sitting in a bus between some town in one place and an exotic city in another; today, I'm on my way to Iguaçu. I guess maybe, like the rest of my blogs, I'll start at the beginning, I'll start from São joão.

it's a Friday night tonight. Most Friday nights are full of parties and going to the bar or drinking in the streets, especially these days as the two new Americans (Kayla and David) have come to stay in the same house as me. This Friday night however is a little different, I decide to try to keep it quite for the next 432 hours of my life will be almost excessively intense (Not to mention I have to stay up until 4:30 a.m. to pick up yet another American(Jose) format he bus station). David, Diego, and I go out for a few drinks at the bar but after a few hours they realize that drinking and staying up just wasn't going to happen for them: they crash out, I watch the first half of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. When I arrive at the bus station (4:45 a.m. July 17) I find it, well I guess after being here a year, not surprisingly weird anymore. The crazy woman outside talking to herself and walking in circles, the taxi guys kind of snickering to themselves about who knows what. You see some families half asleep eater waiting for there bus to go home or waiting for loved ones to return; I take a seat and begin to ponder how long Jose will be late this morning or if he had already come and just walked to my place. After a good 45 minutes of sitting, standing, walking around, smoking, breathing, and waiting, he finally arrives. With a goofy grin on his face, we set off back to my place by foot. We catch up, talking politics and social life. At around 6ish, when the sun is starting to rise, we go to bed to await the following day.

I wake up to Jose introducing himself to David in the room next to mine. Like usual, the first thing that they want to do is go out to eat and so we take off to Pantanal, one of my personal favorite restaurants in the city. Afterwards, they decide to watch the soccer game, I go see Susan. We all meet back up around 6 to commence the festivities of the night. First things first, clean the kitchen, followed closely by the purchase of 24 600ml beers, Set up table, align cups, pop bottles, and our beer pong night had commenced! For the second time playing beer pong in Brazil, i thought I did decently, Jose and I won the first round, David and Kayla won the second. Pong was then proceeded by some kings, and then by some asshole. As I'm sure you can imagine, we were flying through the beer. we got to one bottle left when David decided to go to bed, so the rest of us (now including Diego) went out to a bar. Had a shot of cachaça, a beer and a burger and called it a night.

Sunday
Woke up, went out to Açai with an english teacher that I've been teaching, and then went to the bar to meet with Jose and Kayla. It was the World cup final and Jose was also leaving today right after the game.
This is where I'm going to stop and take a little brake to explain some things.
today is the 11th of July, Susan and I leave the 27th of July back to the states. that gives us a little over three weeks to do everything that we possibly can in Brazil. So far what had been planed was we would leave a few days early to Rio with Susan's host family and then they would take us to the airport from there. Also, it turned out that Jose was going to be in Rio that preceding week also so if possible, we and/or I would go a little early to stay with him and the hang out in the city some more. So that took care of the last week, we had two more weeks to plan for. For the past two or three months, I'd been scoping out cities, beaches, attractions, contacts with whom I could stay with or a kind of list of events that I'd like to participate in before I go. a kind of road trip if you will. Well it was a Sunday and Jose was leaving back to his home town in Arcos and I was adventure thirsty so I figured, fuck it, this end of year escapade could start today.
So, back to where I was before, I meet up with Kayla and Jose at about 330 when the game is starting, they tell me David is on his way and asked where Susan was. I tell them I'll go find her. I grab the first mototaxi I find and book over to the other side of town. I tell Susan that We should take advantage of Jose leaving tonight and go with him to his town for the night, after a little encouragement, she agrees. I leave her to pack and finish the things she was doing to go back to the game. I get to the bar at the end of the first half. I order a beer and a soup which don't get served to me until overtime. I end up leaving a little early because I haven't packed yet and we're leaving in about an hour. I get home and as time ticks away, Susan and I come to realize that a few hours of preparation for a 2 week long trip just isn't enough so we decide to go exactly 24 hours later. the "American click" comes back format the bar, Jose grabs his stuff and says goodbye to everyone and I take him to the bus station. I tell him I'll see him the following day the be prepared to party hardy. I head back to the house, make some popcorn, watch some movies and call it a night.

Monday

The first thing that I feel like doing is some 3D so pretty much immediately after waking up, I head to a nearby cafe, set up my computer, order the usual(medium expresso & orange juice) and work on creating wind and gravity dynamics for a project that I'd been working on for the past few weeks. At around 4 in the PM, I head home to start packing and at about 530ish, I actually start packing. Talking to Susan over Skype the entire time, we coordinate whose bringing what and what we need to be able to wake up in a different city everyday for the next two weeks. at 6, I leave the house, buy a bottle of wine and head to the bus station. I buy the tickets, meet with Susan, we grab some food, hop on to the bus, and the adventure commences.

The days are long...

It's currently, 5:00p.m., May 13th. The internet is being a real piece of crap so here I am writing a blog for the first time in months… I've been writing a paper for the last three hours and had six hours of class before that. The paper I'm writing is about this disagreement between Apple and Adobe; how the ipod, iphone, and ipad are unable to run Flash. This I'm doing for my international journalism class. As for my first three classes of today, I had game design, english, and portuguese. I spent the majority of my game design class modeling one of the cities that I'm going to use in my next Flash game(The first game I'll post at the end). This coming game is going to be a first person shooter based on the Philippine-American War. Then I was off to the english class where I help the teacher with her doubts about the english language and pronunciations. But today was a little different, she needed help in digitizing and organizing all of her CD's and tapes. Then back to the learning side, I had my portuguese as a second language class where we learned more about "Café com leite" politics and it's influence in Brazil in the early 1900's… It's strange to think that today is actually one of my easier days because i get a nice long break between 230 to 9pm to get all of my homework done!

Other than retarded amounts of school work, not to much else is happening in my world. I did go to a bar the other night that made for an interesting adventure… I'd describe the night but my 'english' vocabulary isn't THAT big. The place was, for lack of better words, insane. All I know is when I woke up the following morning, I was completely amnesiac; I didn't know where I was, who I was, or what language I spoke. The recipient of my first conversation that morning could confirm that I'm sure. Must of been that damn absinthe...


Anyway, here's the link for the game I just finished for Mother's day:
http://sk8peace.deviantart.com/art/Escape-164171121
It's an Escape game where you try to get out of the room. Pretty much you click on things, pick things up, play mini-games, and solve the puzzle to do so. Good luck and have fun, let me know what you think, this being my first game I've ever created in Flash.

First Weeks of School

First weeks of Classes

Been a while since I last wrote, a lot has happened and I've been busy…
Firstly, all of my room mates moved back in including three new guys; Pedro, Gustavo, and Jean Paulo ("vegano"). So already the house is a nonstop party. The first week of them all arriving here we pretty much drank every night telling each other tales of the holidays.



Then there's school, this is now the third week back, and the first chance I'm able to sit down a write something. Here's the schedule:

Monday:
Teorieas de Radio Journalismo 7:00p.m. - 8:30p.m.

Tuesday:
Communicação Politica: 5:00p.m. - 6:30p.m.
Teorias de Radio Journalismo 7:00p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Journalsimo Internacional: 9:00 p.m. - 10:30 p.m.

Wednesday:
Communicação Politica: 5:00p.m. - 6:30p.m.
Linguagem Potographica: 7:00p.m. - 8:30p.m.
Officinas de Journal-Laboratorio: 9:00p.m. - 10:30 p.m.

Thursday:
Journalsimo Internacional: 9:00 p.m. - 10:30 p.m.

Friday:
Discoursivas Practicas 7:00p.m. - 8:30p.m.
Officinas de Journal-Laboratorio: 9:00p.m. - 10:30 p.m.

(This comes out to be about 18 NMSU credit hours)

I also picked up some kind of game design workshop/class as of yesterday so that will be Tuesdays and Fridays from 8-10a.m. Yuck, early, but it should be good, we'll be using C++, Blender, and Flash from what I understand…

So if that's not enough, there's more! I've been contracted by the university to translate their website. So I've got probably around 200-400 pages to translate over the next couple months. And finally, I've also been hired to teach english. A woman who has her own english school here in São João, sought me out and asked me if I could teach her a private class, have some of her students for a conversation class, and maybe do more. So far I'm teaching wednesdays from 10:00a.m. to 1:00p.m. and Fridays from 3:00p.m. to 5:00p.m. So that's all of the "scheduled" things for this coming semester. I do plan to make a few trips around to continue sight seeing Brazil (I'm sure I'll need the vacations). One maybe for Easter and another right before I come back to the states.

Carnaval

Took a bit but I wanted to make sure the video was good to go... So I guess I'll start off by explaining what Carnaval is. Carnaval is the South American celebration for Mardi Gras. But, this is the land down south, you don't just have one crazy night, you get an entire week, and in my city specifically, you get two weeks. Here's how it happened to me: Every since I'd arrived in Brazil, people aways talked about Carnaval and how the entire country completely shuts down for one week to party. Being the naive American that I was, I figured you'd go to the club three or four times that week and there was like a concert or something on Fat Tuesday. Heh, to put it simply, I've never been wronger in my life! So it's about two and a half weeks before Carnaval when it seems like the general ambience of the city was just growing in anticipation. You could smell it in the air, see it people's faces, hear premature fireworks from the ones who couldn't wait any longer. I remember my first night seeing Carnaval. I was sitting at home, working on the computer, it was around probably 11-12 at night and I decided that I wanted some espresso to keep me awake because I was working on some project. So I went to the only place in the city that might have coffee. I leave my house, the city is empty, it's very quite. As I approach the cafe however, I could hear the sound of music and people yelling growing. Normally, I wouldn't think twice about this, in São João on the weekends, it's always like that, it's the downtown of the city. But tonight, something was different. It wasn't until I had my coffee in hand and was watching this parade of people with different instruments pacing by that: "Wait a second, today's Tuesday" Carnaval has started! Two days later, turns out I could no longer procrastinate the festivities, Carnaval was now knocking on my front door. There were maybe 2000 people dancing, drinking, laughing, yelling, up and down my street. So a few friends of mine and I drank on our balcony for a few hours enjoying the music and commotion that the street down below was bringing. Every once in a while, we would go down into the sea of people to grab something eat or the talk to people. I thought to myself that night, doesn't this "week of Carnaval" start in two days? And so that's how it went, everyday a different place, a different party. Halfway through the week, a friend of mine from the States came to stay with me to partake in the festivities. To be honest, he was a real pain in the ass! He would wake up maybe around 10 in the morning with a beer in hand to go start parting! There were, what's called a "Block party", What these were were just giant gathering of thousands of people going crazy in different places around town. So party from 11-3 at one, take a quick one hour break for food and sleep and then 4-9, next party, each one getting progressively routyer than the one before it. then at around 11 in the middle of downtown, start the "escolas de Samba" which I now know first hand is just a hell of a lot of people dressing up as extravagantly as possible, dancing samba, in a parade-esc form down main street. If you ever got board of any of these parties or escolas or block parties, there was also a 24 hour party on the other side of the downtown area, which of course you'd always end up at in between all the other parties. Hmm, I think my definition of party has changed since I lived here, let me define for you what a party here is. It is not 50 people in a house, it is not 100 people in a club, and it is not 2000 people at a concert, no, it is 2000-8000 people dancing and drinking wherever they feel like it. There are stands selling B-B-Qed meat, beer, caipirinha, shots straight from the bottle, hamburgers, lights that flash, whatever you can dream of having at a party! And so yes, This was the life style for one-one and a half weeks. Now as I am very human like most of us, this can be very tasking on the body. That is why I decided to create a "Post-Carnaval recovery week". Hence the reason I'm not writing this sooner. After a diet of eggs, bread, beer, and hard alcohol on 5 to 6 hour maximum amount of sleep for a week, I needed to take it easy; Susan and I watched the Harry Potter series, two movies a day, three days in a row. I slept about 10-12 hours a day and now I am fine! Alright, well, enough boring stuff, onto the video!!!!!!





This was shot by Jose (American friend), Susan and I.
Music: Desabafo by Marcelo D2
Cast: THE ENTIRE CITY!!! (...and lots of people from other parts of the state.)

Mostra Tiradentes

So last week in Tiradents, there was a little film festival. Lots of activities, lots of films, and lots of people actually. Although I didn't watch every single movie or go to any of the workshops or conferences, I thought it would be nice to share what I thought about some of the films I saw.

Wednesday, 27

DOIS MUNDOS
DIRECTOR(S): THEREZA JESSOUROUN
Documentary of people who were once deaf but had some kind of medical procedure to be able to hear again and what it's like adapting to sound and learning how to speak. I thought that the idea was kind of cool but it was pretty slow-paced and it lost my attention after the first interview.

C.E.A.S.A
DIRECTOR(S): ARNALDO BELOTTO
It was labeled as a documentary of this food warehouse. Umm, well, it was just random, trying-to-be creative shots of people walking around a warehouse. No point, no plot, no information, no speech, ambient audio for some but not all. Not impressed, maybe I just didn't get it?

OS INOCENTES
DIRECTOR(S): DAVI KOLB
Just like the film before, just set at a beach. This time I think they had a plot or a story but it wasn't very well conveyed. At least the water was pretty.

AVACA
DIRECTOR(S): GUSTAVO ROSA DE MOURA
Labeled "experimental" and that is exactly what it was. It was a film shown in backward time about the slaughter of a cow. It starts with 2 men walking(backwards) into a room and hanging up two big chucks of meat. It then proceeds to show the entire process of cutting away the skin, muscle, organs, bones, everything not wanted, all backwards, until you see a full, intact, but dead, cow laying on the floor. Although shot with different angles at different times, it all takes place in one room with the same two men. I personally thought it was vulgar and kind of disgusting, but also artful and interesting. They get a thumbs up from me!

REVERSO
DIRECTOR(S): FRANCISCO COLOMBO
This one was impressive. A short fiction all shot on one take. It's the story of one man, getting mugged, and then being forced to kill another man. For the first time in Brazil, I saw good acting and good cinematography. Although the story was a bit strange and awkward, the actors played it well and for one take, they handled it beautifully.

O PLANO DO CACHORRO
DIRECTOR(S): ARTHUR LINS AND ELY MARQUES
This film? Not so good, theres a guy dead in the street and another guy watching him. after a series of events pertaining to the one alive trying to do funny things to the one dead, turns out the dead one isn't dead, so he starts chasing him. you get a 5 min. chase scene ending in a dirt field where they beat each other up and then walk off there separate ways...

Friday, 29

SKATE OR DIE
DIRECTOR(S): VICTOR RIBEIRO
guy skates around, sees an x-girlfriend, then skates off into the sunset kind of story. although the story wasn't to great, I thought that the editing team did a good job, good direction.

ENQUANTO ISSO
DIRECTOR(S): VITOR LEITE
A story of a partially deaf guy and a girl hooking up during school during 9-11. The story was well played and the setting was surreal due to my memory of those events. It was a very, kids your dismissed, kind of idea but because they wanted to know, they all gathered to watch the news. Very different from what happened to me... I enjoyed it but it wasn't the best film...

MAIS UMA NOITE
DIRECTOR(S): LUÍS EDUARDO AMARAL E PEDRO MORELLI
Two people meet in a club. The guy is egged to try to get her to kiss her by his friends while she is looking for something more romantic. Cliche idea in an cliche place. Everything completely predictable... Thumbs down.

A DISTRAÇÃO DE IVAN
DIRECTOR(S): CAVI BORGES E GUSTAVO MELO
A cute little story about a small child. At first, a soccer ball goes over the wall at his house and his mom pops it, yelling at the guys playing. Later, he's playing with his friends and the guy whose soccer ball was popped, destroys his ball starting a yelling fight between the kids and this one guy. After, the child leaves and goes on a bike ride to think about the passing events. Nice story, enjoyable.

PASTOREIO
DIRECTOR(S): ALEXANDRE R. GARCIA
This film totally hit me by surprise. It's a documentary of an urban shepherd. It's just shots of him and his sheep traversing across a town. The police stop traffic so he can lead them across the street, he hangs out with the sheep in a park with people playing sports, takes a lunch break, and he's back at it. I know when I think of shepherds, you think out in the countryside, but no, not this guy, downtown with a flock of sheep is his pasture.

FOME DE BOLA
DIRECTOR(S): ISAAC CHUEKE
Being completely biased due to an overdose of soccer here in Brazil, I thought this was quite a boring and uneventful film. A documentary about some game that some team is in. apparently this team was on a loosing streak and well, they lost again. Pointless if you asked me, at least it was well made though. Good shots and decent editing...

HOMEM DOIM
DIRECTOR(S): FAUSTO JUNIOR
Heh heh, a short animation of peanuts in the form of people dancing around. Pretty stupid but fun.

PESCARIA DE MERDA
DIRECTOR(S): COLETIVO SANTA MADEIRA
A documentary of some people who fish out lots of garbage out a polluted river. They clean it up and then put it on display in there shop with a sign saying "Lost & Found". Good concept, nice.

ALGUÉM TEM QUE HONRAR ESSA DERROTA!
DIRECTOR(S): LEONARDO ESTEVES
Apparently this film was shot at random during a day of Carnival (Mardi Gras) script-less, they try to create a story out of close to random shots. They almost succeeded, it wasn't too bad.

Saturday, 30

VIDA VERTIGINOSA
DIRECTOR(S): LUIZ CARLOS LACERDA
An actress tells her counterparts stories that have occurred to her in the past. Bad cinematography, good editing, invisible direction, good acting, bad story. I actually really didn't like the film...

OURO BRANCO
DIRECTOR(S): ELZA CATALDO
I'd tell you about this film but I almost fell asleep during it. Probably one of the most boring films I've seen. Good cinematography and compositing though. Live actors half the time put onto animated backgrounds, mostly on different layers so at least that was nice... Other wise, thumbs down.


ELVIS E MADONA
DIRECTOR(S): MARCELO LAFFITTE
Best film of the festival! The story of a transvestite(male) and a lesbian woman who fall in love. Extremely funny film, the girl gets pregnant and decides to bring her 'boyfriend' to meet her parents so he has to act and look like a guy for what seems to be the first time in his life. A very strange, switching of girlfriend/boyfriend, roles. Wonderful acting, good cinematography, editing, direction and the script was amazing. Hilarious, two thumbs and a big tow up!


Over all, the film festival was pretty good, lots of good films aside from the horrible ones. They were very hit or miss here. A pleasant experience.

Back to Brazil (week 3)

Wednesday, December 30, 2009
We arrived in Rio late, around 11 at night. We got a cab and told him to go to our unknown hotel in our unknown location. He looked at the address and told us he knew about where it was so we took off. After a nice hour long cab drive through the industrial side of rio, around the bay, downtown rio, and finally up a steep, curvy path up to the top of a hill, we arrived to our "hotel". There were no signs, nothing looking hotel-like, just looked like somebody's house. We rang the doorbell of the house that was supposed to be our hotel. A few minutes later, a man appeared saying: "You must be Jean!" So we went in… We learned that this was the right spot; a very nice, tucked-away, bed & breakfast. We had a drink with the owner and he showed us to our 'house?' It was across the street and we had a full kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, the works… We later learned that this place wasn't a regular place to be rented out, it's just the people that lived there were away and wanted to make some extra money. So after unpacking and checking out the beautiful view, we went to bed.

Thursday, New Years Eve
The first order of business today was getting Susan at the bus station. two busses and a few hours of waiting later, we found each other. We went straight back so that she could drop off her stuff. At around 5ish, we went across the street to the main hotel to have champagne with the other tenants and just hang out talking about what our plans were for the night. Two hours later, we left on our adventure to Copacabana; one of the most crowed places in the world for new years. Step one was to get food. Well the only thing we found was this little asian restaurant. We were the only people there. Then we proceeded to the nearest subway to go to Copa. Packed crowded and uncomfortable, we got there only to find that we needed to walk about 10 blocks to get to the beach. Even that far away though, it was super crowded. After shuffling through ridiculous amounts of people we got there. I heard later on that there were two million people just on the beach that night. I think they understated. We walked around for a while until we finally found a nice spot the watch the fireworks. Little did we know we were pretty much dead center for the show. It was a wonderful show; imagine a fire work show, thats what came out of one boat in Rio, and there were I think around five of them. Now imagine the biggest sporting event you've gone to, what we heard was like a goal or a touchdown in the main event, but for 3 miles wide.

(A few little snippets of what the fireworks were like...)







After the show, we didn't really stick around so we just headed back to the hotel to drink with whoever else had come back from there escapades. We were the first ones home to everyone else's surprise who showed up later saying they'd lost a shoe or the subway line was horrible. Not for us, we kind of cut the entire line, weaved through people, and that was that. After having a few drinks, we went to bed.

Friday
Having gone to bed pretty late the privies night, we also woke up late. Didn't really do anything during the day except go to the pool and hang out in there garden/jungle. Later that night though, the hotel owners invited us to go to a party with them. What a strange concept… So there's this guy who owns a chain of jazz clubs in Rio, what makes him famous and his clubs successful is there location. Honestly, the drinks were mediocre and the food could barley pass as edible. But the view? The way to get there? Just the general idea? Impressed… So we left the hotel in two sets of cabs and met at the bottom of this other mountain in Rio. We then took an unmarked white bus up this slope of Rio ghetto also know as a fovea. Aside from the sketchy-ness of the place, it was actually quite interesting. Then when we got out of the bus, we had to walk the last few blocks because the alleys were to small for any kind of car. Although the insides of the houses looked decent, the outsides were dirty, falling apart, and crowded. We get to the place to find out it's called "The Maze". At first I thought they just called it that because it was like a maze to get here but then I learned that this place, the owners house, is itself a maze to some extent. It was a very "alice in wonderland" kind of place with disproportionate rooms, dead-ends, and secret corders. We stayed for a while but then took off cause it was actually kind of boring. We left with this other couple and decided that we should go get some food before going home. So we ate as much as we could and went to the hotel.

Saturday
Today was check out Rio day. We planed to go around and check out downtown, the beaches, and the malls. So we started by taking a tram down our mountain to the center of the city. We then walked around a deserted downtown seeing how it was the week end. Ate lunch and headed for the beach. We walked along the one of the beaches and then a boardwalk around Flamenco. Then one of those things that you never expect, never prepare you happened to us. Strangely enough, the beginning happened to me as if through a slideshow. Slide one: I am smiling, enjoying the ridiculous heat but I am looking at my mother and behind her, there is a six inch blade behind her. "hmmm, there's something wrong with this picture." Slide two: my thoughts are: "I will teach you how to defend against knives but when it comes down to it, your life is never worth a camera or a few bucks, give them what they want and leave." (Jay Elson, my jujitsu teacher when I was around 15 years old) My vision is that off this guy with knife in his left hand down and his right hand holding on to my mom's purse, my mom at the other end holding on to the other end of her already cut strap testing her courage against a blade. Slide three: my thoughts are now calm and collected, I understand the situation, I know only to just be aware and go with whatever this guy wants. My sight reveals Him walking towards Susan and her just holding out her purse for him. Slide four: He's crossing the street and a slow sprint, Susan to my left and my mother in front yelling. All I think is that could of gone worse, good, we're alive and well. But that's not what was on my mom's mind. She wanted her stuff back, and she wanted it bad. As she was starting to go after him I realized that I had two choices, I could either try to convince my mom not to go even though she was quite determined or I could go after the guy myself. I immediately knew that if they went without me going first, it could turn to disaster real quick. So I sprinted after the guy. I crossed three busy streets trying to gain as much distance on the guy and loose Susan and my mom as much as possible. Maybe I read to many books on war strategy but my plan was not to confront him face to face but to take him on his flank, use surprise, as he did, to my advantage to at least disarm the guy. I wasn't angry with him, I just wanted to get the stuff back so my mom would quit bitchin. So after a few failed flanking maneuvers and a good ten minutes of dead running after the guy. He now understood that if he wanted to get away, he would have to something drastic to loose us. he crossed back over the streets and when I caught up to him on the other side, he was in the water. A few minutes later, mom and Susan caught up. We watched him swim, along with a steadily growing group of locals. Everyone shouting at him different things in different languages. After the police were called, all we could do is watch while he was swimming further and further away. We decided that I would stay and wait for the police and keep an eye on him while my mom and susan went back to see if they could retrieve anything he may have dropped or thrown away. I watched the guy slowly swim to a boat, take a raft from it and start rafting to the other side of the shore. The police arrived and well, I wasn't to reassured by there presence. The place where he was heading looked about a mile away and he was getting closer. When he was about five minutes out, the cops speed around to try to get there before he did, I looked around, and knew what I had to do. The police were going to be to slow, and the people over there didn't know what was going on so I told one of the guys next to me: "hey, I'm running there, tell my mom." And then I ran. Assuming it was a mile, my high school gym teacher would of been proud running it in under six minutes. I was the first there arriving as he was coming to shore. He saw me and started going behind the boat, 3.4 seconds later, two police officers arrive running. One shoots a round into the ground as the other is yelling: "Get the fuck over here!" He knew it was over, and so he slowly waded through the water over to us. One officer grabbed his right arm while the other officer smacked him in the head with the butt of his gun taking him down to the ground. They handcuffed him while another local arrived screaming with rage about how he was such a disgrace to Rio and Brazil and what not. Once he was handcuffed, the local smacked him again in the head knocking him out for a few seconds and you could see a small smile on the police officers faces. We brought him to the neighborhood police station only to find out that we needed to go to the tourist police station. After arriving there we filled out paperwork for a good five hours but at least the cops offered us a ride home. Lights and sirens blaring, they took us home. Back at the hotel, we then proceeded to drink a lot of booze and try to make the best of what had happened. We were all safe and got all of our stuff back, wet and mostly ruined but we were safe. Guess we did see Rio at it's best; one bad apple for every fifty good and helpful ones.

Sunday
Unfortunately, today we were leaving after not to much sightseeing in Rio but at least it was to go to a super nice place. We spent a good four hours in the bus station because we didn't know when the next bus to Búzios. It was a nice trip there and on arriving in a confusing location, walked to our hotel. We unpacked our stuff and walked out to the marina to find a place to eat. We ate pizza and drank Sangria watching a cruise ship come close by to check us out and leave. Went back and went to bed.

Monday
I woke up at 5 in the morning to video tape the sunrise like I did in Arraial but when I got outside, it was cloudy and misty.





So I decided to walk around a bit since I was awake. On my journey around the marina, I ran into some leftovers from the night before. Two guys drunk and high, still drinking and smoking, trying to sell me some weed. I did however see some cool sights regardless of clouds. When I went back, I found Susan and we went and ate breakfast. When we came back up, we woke my mom up to start the day. Because we didn't have any time, Susan and I went swimming while mom went around to check out the neighborhood. After a while, we went back to the room and packed our stuff. After a long 2 hour confrontation between my mom and the manager debating prices, she finally told Susan and I that we were going to wait for a rental car and just drive back to São João. We did have like 3 hours to wait though so we decided to at least go see one of the beaches. They were all pretty nice but kind of crowded. After going back to the hotel, we took a cab to the rental car place and drove all the way back to São João. After dropping Susan off at her place, my mother and I drove back to mine only to be welcomed by one of the most obnoxious and loud sounds I've ever heard. It was late, maybe around 1 in the mooring but god damn, that alarm for my house is loud. Hell, I didn't even know that the alarm system worked. After being scared shitless and Angela turning it off, we finally got all of our stuff in.

Tuesday
We started off the day by buying our bus tickets to Belo the following day. Then we dropped off the car and walked to Susan's house. We hung out there for a little bit and then left back to my place because my mom had packing to do. That night we went out to a cafe and had dinner and went to bed relatively early that night.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Woke up early, got a cab to the bus station, got on the bus to Belo Horizonte. got to the bus station, got on another bus to the airport, said our fair-wells, and I hoped on a bus back to the bus station forty five minutes later. Got to the bus station, got another bus to São João, and walked home. She left Brazil around 10 that night and returned to the States well.

Nosotros en la Argentina (semana 2)

Wednesday December 23, 2009
We arrived in Buenos Aires a little after sunset. We were supposed to be met by someone so we kind of hung around until we were. He drove us from the airport to our cousins house, Katie. Interesting how we communicated, we spoke in French. We came to Argentina to speak in French? I don't know, but because it'd been about four years since I'd spoken, I most defiantly was a little rusty. We just spent the night catching up with each other, eating good cooking and drinking good wine.

Thursday
So, we didn't have to much to do today, so my mother and I decided to go check out downtown. We got on a train and headed that way. We walked around a bit until we found the main touristy road; Avineda Florida. It was about a two mile stretch of a pedestrian road filled with malls. You go in one place and then you realize that you just walked into the biggest mall you've ever been in, then you go across the street and same thing. Go down a block, different malls with the same expanse of things to buy. So of course, the first order of business was starbucks which wasn't actually to hard, it was in one of the first mall we went to. Then we proceeded to buy our cloths for that night's festivities and the cousins'. We walked pretty much the whole stretch, sat down and ate and then walked back without destroying out check books too badly. We took the train back to Katie's house and I took a nap, being tired from all the walking(I'm not used to shopping).



Later that night, we headed over to my other cousins', Veronicas', house. Beautiful place, which I later learned she did the architecture for. So this being Christmas eve in South America, apparently the thing to do is have a giant outdoor party; lots of food, lots of drinks, lots of games, and of course, lots of fireworks? I spent most of the night playing fooseball with my little cousins and there friends. At midnight, we launched off the fireworks, huh, it was better than the forth of July in Los Alamos. It's nice being in a place where your allowed to do what you want when you want instead of "No, fireworks are illegal. No, drinking is illegal. No, Parties are illegal. And you must be quiet for heavens sake!" It sounded like the entire city of Buenos Aires was partying that night.







Friday
I was one of the first to wake up that day, it was me and the second youngest one. We spent the morning trying to find a common interest in things to do. He liked soccer games, I like shooting games… Once every one was up and about, we opened presents. I got a nice wallet, belt, shirt, and a CD. We then proceeded to eat a huge "left-over from the night before" lunch at around 3 in the afternoon. Afterwards, we alkyd around the neighborhood. It felt super strange to be skating in the 80 degree heat on christmas, normally it's snowboarding in the back yard in the cold. It was a very relaxing day and at the end of it, my mom and I went back to Katie's house.

Saturday
Today we woke up, packed our things, and headed to the airport. We were off to Neuquén in Patagonia. When we landed, we walked out of the airplane to there one baggage claim. we then met Anna outside and she drove us to her sisters place to drop off all our stuff. Later that night, we met with the parents and went out to a pretty nice restaurant where I pretty much ate an entire goat with a chocolate fondue for dessert. Afterwards, Anna, her friend, my mom, and I went out to a fancy bar for some drinks.

Sunday
We got up somewhere around 11 and started our day by going to eat lunch with Anna's parents at a nearby vineyard. Real nice place, good food, good wine. Then of course, we went on the tour of the factory (all in Spanish) and bought some wine there. From the vineyard, we went to there summer house on the lake, about an hour drive away. We walked around the lake for a little bit and just relaxed in the sun. After the lake, we went back to the house to wind down for a little bit before the aside. The parents that night hosted a giant family feast/birthday party. An asada is pretty much a giant barbecue with tons of different kinds of meat. We ate fillet mignon, steak, cow intestine, blood sausage, and tons of other different kinds of meats. After dinner, we sang happy birthday to Anna and ate cake and drank this champagne, lemon fizzy drink. My mom and I were tired afterwards so we just went home but apparently, Anna went with some of her cousins to a party until 730 the following morning.






Monday
Because Anna had partied all night, we didn't do to much today. We did a little shopping in town where I got a few shot glasses and cigars(Cuban) and my mom got some presents for her friends back in the states. We ate dinner at the parents house and drank cocktails.

Tuesday
We woke up early and hit the road. We were driving from her city, back to Buenos Aires, about a ten hour drive or so. We arrived somewhere around 8-9 at night, dropped of our stuff in a hotel and went to check out a tango show. Although we sat way in the back, it was still fun. We drank decent wine while talking in French to a couple from Reunion, a little island of the coast of Africa.

Wednesday
Was our last day in Argentina and we had some last minute shopping to do so we had Anna take us back to the main touristy part of town. We walked around for another few hours checking out the downtown and buying a few things. We then headed of to the airport once more to take off for Rio for the new year.




This is a little video of some of the sights we saw while in Argentina. The sound is from a video that I recorded of a street performer while in Buenos Aires

Mãe no Brasil (semana 1)

Thursday, December 17, 2009
…We gave each other hugs, talked for a little bit, and we were off on our journey to my place. First thing we did was grab a bus back to the bus station, simple enough. When we get there though, we found that we just missed the last bus to São João. No worries, we found ourself a nice little hotel and went out for a drink across the street. I made sure that the first thing she tried here was the cachaça. She loved it but couldn't finish her drink. we later retired…

Friday
Next morning we got up and to my mothers pleasant surprise, had a giant feast for breakfast full of all the normal/exotic Brazilian goodies. Packed our stuff, grabbed a cab to the bus station, and got on a bus to São João del-Rei where we would be staying for the next week. We gave her the regular tour, she unpacked, and we began the welcoming festivities; going to the bar! It was Lucas, his boyfriend, my mother and I. We got some beer, some food, and later on Susan joined us. It started raining so we just picked up our drinks and headed for the entrance of the bar. After a good few hours of drinking at the bar, Lucas and mom decided that they wanted to go dance so we started heading to DOMO, a nightclub nearby. Susan left before we got there seeing how she needed to grab a moto-taxi home. Too bad to, she missed a fun show; my mom and Lucas (a bit drunk) dancing ridiculously together. Lucas's boyfriend and I just kind of sitting there trying not to laugh to much. All and all, I think she had a really fun time for her first night here.


Saturday
…Well seeing how we had gone to bed pretty late and a little intoxicated, we didn't wake up to early or really feel like doing anything to active and so we decided that it would a great time for MEXICAN NIGHT!!! WOOT WOOT! it's been about six months since Susan or I have had green chile so it we defiantly went all out with it. We probably spent a good three or four hours preparing everything; I was in charge of the guacamole, Lucas and Susan making crepes(we weren't able to get any tortillas), mom making the chicken and beef, and Angela opening the cans of green chile(we all tried and she was the only one successful…) It was a glorious meal; there were eight of us at the table eating everything that we could. It was the first time for the Brazilians eating anything like this before and for the most part, they loved it. I also found out that I have a commonality with my host mother: she loves spicy food, probably the first Brazilian that I've met who does. After our feast, none of us where to able to move so we pretty much just went to bed.

Sunday
Today was a day for adventuring. We went to Tiradents, a nearby "touristy" city. We spent the day walking around the small colonial village checking out churches, shops, and just the general streets of the town. I took her to the chocolate shop there where she ended up buying a six pack of mini chocolate + random alcohol shots which I never got to try :-( on our way back to SJDR, we decided to take the Maria Fumaça back, a train scenic train that goes from Tiradents to São João and back. It was my first time on the train to and it was a lot of fun; a lot of nice views.


Monday
Well, she had seen the streets of São João, she had seen Tiradents, and well I had work to do so today, we went to see my advisor. I need to renew my visa and she was helping me out on that. We spoke in english so that my mom could understand all that was going on. afterwards I showed her the rest of that campus and we pretty much spent the day just walking around seeing some more of the city.

Tuesday
Today we walked pretty much to the other side of town to show her the other two campuses and try to find Susan. First we went to the Dom Busco campus where she got to see a bit more of the "rain forest" side of town. Then we went to the CTan campus where she got to check out the "farm/countryside" side of town. Then we tried to go to Susan's house but she wasn't there so we just went across the street from her place to drink a beer. We found out later that Susan had been to some waterfalls with Lucas.


Wednesday
Today was the last day in São João for a while so we said our good-byes to Lucas and Angela and hopped on a bus at seven in the morning to Belo Horizonte. Followed by another bus to the airport, we got on the plane to leave for Argentina.