The End of Brazil

On Friday, Chum, our friend from the hostel, invited us to go to this market with him. In the morning we ate breakfast and got ready, waiting for Chum to wake up. We were ready to leave in the late morning, so the three of us and Romana, another girl from the hostel, took the metro towards Maracana, the soccer stadium. Once we got off the metro, we walked through a park which was really nice and pretty and got followed by a beggar. He kept following us and begging us for money but we said no and kept going. Eventually, he left us... only to show up a few minutes later up ahead of us, waiting for us to come closer to him. We tried to go around but he came to us and begged some more. We got so sick of his persistence that we gave him R$1 and he left us alone. We got to the market, which was in a stadium near Maracana (but not the actual Maracana stadium, kinda confusing). Going in, we saw that the stores weren't all open, but a lot of the restaurants were open or getting ready to open. We walked around a bit, looking at the different shops and food tents.

The market was set up kind of like a swap meet. Different "stores" had different tents or little enclosures, and there were lots of souvenir shops, some clothes shops, and a ton of food shops. We got acai smoothies for the first time, and they were SO GOOD. Acai flavored stuff in America has got NOTHING on real acai stuff in Brazil. We ate some beef, rice, fries, molhos farafos (this weird corn powder stuff that's salty and dry), and aipim (a starchy potato-like thing that's fried) for lunch. We really wanted beans too, so we tried to order them but couldn't figure out the word for beans. We tried acting it out, but it's not easy acting out "bean" and we did manage to get beans but they were weird and expensive. So sad. I also tried this soda called Guarana Jesus. I obviously had to try it because I love Guarana and I love Jesus, and putting those two together had to make something good. It actually wasn't that great though, other than the name, and it just tasted like bubblegum soda. We shopped around and looked at souvenir shops. For some reason, the market was filled with wooden penis carvings. I really don't understand who buys them, but apparently they're popular 'cause they're everywhere.

We took a cab to the metro station, took the metro back to the hostel, said bye to Chum because he was going back to Hong Kong, then slept for about three hours. After the nap, we went out to look for rice and beans because we still wanted some and the beans we got at the market were wack. No luck (who would have thought that finding rice and beans would be so hard in South America?!), so we just bought 2 large acai smoothies and pastels (meat pastries).

The next morning, we went to a nearby SDA church for worship and had the sermon translated for us by a friend we met named Igor. They were having a special service for their food drive program, and some guest musicians came. They had lovely voices and it was a really nice service. There was no potluck, so that sucked, but we got free candy for being visitors so I guess that sort of makes up for it. We were hoping for rice and beans for potluck though. We took a metro to Flamengo and went to a modern art museum, which was kind of creepy. The pieces were very bloody looking or vulgar and I didn't really like it. Afterwards, we still REALLY wanted rice and beans (we'd been craving it for so long), so we took a bus to Urca and went back to the cheap restaurant we went to on the day we got lost on the mountain. We paid R$18 for both of us and ate a ridiculous amount of rice and beans (FINALLY).

Afterwards, we decided to try to walk up to the small mountain next to Pao de Acucar and take the cable car from there, saving us money. We were just in love with the view, and really wanted to see it again. This time, we made it to the top with little trouble (no near death experiences) and enjoyed the view for about 2 hours. We came down after it was dark, enjoying the sunset from the top of the mountain, then went to the mall by our hostel, ate chicken and fries, then watched GI Joe. We were unsure of what to do and were pretty tired, so we settled for a movie. We weren't sure if it was dubbed so we tried asking but the employees didn't speak English. We ended up talking to 5 different workers and then they called the manager who consulted with the box office, then told us that it was in English. We caused them a lot of trouble. The movie had horrible acting, dialogue, and way too many mini stories, but the action was neat and the CGI was cool.

Our days seem to be getting a little less extreme. No more ridiculous amounts of walking, no near death experiences, just taking it easy. Even without extreme experiences, traveling is amazing. This concludes our time in Brazil, and now we move on to Buenos Aires, Argentina!
I'm still not quite sure who reads this, but please continue to keep us in your prayers and leave us some supportive comments!