Tuesday night was happy hour at Lord Jim’s Pub. I know, so Brazilian of us. Now that my Portuguese skills have gotten progressively better, it really allows me to put my all in to hitting on the professor, not that it’s going anywhere. Other than that, we visited pao de azucar yesterday (sugar loaf) yesterday, which is a huge mountain range that has a spectacular view of all of Rio basically. You take a lift up and there’s freaking awesome lookout points. Favorite part about it was that we saw wild monkeys; which were really cool-I’ve always had a propinquity for monkeys, so this really fulfilled my expectations. Here's a picture!
Afterwards, we went on a walking tour of the Centro-the downtown historical part of Rio, which was cool (We went into two churches, went to casa de moedas, and an art exhibition). Unfortunately, there was this really screwed up younger guy that kept following our group prodding us for money. He looked really high and he wasn’t wearing any shoes which was so sad. Finally, he left us alone after about 30 minutes of following us…
Around 5pm, me, Paola, Juan, Jessica, Blake, and Davis went to buy our bus tickets to Buzios, Brazil this weekend. It’s a really awesome peninsula with great nightlife. Friday morning (tomorrow) at 10am is the departure date. It’s about a 3 hour bus ride. That’s right, already packed my backpack.
Last night, me and Juan met my friend Sandra (the one I met on the plane) and her friend Jay at a Latin party. The party was in Copacabana and it was free entry for girls until 11 and free beer until 12. The night started out with a salsa lesson- one I needed BADLY. But after the lesson, I was a professional. We learned about 5 moves and then made 10 or so partner rotations. I danced with some weird guys, but whatever-I know how to salsa now! During the lesson, Paola, Gaby, Bonnie, Tony, Civel, and Ximena showed up! We all drank beer and I danced with a lot of guys to practice my newly made salsa moves. It was awesome because I met people from all over the world. (Ok, mostly south America) But still, very cool. I heard some girls speaking English so I started talking to them. They were English teachers in the Favelas that had both just graduated college. We made fast friends. One was Canadian, the other was English. We didn’t leave the club until 2:45 or so because it got that crazy in there.
After Portuguese class today, might I remind you is at 8:30, a few of us went out to an Italian restaurant where I had the best Gnocci (spell check?) of my life! Sorry Jen if you are reading this! It had four different types of cheeses and was baked. Cheese. Yum. After lunch, we went on a company visit to Petrobras, the energy company (oil, gas) here in Brazil. The building was huge and an economist talked to us about what Petrobras was doing here in Rio and around the world. They are looking to start oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and look to double production in the next 10 years. Carlos, the economist said that refineries are not as lucrative as oil discoveries so that is their main focus.
The quote I remember from his presentation was “Life is like a bottle of water. You have to buy a new bottle or discover a new reserve.” Oh wait, in America you can drink tap water.
Leaving for Buzios agorra (that means right now in Portuguese)!
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