Sept 29: Today was a day of contrasts. First was the Miller Lite Chili Cookoff at Stone Mountain park, and then a visit to the recently constructed Hindu Temple in Lilburn. The chili cookoff was a lot of fun. There were tons and tons of booths, each with a different theme. There was even a pirate ship! (And an old style diner, red necks, cowboys, firemen... you get the idea.) Even if you weren't a big chili person, there was also a secondary Brunswick stew and cornbread competition. It was a lot of fun wandering through the different areas and getting [View Full Entry]

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All the thanks in the world go to Mark for planning out my short weeks stay in Brasil. I reflected on my time there as having shown me the different aspects to what the country was like, given the time I had to see it. Rio was a traditional tourist town, showing the exterior side of Brazilian life. From the Carioca (Muscle Beach-ish) mentality to the glimpses of the favelas. Brasilia showed me a different take on a capital city, a rather surprising lack of security from what we have in Washington DC, yet it seemed more secure. I also had [View Full Entry]

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Lavras Novas is an extremely pleasant little town on the side of a hill. All the buildings are different colors. Because we went in the middle of the week, there weren't too many people, but it was a pleasant day none-the-less. We spent much of the day at an outdoor cafe owned by Milly, a lady with a welcoming smile. I also found the souvenir shop that I had seen pictures of on the internet - and the prices were very fair too! (And of course I had lots of giggles at the cow.. horse.. mules as they walked up and [View Full Entry]

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Not too far away from Ouro Preto is a town of only a few homes near a waterfall. It's around a mile walk, up and down hills. It was a pleasant walk and worth the effort of driving down the red dirt roads, for many miles, to get to. We'd hoped to grab a quick snack in the town, but no one seemed to be at the one little cafe! [View Full Entry]

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After catching a flight from Brasilia to Rio at 7:20am, catching a 9am bus into Belo Horizonte, and arriving to Mark's apartment around 10 - it was time to prepare to head to Ouro Preto. Ouro Preto is a thriving, colonial style city that began as a gold mining villiage. It is very hilly - and beautiful. I was pretty shocked to see cars zipping around on the VERY steep hills, but it's just a daily thing here. My visit to Ouro Preto actually had significant spiritual overtones. Hundreds of pounds of gold are plated on the walls of the churches, [View Full Entry]

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We arrived into Brasilia late in the night. Our plane had been delayed a bit, but this was the norm considering that there have been issues with control tower strikes creating delays... Either way, nothing is ever cancelled, and all international flights are running on time. (Don't worry mom!) It was not until the next morning that I met Mark's aunt and uncle, our hosts. They were the sweetest, older couple and more accomodating than you can imagine. Truly the type of people that you want to spend time around. She didn't speak English at all, but as time went on, [View Full Entry]

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My 1 1/2 short days in Rio has been fun. Yesterday I saw Copacabana Beach and the Live Earth concert. There are people everywhere! Most of the crowd is for the upcoming PanAmerican games in the city. I have been staying at an apartment just a few blocks from the beach that belongs to a friend of Mark´s mom. (Mark is my host/friend here.) It´s a simple apartment, but is more than sufficient for this trip - and it´s free! Interestingly enough, the elevators are different here. There is a door you pull open once the elevator has arrived, in addition [View Full Entry]

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I have a lot of emotions when I think about my visit to New York. It's a city full of gems waiting to be discovered, and a lot of misconceptions. I didn't find New York to be full of rude people or an unmanageable hustle and bustle. Instead, I found a remarkable city that accommodates all the people within it with amazing ease. The transportation is amazingly efficient and Manhattan, very clean. (I do recognize things change once you leave the touristy areas, radiating outward, that things are always much different.) All that being said... I feel we accomplished the unthinkable. [View Full Entry]

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Thanks to a tourism ad for North Carolina in my Budget Travel magazine, I decided I'd set out to see the waterfalls of the Southwest region. I dug around a little on the internet and found THIS LINK. Waking up at 6am the next day, I was off to spend a day seeing the area's natural beauty. The original idea was to start with Whitewater falls since it's the tallest East of the Smokey Mountains at 411 feet tall. On the way there, we (Myself and Chris) passed Glen/Glenn falls. We decided we might as well stop there while we [View Full Entry]

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For Chris's Grandparent's anniversary, we joined his family and headed to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens as a group. The gardens are located next to Piedmont park, and I honestly had never known they were even there. The facilities were amazing. We began our self guided 'tour' by visiting all the outside area's, and then working our way into the buildings with the more exotic plants. One even had birds running around among the foliage. The highlight for the group was the large room with more varieties of Orchids than I thought ever existed. One of my personal favorites was the children's [View Full Entry]

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