Woo! Hooray for back-dating

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heh, i mean...today really is march 31st! i know nothing of the april days 1-5.

anyway. so...ahem...*today* was much better than yesterday. i crammed a bunch of portuguese last night and just decided to suck it up and act like an assface if i had to. after all, everyone expects americans to be assfaces! anyway...in one of the more bizarre coincidences, kyle's uncle just happened to be in rio today. and after a little confusion about the buses and taxis, (most things are confusing when you have a working portuguese vocabulary of about 15 words, all pronounced wrong) we met him at his hotel, where he generously offered to take us up to see the big statue of jesus up on corcovado. you know what i'm talking about. you've seen him in movies. usually the camera does a 360 around him...he's on a hill with this beatific smile and he has no elbows (his arms are outstretched like propellors). what they *don't* show you in movies is that behind jesus is...a snack bar. really. i don't know how the cameras miss it...it has huge yellow umbrellas. anyway, we'll attach pics soon. it was lovely, though crowded.

we ate a delicious meal (our first non-hamburger one) with kyle's uncle and i even managed to mumble most of my order in portuguese. of course, it wasn't fair because i could cheat by looking at the english menu if i needed to. then we walked all the way back to our hostel along ipanema and copacabana beaches (interestingly, we did *not* get robbed. this is foreshadowing, people. see april 1.)

our hostel ruled. if you are ever in rio de janeiro, stay at tupiniquim hostel. the young owner, alex, gleefully engaged with us in many political and philosophical conversations while he concocted his awesome caipirinhas (sugar alcohol with lime and other delicious things) and all the guests were very friendly. that night, one of the night employees at tupiniquim, gisele, offered to take us for a walk to sugar loaf mountain, the other well-known hill in rio. this was, by the way, at about 2 am. we said sure. now, gisele was super nice. but crazy. she is a professional bike racer and she told me about a time when she almost lost her legs to gangrene whilst camping in poland. anyway, all the way to sugar loaf, she was telling me about how there were all these military bases there and how it was so fun to bother the soldiers by pretending to only speak english. desculpe? yes, she was begging me to join her in *irritating* a bunch of armed soldiers at 2 am by pretending we needed something and only speaking english. hahahano. i don't like to mess with men and guns. anyway, we walked along the beach and it was lovely at night...sugar loaf was this huge black, well, loaf-like thing, and there were old men playing music on the beach. and gisele insisted on bothering the soldiers. soon enough, they were confused and they kept calling other soldiers of higher and higher rank to see if any of them spoke english. the big group of them were about to call the commander when finally we said enough. i think she just liked the power trip.

when we asked her on the way back why she didn't tell them she was brazilian, she said "they would have shot me."

we finally got back around 3:30...about to get not nearly enough sleep to meet our next host in rio....

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Photos

The Seedy Underbelly of Jesus
The view from behind Cristo Redentor at Corcovado, or what we midwesterners call "The Wisconsin Dells."

Surprisingly Unavailable at the Gift Shop
Eden sports "The Jesus Hat."

Comments

[Elsie]

I like hats
Dude! That's the coolest hat EVER!! Bring me one back will you? Oh, and Jesus totally has elbows... how else would he be able to provide the snack bar with snacks? *shrug*

[drae j namaste-rose]

alright! finally, some really good times with the locals! "they would have shot me.." how great is that?! the hat looks nice, and being that it's made out of stone, it wouldn't blow off in the wind either.. cool. "the seedy underbelly of christ"; i couldn't have said it better.