Here are a few pictures of Fortaleza. There aren’t as many as I would have liked because I forgot my camera in the morning. There was a stark contrast between the number of people out in the city on Sunday morning versus Sunday evening. I don’t think people around here even wake up until 7pm.
They nagged me into upgrading and now nothing is showing on the front page. Oh God, why did I do that? It was not necessary.
Update:
Master Blaster rules Bartertown.
I left my homestay yesterday. The 2 weeks turned into 3 weeks of language school are over. My host, Anna, was a major reason for my quick integration into Rio. She was always friendly and always willing to talk. She walked me to class on the first day and made sure I got on the right bus for my first trip to Ipanema. I felt at home in her apartment. Maybe someday I can go back and have a real conversation in with her in Portuguese instead of this mash of English and toddler-level Portuguese. Right now, it doesn’t feel like I’ll ever be able to speak, but a man can dream.
The first part of my trip to the NE part of Brasil is under way. As soon as I arrived yesterday, I went for a very long walk down the beach. The pace of life here is quite a bit different than that of Rio. You can walk down a portion of the beach and see people fixing their rickety fishing boats while gruff, old men play cards and laugh over beer. I watched one man create a fishing net on the sidewalk. He had two lengths of thick fishing lined tied to two trees. One was above the other by about 4 or 5 feet. He then set to work weaving thinner fishing line between them. His work took his entire focus. I don’t think he even knew I was there.
The school I attend has daily excursions. They usually involve some historic tour of Rio and maybe a touristy thing thrown in once per week. The historic tours are done buy a man who I believe to know everything there is to know about Rio. He speaks several languages quite fluently. He speaks in each language with the ease of a native talker. It’s really interesting to hear him switch between Portuguese and English.
There isn’t a lot going on today. As far as I can tell, it’s Easter. It’s about as popular here as it is in the states. People like to eat the candy, but they don’t seem to go very far into celebrating the resurrection of Christ. It could just be this homestay, though.
Here’s a picture of my bed. I tried uploading more pictures of this apartment, but I’m not very good at computers.
It’s not much, but I rarely fall off more than once or twice per night. I’ll upload more pictures later if the Internet lets me.
Update:
Here’s a slightly blurry picture of the sofa.
Barbara’s flight back to Austria was today. She called me this morning to get together for coffee before she actually left. We ended up walking down Copacabana beach to Forte de Copacabana. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it’s some sort of military installation with museums.
They have a really nice cafe where we ate waffles with ice cream and had some coffee. We took a few pictures too.
Upon arrival to Rio de Janeiro, the roads were one of the first things I noticed. Most of them are tiny and 1-way except for a few major ones. The major ones have multiple 1-way roads separated by long medians. For example, in the central district, the major road has a 4 lane 1-way section followed by a median dividing it from another 2 or 3 lane 1-way section in the same direction. Yet another median divides that road from a 2 or 3 lane 1-way road in the opposite direction followed by another median and another 4 lane 1-way road. All of these lanes and medians make crossing the road a potentially lethal. It is not uncommon to require two light changes to get all the way across the street. People who are in a hurry end up playing Frogger with oncoming traffic.
My host was nice enough to let me use her ID to get a cell phone down here. Everything is paid for by me, but they needed a sponsor or something.
55 21 83452370
Yesterday was pretty interesting. Some friends and I were supposed to go hiking. There’s a mountain nearby that has amazing views of Rio and the surrounding areas. Unfortunately, however, I did not get a chance to hike. I received a text from Barbara in the morning saying that she was good to go then immediately received another negating her previous statement. The problem was with her foot. She has had a blister on her foot for the last couple of days. She thought it was just a bug bite, but it wouldn’t go away and was in fact getting worse.
I'm not a robot.
