Foz do Iguaçu

Rochelle came to Brazil last week. We made tentative plans to meet in Iguaçu on Tuesday. Iguaçu is 19 hours from Rio Grande and as of Sunday I hadn't made my travel plans... because I'm disorganized and never manage to plan things well, if at all!! I took an overnight bus to Iguaçu Monday night that totaled 14 hours. Those 14 hours were made less than optimal by the guy behind me who went to the bathroom every hour to smoke a cigarette. Casual… like no one is going to notice that you’re smoking in the bathroom and that the entire bus smells like an ashtray.

When I got off the night bus in Iguaçu (to a cloud of cigarette smoke) I checked my email and read an alert from Fulbright that a couple of ETAs had been held up at gunpoint on a night bus. AH! 

I met up with Rochelle, Arielle, and her med school friends later that day and we explored the Brazilian side of the waterfalls (cataratas). Everyone was a lot of fun and goofy and we had such a nice time together. Roche is always fun to hike with because we share a love for all of Earth’s little creatures. The following day we spent on the Argentine side of Iguaçu. We began at the top of the falls where it looks like the water is falling into the center of the Earth (see picture below). And the last day we spent at the Parque das Aves (Bird Park). Here are some pics! 

Tucan out in the wild

rainbow

The gang

Top of the waterfall, where it looks like the water is being sucked into the Earth!

capybara - the world's largest rodent

Brazil side

Roche & I soaked from just standing near the waterfalls

As Coisas Essenciais

The essentials: Guaraná, coffee, and caipirinhas. I don't know how to describe Guaraná. It's a soda made from a seed that grows in the Amazon and it's great! My friends tell me that the gringos always love Guaraná. ;) And cappuccinos come standard with chocolate powder (chocolate em pó). The coffee in general here is so good. It's much more concentrated.

drool

Grumpy until I feed the addiction

The traditional caipirinha is made with cachaça, lime, and sugar but you can get a caipirinha with vodka or rum and with different fruits like maracuja (passionfruit) or abacaxi (pineapple). Cachaça is a hard liquor made from sugar cane. Everyone insists it's just a regular alcohol but I think it's part horse tranquilizer because every time I drink it it KNOCKS ME OUT. 

Carnaval

I didn’t know what to expect from carnaval in Floripa. The only carnaval I've ever attended is Mardi Gras in NOLA.

Sunday night we took the bus from Lagoa de Conceição on the other side of the island to the Centro. We were packed in like sardines on the bus ride. About thirty minutes in, some of us started singing some Aventura and some old 90s hits. Next thing I know the entire bus has started a “I’m a Barbie Girl” sing along; the Brazilians not only joined in but knew every word and carried the performance! We pulled up to the Centro and the bus was rocking as we drummed a beat into the side of the bus and chanted “life is plastic.. it’s fantastic.”
We arrived to a performance midway through. I was just soaking everything in, hanging out, when I started to take in my surroundings a bit. Most of the ladies around me… were actually dudes! We rolled up to one of Brazil’s largest drag shows: “Gay Pop.”

Other Catherine, Rylee, Jake, and I went to the Tuesday night carnaval stuff too. So carnaval it seems is more of an observer sport here in Brazil than Mardi Gras is in New Orleans – where I feel like you get to participate with the people in the parade. I think it also depends on where you celebrate carnaval in Brazil. We were in stands in Floripa. It had been raining all day and not that many people showed up to the event. I got some pictures though!

Favorite outfit of the night

Samba couple killin it

Floripa

I spent the last week in Florianópolis for carnaval. Rylee and I wanted to find a place that put on a decent carnaval not too far from home. We went to the beaches and met up with some other ETAs from Curitiba, Pato Branco, and Porto Alegre. Here are some photos of the scenery - carnaval pics to come.

Churrasco dos Gringos

Rylee and I enjoyed a 5-hour bus ride to the Porto Alegre airport passed out in the back seats next to the bus bathroom. We went to meet up with Rylee's husband, Jake, and made friends with a woman waiting next to us at the airport while we waited for him to arrive. She was very blonde, which I thought was unusual. But in our state, Rio Grande do Sul, there are a lot of German descendants. Gisele Bundchen is from Rio Grande do Sul, for example. Our friend at the airport taught us some slang: Gurí and Guría (guy and girl) and gave a mini German lesson.

After Jake, Rylee’s husband, arrived we took the bus to meet up with the ETAs in Porto Alegre (POA). That night we had a ‘Churrasco dos Gringos.’ Our POA ETAs invited over their friends from the Inglês sem Fronteiras (IsF) program at the university and we ate a lot of meat, drank a lot of beer, and altogether had a great time. See the ‘meat and beer’ picture below. Catherine (not me – another ETA) taught our Brazilians friends a classic American sport (beer pong). I’m not sure when I went to bed but what I do know is that people were still partying and starting to go to bed as I woke up to catch my flight that morning. 

Check out all that raw meat

Meat n' Beer Pic

Vou ter saudades de vocês

The weekend before carnaval was a haze of sleep deprivation. Rylee and I were up late every night with our new friends and awake early every morning for work and meetings. The university is on break right now because there was a strike a couple years ago that’s got the academic calendar all turned around. Usually summer break is December, January, and February but this year break is the month of March.

Rylee and I left for Porto Alegre early Saturday morning. Our departure time was the result of much conjecture! We were at a friend’s house and around 2:00am someone wanted to know what time we were going to leave campus to catch our 7:00am bus that morning in the centro. The ensuing conversation involved 10 people crowded around a laptop for an hour until our friends determined that the bus schedule was unreliable and that they needed to escort us to the rodoviaria downtown. So Wesley and Luan, our two best buds, got up at 5:30am to make sure we got to the bus station okay. Shout out to our lovely friends (pics on Rylee's March 1st post); we missed yall in Floripa! <3