Summer in the Sand Dunes: Part 2!

OK so NEWS FLASH yesterday was one of the greatest days of my life because I got World Cup tickets to USA vs. Germany people!!!! I also got a ticket for a round of 16 game in Salvador where #2 in the group of death (the group with Germany, Portugal, Ghana and the US) will be playing for July 1. This is such a dream come true and I can't believe my luck... Although for the record, I did make sure to set my alarm so that I would be on-line right at 8am when FIFA opened up the first-come first-served ticketing phase to sell all of the remaining tickets yesterday and this simple act made a world of difference. I know countless people who slept in a little past 8 and by the time they logged on all the games they wanted tickets for were sold out....If everything goes according to plan, on June 26 I will head to Recife on an early flight from Rio with Kate to watch team USA take on Germany the very same day!! Hostel reservations are done and I already bought my plane ticket, now I just need to pay the bill at the bank in cash (TAM, the airline, wouldn't allow me to buy the ticket with my card online so gotta use the Brazilian method...) and I'll be all set! Woo!

After the USA game (I already have my patriotic outfit planned eee!!! Look for me on TV guys!!! hehe) we will enjoy Recife, the colonial town Olinda right next to it, and of course the famous northeastern festas juninas, festivities typical of the northeast  for a few days before making our way down to Salvador for our other game. I AM SO EXCITED!!!

Anyways, I am getting way ahead of myself... I still need to tell you about the end of my summer break, when I explored the Lencois Maranhenses national park! It was such an adventure and simply a wonderful way to wrap up my summer with unique experiences before heading back to the grind in Rio.

Me and Kate trekking through Lencois Maranhenses park!

So. First things first. Getting there! Now the distance we covered to get from Jericoacoara to Barreirinhas, the starting point for exploring the parc, looks quite tiny on a map. In reality it is quite small, only about 380 kilometers. However, in practice, our voyage between the two places took about 24 hours in total and 5 different vehicles, with a stop at a sketchy motel for a couple hours rest in between...

 To say I was relieved I only had to sleep here one night is an understatement...

Basically, because of the poor infrastructure and geography of the region, some portions of the trip were made in Toyota 4x4 trucks on sand, and these stretches took much longer than if we were driving on asphalt. First we were picked up at 6am at our hostel in Jeri by one of these toyotas, then we were driven accross the sand dunes surrounding Jeri, ferried accross a river, and drove a little more to the closest big city of Camocim. We got off the Toyota there then transferred to a bus that took us to a "bus stop" (it was literally someone's front yard, although the family was resourceful and turned their living room into a rest stop for travelers with soda and candy for sale) in a tiny town called Chaval. From there we transferred to a van that took us to Parnaiba, a city in the state of Piaui that is a starting point for visiting the delta region there. In Parnaiba, we arrived just in time (thank god for Brazilian time...we were technically late) for a bus that would take us to Paulino Neves. When we got on that bus, not only were we the only people on board, but half the windows were boarded up with actual wooden planks. It was an interesting (breezy!) ride to say the least, as at the next stop a flood of about 50 people got on board, enough to make it so that there was not a single seat left. Me and Kate were the only gringas of course. Once we finally got to Paulino Neves, at this point past sunset, the bus driver dropped us off at a very cheap pousada (that also doubled as the town's bus stop) that was a steal at 30 Rs (a little less than 15 dollars) for the night. But you get what you pay for I guess...there were tons of mosquitos, the shower had a cockroach in it, and the bathroom itself had no door except for a flimsy curtain.... (see picture above)

The famous Toyotas that took us through the dunes and are ubiquitious in Barreirinhas

Luckily we didn't have to stay there long, because at 4 (yes you read that right) AM we were to be picked up by a Toyota truck to go to Barreirinhas! The journey, through enormous sand dunes, into giant puddles, and weaving through wild cows, took about 2 hours in total and was mildly terrifying. It kept feeling like all of our stuff was going to fall into the giant puddles as we were all sitting in the bed of the truck with nothing attached to the truck itself. It didn't help that it was pitch black most of the way so I was doubly paranoid about hitting an animal.

Despite the long and tiring journey, pulling into Barreirinhas at sunrise was something I'll never forget. Whereas driving through the sand dunes at night felt like I was in the opening scene of Aladdin and I kept expecting a giant tiger head to form out of the sand, driving into Barreirinhas with the Sunrise behind us as a giant yellow orb peering up from behind scattered clouds was straight outta Lion King. No joke, the circle of life started playing in my head...it was EPIC!!!

We got to our hostel a little after 6, had a quick breakfast at 7 and then napped for a bit, but not too much because you can't rest when you only have two days of vacation left! With a little help from our trusty friend Coca Zero, we powered through our sleepiness to go on one of the classic tours of the park that includes a river crossing into the park, driving through the park on yet another Toyota and then hiking through the dunes where it gets too steep for the truck to drive. At the end of the hike is a refreshing dip in the lagoa do Peixe (fish lagoon) before we hiked back. Unfortunately we were visiting at a time when the "lencois" or narrow lagoons that form between the dunes and give the park its name were mostly dried out, but the landscape was still so visually stunning and serene that we had a wonderful time nonetheless. We also had fun acting like kids again and rolling down an entire huge sand dune and plopping into the water at the end. Never been so dizzy in my life...

 Ferry ride to enter the park!

We got to swim in this lagoon, Lagoa do Peixe, at the end of our hike.

On our last full day of vacation *sob* me and Kate did a river tour up the Rio Preguica (lazy river). It was super convenient because our hostel had a small private beach and dock area on the river from which the boat for the tour picked us up directly. Our first stop was a  little shack with tons of monkeys that at first glance seem cute, but it didn't take long to realize these were the most aggressive, planet-of-the-apey, crazy monkeys that would come flying at at all the tourists brave enough to give them bananas. A kind Brazilian woman gave me the inside of her green coconut, but once I put it down on the table a monkey instantly jumped off a tree, onto the table and swooped it from me :(

Warning: monkeys appear cuter than they really are! This one was ready to pounce...

I was sooo glad to leave the crazy monkey area, and our next stop was beautiful anyway. There was a huge lighthouse made by the Brazilian marines that we walked to the top of for an awesome view of the park, the river,and the ocean too! Me and Kate treated ourselves to a local specialty, a caipirinha de caju or cashew caipirinha made from mashing the pulp of the cashew fruit (the bottom fleshy part of the fruit--the nut is only in the tiny top portion!) with sugar and cachaca. It was amazingly tasty, but would be very expensive in Rio though because all the fruit has to be imported by plane from the region near the park. 

Our next and final stop was at another river beach area with restaurants that was really remote and just about 100 meters to the actual ocean. I got to swim in a river then take a dip in the ocean right after on a deserted beach---it was pretty surreal! We then had lunch with a group of Brazilian women who were excessively friendly and basically forced us to eat their food. One of the women liked me so much she even offered me a job to work at the Sao Luis (the capital of Maranhao) mayor's office, and she kept repeating how enchanted she was by me and Kate. It was pretty comical in fact, I'm not sure if it was her or the copious amounts of beer she was drinking talking...

Just a little sunburnt....

Anyhow, those are some last snapshots of my summer break. I miss it already.... Maranhao is so different than Rio and it was so refreshing to see another side of Brazil! Until next time....

Beijos,

Marie

Summer in the Sand Dunes

 Me and some hostel buddies in front of Casa Coco Verde, the hostel I volunteered at for three weeks from January to February 2014 in Jericoacoara (aka Jeri) :) We were about to leave on a buggy tour to explore some lagoons around Jeri!

Ok so first for a bit of background on why I did what I did this summer. Two summers ago, after my study abroad program in Portugal, I stayed in a youth hostel for the first time in Lisbon and had an amazing time meeting people from all over the world. One of the girls I met, a Canadian girl just slightly older than me, was making her way around Europe on a shoestring by volunteering in different places around the continent. When I met her she was on her way to work at a restaurant in southern Portugal, then she was going to France to work on a farm. In exchange, she could stay in these places for free!

Meeting this resourceful, solo female traveler who barely had to spend any money, yet was able to visit various beautiful places all around Europe, made me vow that one day I would participate in a work-exchange program myself. And, I finally got around to doing it this summer! Earlier last semester I signed up for workaway.com, a work-exchange website, and I got in touch with various hostels in Brazil to try and volunteer at one during my summer break. I ended up spending three weeks volunteering at Casa Coco Verde in the tiny town of Jericoacoara, in Ceara, a state in northeastern Brazil. In exchange for 5 work hours a day I got a free bed and breakfast. I actually spent minimal money on food because the great thing about hostels is that there are communal kitchens and when you befriend the guests they often share their food ;) With room and board pretty much covered, I ended up spending most of my money on just a few things: transportation to get to Jeri (expensive because of distance from Rio and high season), and the occasional caipirinha (just 5 reais!), surfboard rental or buggy tour.

                           

 #nofilter. One of my favorite memories was surfing under these pink cotton candy sunset clouds before my night shift one day!

 

The work was a bit boring and consisted mainly of cleaning up after breakfast, gardening, grocery shopping for breakfast, and helping guests check in, but the downtime I had on my time off made it all worth it. Getting away from Rio in an isolated paradise was JUST what the doctor ordered. I was completely and utterly burnt out after my semester in Rio. And although I loved having my family and later my friends from California visit me there, being the designated "local" and translator was a bit stressful. By the end, I really needed time for myself where no one would rely on me... In Jericoacoara I could finally exhale, make my own schedule (ie read in a hammock for three hours straight if I wanted to), walk in the streets (made of sand) barefoot, go out without any fear of being robbed (oh Rio....), watch the sunset on a giant sand dune, nap, etc. Aaaah the simple life. I miss it already!

 The giant sand dune where the whole town would go to watch the sunset. 

Some of my favorite memories from the summer:

-Arriving in Jeri. I got into the Fortaleza airport at 1 am. At the crack of dawn at 6 AM I boarded a Van that took me all the way to Jijoca de Jericoacoara. From there, I had to switch to a truck that took us into the sand dunes. Jericoacoara appeared like an oasis in the desert after the long journey (more than 6 hours in total).

-Becoming really good at making pancakes, french toast and garlic bread! I made pancakes daily for the hostel breakfast. And, with the leftover bread from breakfast, we would make french toast and garlic bread around 3 PM so guests could have a sweet or savory post-beach snack :)

- Dancing forro until 4:30 AM with my fellow volunteers and friends Pia (24, from France) and Selina (18, from Germany). I got really into dancing forro in Jeri. It's an upbeat, northeastern style of dance and music that uses accordion, triangle, and drums as the main instruments. By the time the forro ended, the three of us were some of the last people there along with Angela, our boss. We joked that it was a Casa Coco Verde staff party. After forro, we went to the bakery, padaria Santo Antonio, and ate delicious pao de chocolate (only 2 reais!) fresh out the oven. 

-Walking to the Jeri lighthouse at sunrise. It is a sorry excuse for a lighthouse, being more of a glorified pole with a small light at the top, but it sits at the top of a huge hill covered in cactuses and wild goats/donkeys. Walking up there to take in the view and be completely alone in the silence of nature was such a treat!

   Walking up to the lighthouse :)

-Taking buggy tours on my days off. The first one was to lagoas paraiso and azul with my hostel buddies Matthew, Felipe, and Nick. We had a hilarious driver who insisted on taking a bajillion photos of us doing all kinds of optical illusions. The lagoas were great as well...they had crystal clear waters and hammocks built such that half of your body was in the water!

-My friend Kate's visit! She arrived in Rio in January to study at PUC and we had met at i-house in Berkeley my junior year. We took another awesome buggy tour, this time to the Tatajuba lagoon. This time the lagoon was rather muddy and anticlimactic, but the journey there was the real adventure. We had to cross a river on the buggy (by going onto a man-steered sort of raft). We also got to climb these huge and amazing mangroves, ski-bunda or sandboard (and walk all the way back up the dune... a struggle), and swim on a beach on our way back to Jeri that was completely deserted as far as the eye could see!

Post sand-boarding happiness! Although climbing back up a huge sand dune with only a rope to help is not so fun. For each foot I would climb it felt like I sank 11 inches haha!

Kate after a swim on our own deserted beach!!

After Jeri, me and Kate continued onto the Lencois Maranhenses park in the state of Maranhao for a couple days. Now that trip was a whole other adventure deserving its own post.... someday soon I will write about it hopefully, although things are heating up in Rio for Carnaval, with tons of pre-carnaval celebrations happening right on my street in Ipanema, so I can't make any promises....>__<

Thank you for reading!!!

Tchau beijos

Marie

Summer Part 1: Lefebvres in Brazil!

So I was supposed to go out to a samba club tonight, but considering it just started pouring rain tropical-downpour style I've chosen to do some blogging in my PJs instead =)

Excuse the lack of chronology but although I've updated you on my return to Rio I haven't talked about my summer yet! I'll try to give a summarized version broken up in different parts or else this post will never end.

Let's see...so PUC wrapped up in early December for summer recess and shortly after my parents and brother came to visit me in Rio and then we traveled around Brazil for a bit.

Some highlights from our Lefebvre family vacay:

- Getting brunch at the beautiful Copacabana fort with my parents and lovely housemates from last semester Blair and Monica who are now back at Brown University in the states. *tear*  I am going to miss them, although I have to admit that it's a relief to not be in an apartment that is constantly falling apart anymore...

Monica, Me and Blair at the Forte de Copacabana 

-Getting shown around Rio by my PUC yoga teacher, also named Monica. Monica generously took us all around Rio, showing us some cool local spots that are hard to access without a car such as a cute neighborhood called Urca next to Sugarloaf mountain, Pedra bonita (the place hang-gliders take off from to fly over Rio), and she even brought us to her apartment in Recreio dos Bandeirantes where we had dinner (meat with beans and rice of course!) and met some of her family! 

Enjoying a snack on a beautiful Rio day in the neighborhood of Urca. It is next to a historic military fort and has a lovely small-town feel that made me want to live there! But no more moving for me for a while haha....

-Visiting Salvador (took my family to my favorite street food vendor from my trip there in August =) ), Foz de Iguassu (we ate at a Turkish restaurant for christmas because all other restaurants were closed for the holidays!) and Paraty, an old Portuguese colonial town just south of Rio.

 On the macaco safari boat tour in Foz de Iguassu. The falls were amazing and we kept seeing rainbows form from all the mist and sunlight interacting!

-And of course the grand finale: New year's in Rio! We had a great time ringing in the New Year on Flamengo beach where we rented beach chairs, sat in the sand and just people watched and watched the fireworks--all dressed in white of course! It was less touristy and less crowded than Copacabana beach and it worked out perfectly because we were much closer to our hotel as well so we got home quickly after the fireworks show!

NYE 2014: Reveillon Rio de Janeiro style--wearing white brings good luck!

Also, I finally made it up to Christ the Redeemer! I had hiked up to Cristo earlier in December with some friends (three hours of intense uphill hiking in the heat---overpriced ice cold coke waiting for me at the top at one of the tourist kiosks has never tasted so good haha) but I waited for my parents to come to actually go up onto the viewing platform to see the Christ statue. I can tell you that it's NOT overrated! I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being up there even despite the 100 degree heat and heaps of cranky tourists and cruise ship groups mobbing the monument around me. The panoramic views of Rio are truly amazing from up there; everywhere I turned was a great view and the Christ himself is HUGE! Fun fact: the Christ statue lost a finger last month because it got hit by lightning! I'm just glad there wasn't a thunder storm when we went to see it... haha!

Coming up... a post about my summer volunteering gig in northeastern Brazil! Stay tuned :)

Marie

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

Ouro Preto

Hello fans! Long time no see! I have been as busy as ever these past weeks with the beginning of finals at school while simultaneously house-hunting for next semester and continuing my two internships, Throw in some baby-sitting here and there, training for and running a 10k, and trying stand-up paddle boarding for the first time last week-end and well, you get the idea... there just hasn't been much time for updating my blog!

I have been meaning to write a post about the UC trip earlier this month to Ouro Preto, a quaint colonial Portuguese town in Minas Gerais state (the state just to the west of Rio in the Brazilian interior) who's name means "Black Gold." The town's once-thriving gold-mining past is evident by the abundance of churches with ornate gold interiors throughout the small, sleepy town. The town is known today for having a large student population and thus one of the most festive carnivals in Brazil. Walking around the town on Saturday night reminded me a bit of Isla Vista (for all of you that don't know that's the infamous student party town adjacent to UCSB) because of the sheer number of college students filling the streets, preventing cars from passing by every now and then. Every other house in the town seemed to be a Republica, which is like a co-ed fraternity or club that hosts student parties.

All the streets in Ouro Preto were cobblestone, and there is a building code that stipulates all the buildings there have to be in the original Portuguese colonial style the town was first built in!

Igreja São Francisco de Assis in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais. The altar inside is covered in gold.

The character of Ouro Preto and the Minas Gerais region was worlds away from Rio, even though it's only a 7 hour bus ride away. The whole place had such a rural farming feel to it, and the dairy industry is really strong there aka the cheese was AMAZING!! I ate so much delicious food there including lamb, feijão tropeiro (beans cooked with cassava flour, onions, eggs, and bacon) and pão de batata com queijo minas (potato bread with minas cheese, a mild and salty white cheese). One night we also did a typical Brazilian "rodizio" in which waiters constantly brought various savory crepes and pizzas to our table with the wierdest but still delicious combos (crepes filled with pumpkin and cream cheese or pizza topped with boiled eggs and dried cod anyone?) the whole night until we couldn't stuff any more food into our mouths. Then, as if that was not already enough, we were also allowed dessert pizzas--i got mine with chocolate and strawberries on top! It was a very indulgent trip indeed food-wise, and the best part was that it was all already paid for in our UC fees so I definitely didn't hold back haha!

Because the state is landlocked, there is no beach in Minas Gerais but we were able to go swimming on the last day in the caves of a gold mine in Mariana. We rode a tiny little trolley that was held by just one cable down more than 100 meters into the earth (I felt like one of the dwarves from Snow White!). Once in the mine, we explored the caves and swam in one of the pools down there even though there was a big sign saying it was not allowed... We  made sure to ask permission from one of the women working at the park and she said it was fine (woohoo for the jeitinho brasileiro....I kept thinking this kind of situation would not fly in the US).... but we just had to be careful not to swallow the water because it had arsenic in it. The water was absolutely freezing but so clear and beautiful!

Getting ready to descend into the abyss!

There's nothing quite like swimming in clear, dark waters underneath the earth!

Look at all these happy campers! Here is the UC group in front of Mina da Passagem, an old gold mine in Mariana, Minas Gerais

I can't believe this semester is already coming to an end...By Wednesday night of this week, I'll be done with finals! Tonight my friends and I are having a thanksgiving potluck and tomorrow we are going to the Lagoa to watch the annual tree-lighting ceremony of the enormous Christmas tree that floats on the water there every Christmas season. It's supposed to be a big deal so I'm excited...there's going to be fireworks and live music, and there's even a livestream of the whole thing on the internet too!

Muitos beijos to all!
Marie

Never a dull moment studying abroad in Rio de Janeiro...

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I had studied abroad somewhere else other than Rio de Janeiro. The chaos around me in this city is sometimes a lot to handle. Just last week, the favela just above Ipanema and Copacabana that is two blocks from where I live was overflowing with police due to a  drug-related shootout that resulted in a death and an injury (just to clarify the shootout was at 3 AM and I was completely safe far away and sleeping in my apartment---this line is for you mama =) ). Rio is already the most militarized/police-heavy city I've ever been to but for a couple of days it seemed as if there were cops on ever street and corner of my neighborhood. I've also been recieving e-mails about  terrorist threats to the upcoming World Cup, the latest ones coming from a prison gang network headquartered in São Paulo in response to some of its members facing re-location to maximum security prisons. Considering I just applied for World Cup tickets this information is particularly unsettling...

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the chaos happening around me in this city, and it does not help when I have the odd misadventure every now and then such as my apartment catching fire(!) although that is a whole other story...Thankfully it was a small fire in the entryway and aside from a charred floor, an exploded fan (what started the fire...) and smoke traces on the walls, me and my housemates are all OK. Big thanks to my housemate Blair for putting out the fire when he got home and big no thanks to my doorman who just called the apartment (when clearly no one was home) when neighbors complained of the smoke and then did nothing when no one answered.

the aftermath of our fire :(

I love my life here in Rio but sometimes, for the reasons described above and more (the incessant traffic, the aggressive juxtaposition of extreme poverty with extreme wealth, superficiality of a vain beach culture, etc.) I am grateful to be able to get away from it all every now and then. A couple weeks ago we had a long weekend because PUC was closed so that Brazilian high schoolers could use the space to take their annual vestibular tests (mandatory in order to go to college). I decided to take advantage of the time off to go to Ilha Grande, a remote island off the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro State that opened up for tourism less than 20 years ago as it was the site of a high security prison until 1994. There are no cars or roads on the island and less than 3,000 people live there in total. The quiet serenity of the island was just what I needed to recharge after midterms--I ended up only being there for one full day but I definitely made the most of it by doing a sweaty hike from my hostel to Lopes Mendes Beach (2.5 hours each way!), swimming in the ocean, eating delicious seafood at the cutest beachside cafes where the tables were literally set up in the sand, and walking around the tiny shops and streets in the island's only sleepy town, Vila do Abraão.

This is the boat I took from Angra dos Reis to Ilha Grande. The boat ride was about 45 minutes. The bus ride from Rio to Angra took another 3 hours.

One of the amazing views during my hike to Lopes Mendes beach

Here I am with Elizabeth and my friend Andrea. Elizabeth was a Brazilian friend we met at our hostel who is a teacher from Niterói. She kindly showed us the trail to Lopes Mendes and we ended up spending the whole weekend hanging out with her and (practicing our Portuguese woo!) as she was traveling alone.

Our hostel---adorable right?!

 Last weekend PUC organized a fieldtrip for the international students to a farm/coffee plantation in Barra do Piraí, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state. Again, I was able to enjoy some hiking and fresh air out in the lush green countryside, this time among rolling green hills far from the beach. I also got to play soccer for the first time since I got to Brazil with other exchange students and some of the Brazilians who work in the International students office at PUC--we got eaten by mosquitos and fire ants (OUCH the bites still itch even today a week later!!) but it was so much fun catching up with other exchange students I had not seen in a while and playing in the sun. We did not get back to Rio until about 10 that night (after having left PUC at 6:45 AM) but it was so worth it, especially because the excursion and food (buffets on buffets!) were all paid for in our study abroad fees already. 

Hiking around the fazenda (farm)

More hiking =) 

Week-end getaways for the win!!!--- I honestly think they help keep me sane in this crazy place I now call home.

Beijos,
Marie

Centro and a bit of an update!

Hello everyone!

So yes as you may have noticed I have been quite behind on my personal blog...I'm sorry to say this is turning into a once a month update kind of blog but I have just been so busy these past couple weeks. Since my last post I've taken midterms for all my classes (2-hour in-class essays in Portuguese woohoo!), started baby-sitting for two expat families in Rio, become a contributor to a new student budget travel blog (you can check it out at www.wanderversity.com), spent the night in the hospital because of a nasty viral infection, went to a traditional afro-brazilian roda de samba club in the north of the city, marched to raise awareness about elephant poaching (they will be extinct in ten years at current poaching rates--it was on the cover of this month's national geographic!), gone to an amazing Seu Jorge concert/beer festival, and taken a walking tour of the historic Rio downtown with my geography of Rio class.

Marcha pelos Elefantes on Ipanema beach last week-end. I'm holding the green sign and I marched with my friend from my FUNBIO (Brazilian Biodiversity Fund) internship!

It's really easy to get wrapped up in the bubble that is the Zona Sul (literally "southern zone") of Rio de Janeiro, the area comprising the beachside neighborhoods of Leblon/Ipanema/Copacabana and the couple neighborhoods just north. However, I had a mandatory field trip two weeks ago to the Historic center of Rio, just north of Zona Sul. Centro is far removed from any beach and, with its wide avenues and imperial style buildings, feels worlds away from the superficial urban paradise of the southern beach strip.

I love my geography of Rio class because I get to learn all about the development of the city around me and then I get to go out and see the developments first hand. We started our tour of Centro in Cinelandia, a square once occupied by a favela but that was torn down after the Portuguese royal family relocated the capital of the Portuguese empire to Rio during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. As part of a larger hygienic discourse to "clean up" the city from germs and to supposedly let the air circulate so the city could "breathe" better, city planners decided to tear down two of the original morros or hills that used to originally delineate the city limits of Rio. I had no idea before, but it turns out Rio is one of the most geographically manipulated cities in the world, full of artificial embankments, tearing down of hills, and enlarged ports and beaches.

The beautiful Teatro Municipal in Cinelandia, once the site of the Morro de Castelo hill/favela

Another Parisian-style building: The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes. You'd almost think you were in Paris, but the kombi is a giveaway that you're definitely still in Rio haha!

Centro is one of the areas of the city that changed the most, as hills were torn down, and the area's swamps were filled with dirt to attempt to rid the area of mosquitoes and make it a Parisian-style, sanitized city with minimal indications of its tropical disposition. My favorite building in Centro is the Teatro Municipal, modeled on the Parisian Opera but 3 times smaller. I'm hoping to see a ballet there at some point this month! Other buildings that I saw on the walking tour were the Getulio Vargas era ministry buildings, built in a communist state-centric style in the mid 20th century when Rio was still the capital of the country and Vargas made sweeping efforts to create a strong national Brazilian identity. We finished the tour on one of just 2 hills bordering the original city that is still standing, the Morro da Conceição, a traditionally working-class neighborhood that is becoming more gentrified for its relative peace and quiet and cool breezes despite having the buzz of downtown just a short walk right below it.

Street art at the bottom of the Morro da Conceição

Another great thing about Centro is that it has a lot a free art and other exhibits. Speaking of which, I'm planning on going to the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Centro this afternoon to check out a free exhibit of modern Japanese art :-D Tomorrow I head to Ilha Grande for two nights, an island off the coast of Angra dos Reis, a city that's a 2-hour bus ride South of Rio. There's no cellphone signal or cars on the island, so I'm looking forward to some real quiet time in nature! We have a long week-end because the Brazilian vestibular (the major exam high-schoolers here have to take to get into college) is taking place at PUC Monday.

Thanks for reading and until next time amigos!
Marie