Oi Paulistas

Hey everyone, sorry for the delayed updates...been busy wandering about and getting to know some people in Sao Paulo. For those of you who don't know, Sao Paulo is the 3rd biggest city in the world, at over 22 million people. And its freakin huge. Its a city of concrete, not really pretty, but it does have its moments in certain parts of the city, parks, museums and the people (who are called Paulistos for men, Paulistas for women). First and foremost, yes it is true Brazilian women are beautiful.

As for what I've been up to, the first day i got here Dylan and I had met a couple of friends in Sao Paulo and they had said we could crash at their place should we drop by. Unfortunately, after dropping by and realizing they werent there because they were still in Buenos Aires, decided to crash at the closest hotel which was cheap but pretty ugly inside. After one night in a dodgy hotel, relocation occured.

The new place was the Orthon Palace...got a really nice room with mini fridge and everything, so i guess you could say living it up. As for what Ive been up to, its been a blur, busy wandering the city and have hung out with some locals. Went to a couple friends university one day and sat through a law class in portuguese...and its nothing like spanish, i think i understood 2 words in the whole 1 hour class. The prof was hilarious, first he got in a shouting match with some guy, and then during his lecture he kept having these shouting outbursts, i guess he was trying to reinforce some points.

At the hotel there is a really good view as the room is on the 22nd floor. Also wandered the 2nd subway system of the trip, the first being Buenos Aires. Have to reitterate how much knowing spanish helped in Buenos Aires, here its so hard to understand anything, the words are different...it amounts to lots of pointing and hand gestures.

Also went to Ibirapuera Park, which is Sao Paulo's central park. It has museums, including one really good art museum, a planetarium which unfortunately wasnt open that day, bicycle and rollerblade paths...a larger number of people rollerblade here than i would have imagined, and its home to the Legislative Assembly. It also seems to be the number 1 place to take school classes, as there were eight million children running around with their classmates.

The second last day in SP went to a movie called Taken starring Liam Neelson, the guy from Star Wars. It was very good, after went for dinner at Outback and then called it a night. The next day my friends family picked me up because it was Sunday and we went for a family lunch at a buffet style place, i forget what its called but its mostly meat where they bring big hunks of meat around and offer you, so in one sitting i had chicken, beef, pork, lamb and some sort of sausage. I also had chicken heart. haha. After lunch they drove me on a tour of parts of the city i hadnt seen. After the car tour, we walked around a bit and then went for dinner. I headed back to my hotel as i had to be up at 4am to catch my bus to Rio.

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