BIG POST!! Salvador and many Photos!

HI! Sorry it has taken me a while to post, but I have been on vacation and now I am finally back in Rio at PUC. So, last week I went to Salvador Bahia from Saturday to Thursday. It was a really fun and interesting experience. Salvador was a really interesting place with such unique culture and music and food (which we didnt eat, so as not to get sick). It was really different than Rio, and overall I loved Salvador as a place to visit, but I am so glad to be living in Rio. I'll give some short recaps of my time in Salvador, but everyone has been bugging me for picture posts, so I am gonna post LOTS of photos! so get excited.

2 weeks ago: Finished my intensive portuguese class with the Brown group. Got placed in the highest level port class! Woo haha! It's a bit scary and challenging because it will be a lot of grammar but I'm sure I will be fine.

Last Saturday my friends Courtney, Elena, and I took an EARLY flight to Salvador, Bahia. We stayed in a cute Pousada in the old historic town called Pelourinho. The guy who worked at the front desk at the pousada had a slight speech impediment where he didnt say 'C's so at first we got a lot of the names and stuff wrong that he recommended, until we realized there were c's at the beginning of the words.

Pelourinho means "whipping post", so the old historic city is one of the main places in Brazil where slaves were bought, sold, and punished. It's a really beautiful old city with lots of hidden and tiny cobble stone roads, but it is deteriorating quite a bit. Nonetheless, very pretty. (as you will see in pictures soon.)

Another thing about salvador is that there appears to be a lot more (noticeable) poverty than in Rio. There are a lot of street kids begging and a lot more people living on the streets. But, Salvador has just as many positives as it does negatives. The culture and spirituality there is incredibly rich. We went to a candomble ceremony which was sooo different and quite spiritual. We stayed for about 5/6 hours and left at 1 am and the ceremony was still in full swing when we left. It was in a small farm town outside of Salvador, probably about 1-1.5 hrs away from our pousada.

We went on some day excursions while in Salvador which were really neat and different and fun. We went to this island about 40 min by boat from salvador called Itaparica which is most populated in the summer, as wealthy Brazilians have summer houses there. It had really interesting and beautiful beaches, but it was not good for swimming, because it was so shallow.

Then, one day we went to this little resort town called Praia do Forte. They have a great turtle reserve there which was really interesting and great to see. Other than the fancy restaurants and boutiques it was a really cute little town with a tiny church and people fishing and boating.

Something really neat about Pelourinho, is that they use a HUGE elevator as a form of transportation. It goes from Pelourinho to Cidade Baixa, which is a city below pelourinho, right on the ocean. the whole elevator ride is only about 20 seconds and its free saturday-monday, and costs, R$.05 during the week. It's a big tourist attraction, but it's used as a normal form of transportation too. So neat!

Apparently the entire time we were gone from Rio, the weather was TERRIBLE and it was raining and what not, but luckily, as soon as we got back the weather got very nice and it was complete beach weather for us! Once we got back, we just hung around Rio a bit. We went to this antiques street fair in o Centro and we also saw a great movie called Zuzu Angel about the military dictatorship. If it comes out in the US you should definitely see it!

Today was my first day of school and I only had one class, but it seemed managable and good. Tomorrow I have three classes in a row, so that will be the real test.

NOW FOR THE PICTURES: First are my random Rio pictures including Petropolis, and then Salvador!

LAPA at Night!