Tuesday, December 25, 2007

so gente, i´ve FINALLY gotten back from the northeast, and now theres just the task of unpacking, doing my virtual MOUNTAIN of laundry, and settling back in.
the northeast was really great, that region of brasil, first of all, is really beautiful:

this is a beach in Ceará, which is the farthest north we went. to give you an idea, the capital, fortaleza, where we actually stayed, is four degrees south of the equator, and about three fourths of the year is sunny. We didn´t actally go to this beach, but looked at the sand here, because the sand is colored naturally. plus the view was mighty pretty, as you can see.
all and all, we actually spent time on the beach in eight different beaches, all of which were amazing. my favorite was probably ipanema, in rio, because the waves here were crazy, AND you could go topless, which was an...interesting experience.











so, the trip was really really long, we covered 12,000 km of brasil, all by bus, we probably spent about....twelve or thirteen of the twenty nine days on these two massive! buses, which got both tedius, and long, and uncomfortable. HOWEVER, we managed to find ways to pass the long long hours inside the bus. for example, on the way from maceio to fortaleza (which was a really long leg, two FULL days of driving) my group and the green group (we had four groups that rotated) were on the crappier of the two buses, because that bus had an air conditioning malfunction. SO we were all on this bus in our underwear, to stay cool. THAN we started dancing, and THAN we convinced some of the boys to CROSSDRESS!:

from left to right, it´s florian (from france) mads jensen (or tall mads, from denmark), gunnar from wyoming, max from germany, jon from minnesota, and bence from hungary. This stunt earned us the name naked party crossdressing bus. But it was quite funny, so yay!

for those of you who are interested, the exact layout of the trip was this: we drove from belo horizonte, north to brasilia, than east to lençois, in the interior of bahia, that northeast to maceio, the capital or algoas, THAN up the coast to fortaleza, in ceará, than we descended the coast, stopping in Canoa Quebrada, also in ceará, natal, in rio grande do norte, recife, in pernambuco, salvador, in bahia, porto seguro, also in bahia, and finally to rio de janeiro (obviously in rio de janeiro) and our last stop was a little town called parati, also in rio de janiero (the state, not the city), until finally, last thursday, we drove back up to bh.

Friday, December 7, 2007

hello all!
i´m currently halfway through the northeast trip, and it´s utterly fantastic!
so far, i´ve been to the capital, brasilia, this grand canyon-y mountain thing in the interior of bahia, called chapatta diamantina, and to beaches in maceio, fortaleza, and natal. they are extremely beautiful, i feel so lucky to be here. i´ve also gotten really tan, which is nice, because i´ve never really been tan my entire life, and i was getting tired of being the palest person in brasil.
the trip really is great, i love all the exchange students here and when i actually have time, i´ll put more details about it, and lots of pictures, as i´ve taken heaps!