Outside of petroplis

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ola' todo bem, (hello, how are you)

Today celebrates our our first week in brazil and we feel like little sponges soaking up everything possible. Right now we are at a place called the "Sitio" which is a mountian home of our friends that we have been visiting in brazil. It is a beautiful house in the middle of a valley near the city of petroplis.

Prior to coming to Sitio we spent 6 glorious days wondering around Rio and discovering its many wonderful places. One of the days we did as so many cariocas (what people from rio known as) do, and spent the day at the beach both of getting a bit to much sun.

On another, we walked for about 7 hrs around a giant lagoon and then to the Jardim Botanical which are worlds the first botanical gradens. The gardens were amazing. We saw no end of tropical vegetation and my first monkey!!

On our last day before going to the sitio, we toured the downtown of rio (again walking for about 7 miles) here we went to a monistary that had an extrodinary church in the baroque style. We also wondered into many a classic style church and other old and colonial style buildings. Later that night we went out to a samba club and had our first experience of the active night life of rio. It was a club called Rio Scenarium which was filled with dancing, drinking, laughing, and drinking!!

We will update with pictures soon but have taken very few as Rio is not the best place to carry around a digital camera.

We will have many more adventures to share soon. We miss everyone but are enjoying ourselves more than we even thought possible.

Hope all is well.

Ciao.

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