It's another Beautiful day in the neighborhood

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Today was a beautiful day. I woke up at 7 to the sun coming through the curtains and the birds chirping (though they were soon to be joined by the cacophony of construction and jackhammers in the lot next door). Following a hot shower* and a breakfast of granola and pineapple yogurt, I took off to the beach. Stopping along the way I called my mother at a dock to check in on the home front—all is well. My hour long walk (or hike… depending on how you view these hills) was accompanied by Pimsleur’s Learn to Speak Japanese… basically, I walked along a decently crowded sidewalk and then up the side of a hill while repeating after the voices on my ipod trying to learn to speak some Japanese… the Japanese learning process is going slowly as I’m not an auditory learner, but I haven’t given up yet!!

So… when I got to the beach, it was beautiful. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and the beach was relatively empty. Gorgeous. I took off my shoes and enjoyed the sun and sand and watched the surfers do their thing. I made an important discovery at the beach (Joaquina Praia): Penguins do indeed come to southern Brazil. This is a decently large deal because yesterday night when walking home along the Lagoa I swore that I saw a penguin in the waves. I was called crazy by everyone. So how did I make this discovery? Maybe the piles of dead penguins by the garbage cans on the beach was a give away… it turns out that penguins come to southern Brazil when they get lost and then they die because the water is too warm. Poor little penguins.

I climbed around on some rocks for a few hours and painted a tad too. It was really relaxing and quite fun. After climbing around I decided to investigate this other beach adjacent to the rocks but a hike away. As I began my journey I discovered that this beach was not any normal beach, it was a nude beach! Well, as it was too chilly for me to fathom going in the nude, I kept my clothing on and enjoyed myself as was. It was the most beautiful beach I have been to thus far. Simply spectacular.

After 5 or so hours at the beach I had had a little bit too much sunshine and decided to head back to Lagoa. The walk back was slightly more down hill (what goes up, must come down!) and I was thankful for that. In Lagoa I hiked up a hill behind our Pousada to a church I have been looking at for several days and it was beautiful! Unfortunately I had missed the services on Sunday and the church was not open so I had no opportunity to venture inside. Still, it was worth the hike.

Tomorrow we leave for Foz do Iguazu. I said goodbye to the Florianopolis sunset tonight and enjoyed treating myself to a meal of thin crust pizza (they do pizza very, very well here) and lime and ricotta pie with a whole wheat honey crust. Yummy.

*Aside on showers: Brazilians really do have a rather genius invention regarding showers. The higher the water pressure, the colder the shower. This system ultimately saves everyone energy because either you take the cold shower and make it short because you can’t stand the chill or you have it long but with low pressure.

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