Picture Post from Rio! (it's a big one)

So the last two days in Rio have been really fun!!!!

Yesterday, I went to Corcovado (the huge Christ statue). While it does look small from far away, its pretty huge it person. It's at the tip top of a mountain, so the main way to get up there is on a train through the mountains. It's a really nice train ride up, through the forest, but one of the silliest things, is these huge paper mache bugs and people, that you find along the way on the train.
Here are some of them:

















So, those are some pictures of those wacky paper mache animals on the train up to corcovado, pics of christ the redeemer, and some pics of overall Rio.

Then, at night we went to watch the Brasil vs. France futebol game at a famous bar called the Academia de Cachaça. It was really fun to watch the game in such a crazy atmosphere, and obviously, it was sad when it was over and they lost. The overall sentiment seems to be that people are really sad that the team lost, but also agree that Brazil wasn't playing very well.

Then today, we saw a lot more of Rio. We went to this area called Barra which was really nice. It's the new part of Rio where people are expanding to live. We then went to Floresta de Tijuca, which is this AMAZING huge forest inside of Rio! Then we went to this beach Sao Conrado where we saw tons of people hangliding and you could get coconut juice straight from a coconut. Then we went to the Centro of Rio, which has a lot of old European (specifically Portuguese) architecture. It is very businessy now and is completelty deserted on the weekends. We went to this one hidden old Portuguese church which was really beautiful and had great wooden carvings. After that we went to this great and diverse fair in Ipanema called Feira Hippie. I'm definitely going back again as they have great crafts, jewlery, bags etc.

Here are some great pics from today!

























Double click on this photo and look into the hills. You can see one of Brasil's biggest and most famous favelas, Rocinha.









So far, I really like Rio as a city, because it has such a nice balance of city-ness, but is also surrounded by nature, including the forest, beach, lakes, and mountains. I have never felt unsafe in the city, and people just say to keep your guard up (like in any big city) and dont flash around jewlery or money. I just went to my apartment where I will be staying and it is less than half a block away from the beach which is great. Also, I'm a block and a half away from the main shopping street in Leblon, so so far I'm really loving everything about Rio. At the place where I am staying I dont have internet, so I will probably just update from PUC-Rio, which means I probably wont have many picture posts often, but I'll try as best as I can. Oh ya, winter here is amazing!!! the weather was sunny today and gorgeous!