I'm baaaaack!

Hello lovely readers!

Today marks one week that I have been back in beautiful Rio de Janeiro. I am slowly getting back into the swing of things here in Rio, and the pace of life is as quick as ever here as I am keeping busy with a new internship, lots of baby-sitting, birthday parties, and figuring out my classes for my last semester of college...ever! *sob* Sadly, I cannot be a super senior forever...but, as long as I still am, I plan on taking as many classes as possible! So far, I'm really excited about my geography class on urban space (we get to read lots of my namesake, the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre!), and a class on the development of comunidades (the politically correct term for favelas or the infamous Rio slums) offered by the department of social work. The latter is really fun because each class we get to have small group discussions where the teacher pairs the gringo students with a Brazilian. I was paired the first day with an adorable Brazilian girl named Jennifer who lived all the way in Queimados, a city north of Rio de Janeiro in the poor northern region of Baixada Fluminense. She is on a full scholarship to PUC (As are most of the brazilians in the social work department) and has to take three buses to get to school every day! She also lost all the furniture in her house when there were bad floods north of Rio a couple months ago. Speaking with her really put into perspective my own petty complaints about commuting to school and my old apartment where everything was breaking, we had a small fire, and then on my last day there the toilet overflowed, flooding the whole kitchen. A pain to deal with, but we did not actually lose anything... 

In other news, in keeping with my continuing narrative of housing dilemmas, I have moved into my *sixth* apartment in Rio de Janeiro. Sixth time is the charm, right? I sure hope so because I am completely fed up with housing in Rio. It is kind of a long story but basically the homestay I was supposed to move into in Botafogo for this semester did not workout. While I was away for the summer volunteering in a hostel in Northern Brazil (more on that later) my future intended host parents got a divorce, put two students in the room that was supposed to be mine, and then turned the entire (tiny) apartment into housing for PUC exchange students. After working in a hostel for three weeks I really wanted my own room, and that condition along with the fact that I would be kicked out for the World Cup, not being able to have guests, and a lengthy list of rules (no cooking with oil?!, breakfast only at 7 am, etc.) the host dad (more like a landlord at this point...) had e-mailed me, I decided I needed to do what was best for me and find somewhere else to live that would be a true home as opposed to an additional source of stress.

In a gift of fate, right as my Botafogo housing situation was decaying and I was beginning to panic trying to deal with it while so far from Rio, around this time one of my friends from last semester messaged me on facebook asking if I or any of my friends would be interested in living in her Ipanema homestay with her. Erin, who I met last summer at the Boren orientation and who goes to University of Maryland (and also a super senior :) ), has also been in Rio since July and has been living right in the heart of Ipanema in what I think is the absolute best homestay there is in Rio... I jumped on the opportunity and I can say with fair certainty that I have hit the housing jackpot this time around!

What do I mean? Well first of all, here is a picture with the view from my balcony.

Yes, you read that right, I have a balcony! Pinch me! It also has the perfect view for sunrise. Below is a picture taken at sunrise on Friday.

So basically, me and Erin share our own floor in our hostmom Marinez's 14th floor (penthouse...) apartment. In the living room when you walk in there is a spiral staircase that leads up to our floor which is basically another living room area (where my bed is), Erin's room, a little kitchenette area with a mini-fridge, a bathroom, and huge sliding doors that open onto the balcony where we have a churrasco area, an outdoor shower (we shower outside in our swimsuits under the stars!) and, my personal favorite, a huge potted plant of basil! Marinez gives us breakfast every day (the classic Brazilian misto quente, or ham and cheese panini) and she just the right amount of chatty without being invasive. She has an adorable shih-tzu named Jack (but of course pronounced the brazilian way, "Jackie"). Also living here are her two kids, her daughter who is 25 studying law at PUC and her son who is 15. There is another bedroom downstairs where another PUC exchange student, Charlotte from Paris, just moved in yesterday.

Well that about sums up my first taste of Rio: round 2! I'm hoping to write about my time volunteering at the hostel in the Northeastern state of Ceara and my summer travels soon, but in the  meantime here's a picture of my new friend little Jack eating a bone :)

Tchau beijos!!

Marie