So, I am spending 4 months in Brazil - about 2.5 in Rio, learning Portuguese and volunteering in the Rocinha favela, and 1.5 months traveling up the coast to the Northeast. I’m living with 3 Brazilian girls in their early/mid 20s in Apoador, the area between Ipanema and Copacabana. I thought I’d try to get back into diary/blog mode and jot down some of my initial observations and experiences. Language School: I’ve been taking language classes every day for four hours in the morning. The school is in the business district which is a bit of a hike, but a nice change of pace. Plus, there are a lot of museums and historic buildings up there. The school is absolutely great. If anybody is considering a trip down to Rio to learn Portuguese, check out Bridge ... read more

Visit to GK Field Offices Asia » India » Karnataka By jelibeli101 June 26th 2007 jzdVikash and I went to two Grameen Koota field offices to conduct interviews with clients for case studies. ... read more

Hyderabad Asia » India » Hydrabad By jelibeli101 June 23rd 2007 jzdI'm getting kind of lazy about writing the travel blog so I think the next few are going to be a series of pictures...... read more

Having realized that we had hardly seen anything of Bangalore, Ryan and I spent Friday and Saturday exploring Bangalore. Our first stop was obviously MG Road and Brigade, one of the biggest commercial areas in Bangalore. We roamed around, from store to store, checking out all the merchandise. On MG Road, we found street vendors selling pirated books. I picked up “Five Point Someone,” a bestseller about a group of friends at the Indian Institute of Technology who joined forces in an attempt beat the system the crushes creativity and only encourages grade grubbing. In the end the graduated with 5-point something GPAs (on a 10 point scale) but a lot of amazing stories… Maybe the book is saying something about the pressure kids go through to succeed in the education system here. After waiting ... read more