Basically, I spent all day Friday and Saturday at Ipanema. Sunning. Or swimming. Reading, and people watching. Perfect. During my hours and hours there, lying around like the rich fat cat that I seem to have become during this trip, I made some interesting observations about Brazilian beach culture. Some are very obvious, but worth stating for those who have yet to experience the teeny-bikini land first-hand, and some are maybe just my random and poorly-conceived perceptions. But whatever. Here they are. * Bikinis are small. Mainly bikini bottoms are small, although th [View Full Entry]

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So! Saturday night was camaroche night. But to get the concept of the camaroche, you have to know something about Salvadorean carnaval first. If you're already thinking 'Blah blah blah! I already know about Carnival. It's the week before Lent starts and everyone gets crazy and wears crazy costumes and do parades in the street.' Not even close. Rio and Venice's carnival celebrations are like A list celebrity parties with chorographed dance numbers and caviar compared to Salvador's which is more like everyone having the biggest field party imaginable. Okay so maybe now you're thinkin [View Full Entry]

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Wow. I'm indimidated by 1) how much I have to write and 2) how I can ever even begin to explain Salvador's Carnaval celebration. But, I'll try. Saturday, Angeliki and I parted ways at the Sao Paolo airport around 2pm. I was taking an earlier flight with TAM, the national airline, and she was on the budget carrier GOL an hour later. What's the difference you may wonder? * GOL flight was running 1 hour late * During TAM flight we received not only complimentary beverages and a sandwich, but also a small stick of deodorant. Interesting. * TAM pilot tried [View Full Entry]

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Hey all-- I know I haven´t written much at all lately. It´s primarily because the only traveling I´ve been doing lately is to the lovely land of Pascagoula, from which I didn´t escape as cleanly as I´d planned in December. Yup, our case rolled for another 2 months. But! My life in the PFG (that´s Pasca-fíng-goula for you Yankees) is wrapping up and even better I´m on vacation! Angeliki and I have just one short week to get up close and personal with Brazil and more than a few Brazilians (kidding, Luke!). Seriously though we´ve got Saturday through Wednesday morning to [View Full Entry]

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I could write tomes on the wonders that exist between Mobile, Alabama and Biloxi, Mississippi, but unfortuately I'll have to refrain from expounding on some of my most hilarious moments from my 2 month stint working in Pascagoula as part of that tricky work-privacy rule. What I can say is that the PFG (Pasca-f-ing-goula) has been good to me like a big dose of backwater Southern loving. And for that reason I'd like to give a bit back to the 'goula especially seeing as to my knowledge the only people extolling the wonders of the gulfport region have been weary country [View Full Entry]

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You might think that after arriving on a 12 hour flight from South America I might be a bit too tired to head on out on another trip less than 24 hours later. But then that wouldn't make me Maria Lambert would it? So the day after the end of my 'Circle the Pacific' trip I jumped into our new trailblazer (I can't leave my dad unsupervised for even a few days-- he can't control his car buying frenzies) and headed out to West Chester, PA with my mom and my dad to attend my favorite cuzzy Claire's engagement party. The [View Full Entry]

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Well first off apologies for not having written in what seems like forever (actually just about 2 weeks). I´ve been in Argentina of course, hanging out with the family and as always sitting in front of a computer has been the last on my list. Especially since everything that I wrote in my blog last year about Argentina pretty much still holds true. Just change all the "Ana Emilia, Maria Lia, Fransisco, Lia....(long list of family members) ....Pablito, Rocio and me" to "Ana Emilia, Maria Lia, Fransisco, Lia....(long list of family members) ....Pablito, Rocio,'PATRICK and me" in my entries an [View Full Entry]

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Patrick and I arrived in Argentina on a Thursday. For me, it was a very long Thursday. I started leaving NZ at around 9am and eventually made it to Buenos Aires at around 4pm. Doesn´t sound too bad except that I crossed the date line so if you do the math (which I haven´t bothered to) it was a very long day for me. But I was very happy to finally be here and of course Pat was overjoyed. But we didn´t have long to get to know the lovely capital since we were invited to hitch a ride along with [View Full Entry]

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This morning was stressful. Our ferry started boarding from Wellington at 7:55am and we were to drop our car off at Nationwide by 7:30am. Didn't seem like it would be too difficult. We left the hostel with plenty of time to get gas and make it to the car return place...well plenty of time if you don't plan on getting lost. Which we did. Why doesn't NZ mark their crossroads! In a nutshell we got stuck on the highway, had to ask for directions twice and finally got it to the ferry station where we asked the parking attendent where the [View Full Entry]

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Today was the big day! Around 10ish Blake and I arrived at the Hastings Aerodrome so that he could take a flying lesson and I could do my first sky dive! The weather was perfect for flying-- sunny, cloudless skies. While Blake took off for his first piloting experience, I arrived at 0800 Skydive, a small hangar amongst other small hangars at the small aerodrome. I met Marty the skydiving instructor, Lars the pilot, the videographer, the booking guy, and the resident hangar cat. All of them (even the cat) were very nice and very reassuring, not that I was really [View Full Entry]

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