Hello to everyone from the ´cidade maravilhoso` of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I write after completing about 9 full days thus far in this city, and with 22 to go.

Even though our time here has so far been short, I feel as though I have gone through a dip as well as a rise in feeling happy and comfortable here. Before even arriving in Rio, and I mean months before, the most I heard about it were dangers and precautions: ´you´d better be really careful, that´s a dangerous place´, ´don´t take any public buses in brazil´, ´if/when anyone tries to rob you, just give it all up´. Most were accompanied with a `but you´re gonna have a great time´, which seemed to be a semi-cushion to the initial fear and worry that were instilled in me, however not in any way dissolving it. Therefore, upon arrival, i looked around with heightened awareness, for myself, as well as my protective instict for the safety of my travel companion.

I´m not going to lie and say that from the minute we got here we were floating on a rainbow of parties and new friends, because on the contrary, we were afraid to go out past dark, and very protective of our things and selfs. Our first few days had ups and downs. We found and got into our apartment with ease, and found it (as well as it´s surrounding neighborhood) to be comfortable and safe. Our first day of language school went well, and we respect and enjoy our teachers very much. However, we also got lost a few times, had to do the whole `walking withour maps in our faces`, and got frustrated with the midday heat, humidity, and our newfound normality of sweating the minute after we get out of the shower. However, with the week that has passed, we have somehow gotten used to the heat, don´t need a map of the city all the time, and feel more comfortable with each passing day.

What has best facilitated this transition has been my friendship with one of my profesors, a 28 year old woman named Teresa. Within the first day of class with her, she told us about a place she goes dancing in her home neighborhood in Rio, and invited us to go with her the first weekend we were in town. After having a week of socializing only with our teachers during our 3 hours of class-5 days a week, we spent almost the entire weekend with two locals, (called ´Cariocas`, meaning a person from the city of Rio), and learning more about local life than any amount of portugues classes or renting an apartment in the city can provide.

Saturday night began with a long metro ride to the north zone of rio, ´zona norte´, where more Cariocas actually live, and where most tourists don´t know exist in rio because books dont mention it or even map it out at all. (Note: the parts of rio that tourists mostly visit are only about a fifth the size of the actual city, or probably even less than that, but i guess that´s normal….). Our teacher and her husband met us at the metro stop, which was followed with a half hour bus ride to what I thought was going to be a normal sized dancing club. However, we got off the bus, and joined the spuratic groups of people of all ages gathering towards what looked to me like a huge baseball stadium.

We got in line, payed our 1 Real (about 50 cents), and were immediately engulfed in a huge outdoor (yet enclosed) market for everything, which was sprinkled with Kareoke bars (all in use!), informal brazilian restaurants, music shops with small tv screens playing (or rather blasting) brazilian music videos, small independant bar-b-q-ers selling meat and cheese skewers, and people dressed for satuday night filling the aisles between everything. It was all quite sensory filling, especially with the salty and yummy smell of all the meats being bar-b-q-ed and the sounds of people belting it in the kareoke bars. Along with all of this, there were also two main stages with live performers that went on from when we arrived at 11pm to when we left at 6am.

So we drank beer, we sang kareoke (billy jean to be exact), we ate tasty bar-b-q food, we danced forró (pronounced /foho/), amy and said no to guys asking for (or just going for kisses), and all the while we laughed and shared the night with our wonderful teacher and her husband. The night was completed with the sunrise on the scary running-across-huge-brazilian-highway-type-streets, eating fresh pasties and coca-cola in our teachers home after meeting her entire family who lived within 10 seconds of her, and passing out for 3 hours in her bed while her and her husband insisted that they share the single mattress on the floor beside it.

The following day (or the same day?) was spent walking along the less popular however more beautiful beach by her house, drinking beer under beachside kiosks, and taking a long busride home which happen to go through the biggest favela (slum) of all of south america, where the cuttest kid got on and played with me the entire ride home.

with lots of love, Marisol