Boa noite,
Desculpe for not writing the blog in a couple of days! Today, June 12th is the Valentine's Day of Brazil and sadly I am not with my namorado so I can't really celebrate. We saw so many Brazilian couples just making out so that was interesting... Anyways, on Thursday, dia 9 de Junho we returned to PUC-Rio for finalizations to our design for our bamboo bicycle. The day at the university was a long couple of hours with lots of arguing and changing our design and generally lots of frustration, but we got it all together by the end of the day. Thursday was a very low key day with no serious sight seeing but it was nice to slow down for a bit after the overwhelming past few days. On Friday we spent time at PUC again and then we came back to the hotel for a late lunch (3:45pm ish--yes, that is Brazilian time). Following lunch I went to purchase a small purse from a store called "Jelly". The store is awesome--shoes and handbags, my two favorite accessories. The purse is so cute! I love it. It fits everything I need inside without the purse being too bulgy. Friday night was super fun. We all went out with Bhavna's Brazilian friend, Tati, to Rio Scenarium in Lapa. It was a LONG night of samba and drinking yummy caiparinhas. My feet were killing me the next day from my heels. Brazilians are amazing dancers--they can dance all through the night! I think they actually do party till 6 am...
Yesterday was a very long, relaxing day at the beach in the beautiful sun and there I practiced my Portuguese skills and bought two pairs of earrings as well as four bracelets from the local vendors. Nothing too exciting--just trying my best to be a carioca, haha.
Today was a very busy Valentine's day. We went to Santa Teresa to meet up with Joao, one of Dr. Ghavami's doctoral students, to cut bamboo at his workshop for our bamboo bicycle. The commute itself was about one and a half hours! We took what is called the "Bonde" up into Santa Teresa and got a beautiful vista of Rio de Janeiro and a glimpse of the "favelas". The bonde was super squeaky along the tracks...I thought I was going to go deaf. Bhavna described the neighborhood as a "sad beauty" which I think fit the scenery of Santa Teresa perfectly. The graffiti along all the beautiful antique French style homes really made it a different feel for the neighborhood. I really enjoy the graffiti in Brazil. To me, it's like a message of emotion from the Brazilians facing poverty or hardships in Rio. When we finally got to Joao's workshop, which is a part of his home (pretty awesome), we met his mother and father and we cut all the bamboo to make not one, but two bicycles out of bamboo. Dr. Ghavami has high expectations for us Pitt students.
Afterwards we met up with Dr. Ghavami in Lagoa and he showed us Lagoa and told us the entire history. It was a nice 3 hours of our day, haha. I do not think Dr. Ghavami has a sense of time at all but I really enjoy being around him and listening to everything he knows about Rio, bamboo, Persia, life, etc. Now, on Sundays all of Rio is outside either walking, biking, running, drinking coffee, or eating out...our two hour walk from his apartment all the way back to our hotel was very scenic and full of learning experiences of the Brazilian culture. We ended our night at the Hippie Fair of Rio--translated as Hippie Feira. The Hippie Fair had stalls and stalls and stalls of hand made jewelry, woodwork, clothing, paintings, etc. I fell in love with the feira and we plan to go next Sunday to catch more of the stalls before sunset.
Tomorrow morning we are off to Camburi (5 hours south of Rio) at 7:00am in the morning. I best be off now to get some shut-eye.
Ate' logo~
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