Blogs from São Paulo, Brazil, South America - page 47

Carol, Giselle, and I walk out of the airport on a cool, overcast day. At this point it is around 2:00. I look around and take in my first impressions of Brazil. Across the road in the distance I can see a favela. Favelas are Brazilian shanty towns. While every major city has favelas, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have the largest. Poor farmers, migrating from the destitue interior of the northeast make up the greatest percent of the population. Many of these northeasterners have a distorted view of the reality of Sao Paulo, and Rio. The cities are seen as places overflowing with jobs and money- reminding me of the early stories of America having streets paved with gold. Those who migrate seldom have the skills, or the family network to overcome the large ... read more

So here we are on the last day of our trip around the world. We are currently in Sao Paulo, Brazil and this blog entry will be for our last night in India, 2 days in Vienna, Austria and a short paragraph on Sao Paulo. Our flight from Delhi, India to Vienna, Austria did not leave until 1:50am, so we had a night to go explore the city (Sunday night). It happened to be that we were in Delhi during a 9-day religious celebration for the Hindus. During this time, they decorate the Temples with lights at night and mobs of people go to the Temples to celebrate. I hired a car to take us to the largest of the Temples in Delhi and to a local bazaar where local people go to buy crafts. After ... read more

The last 24 hours have been exciting but have also reminded me of two of life´s infamous sayings. How many times have you returned to a place that was once a stomping ground but is now a memory in the past? You return with the memories you last had of the place and for some reason you expect nothing to have changed although it makes no logical sense since as we all know (1), "The only constant in life is change." Being a mid-twenty year-old, this phase of my life and the lives of my friends is about finding the path, the patner, and the clearness of mind to forge a life. So, naturally my friends and myself are taking steps forward and then back and then forward again, all with the expectation that eventually we ... read more

well its been a while but im afraid we have come to an end. This the 19th is our last day! The emails begging our parents for extra money so we could stay here an extra month, or 6 failed so we are on our way home this afternoon. Its been an adventure, but its okay because now we are planning our next one. last minute dash We´re in Rio again now but getting here was a bit of a struggle, with less than 10 days to go we suddenly realised that we were in Peru, humm, so a taxi to Bolivia (yes a taxi from Peru to Bolivia!!!) was in order and then a bus to La Paz. In La Paz we did last min shopping, and spent a little (*cough* lot *cough*) too much ... read more

Geez, people are nice here. Really frickin’ small town wave and nod and say good morning and give you the restroom key at the gas station before you ask and joke around with you when you bump into them on the sidewalk nice. In one of the biggest cities in the world. Amazing. How do they do it? Its especially interesting bc people in Rio are so markedly not nice... (i have a theory about that - i think it has to do with the way the cities are laid out.) ... read more