Crash Course on Cariocas

Day 1: Rio de Janeiro

Hello from Brazil! So, even after one day, I’m rethinking my decision of buying a return flight to the U.S…I might never want to leave here! My first day was amazing.

It didn’t really hit me that I was leaving for Brazil until a couple hours before I left for the airport…maybe because that was when I started to pack and it finally seemed real. My parents dropped me off at Tampa International, where I met up with my friend Luis (who’s doing the same study abroad program as me) for our 7 pm flight to Charlotte, North Carolina in order to make our connection to Rio de Janeiro.

Nothing to crazy about the flights themselves to report, except when we were hanging out in the food court in the Charlotte airport and heard an announcement for “last boarding call to Rio de Janeiro”…man, we grabbed our bags and sprinted down the entire terminal, with my things falling all over the place (including my computer). But we made it on the flight, and arrived to Rio! (as you can see below we are really excited)

My friend, Rosi, who I met when she was doing an professor exchange at UF this past February, was so wonderful to offer to pick us up from the airport, which is a bit of a ways from the rest of the city, and introduce us to Rio. Cruzing with the windows down, our eyes glued to all the new sights around us, we listened as Rosi narrated all the places we were passing as she took us through all the well-known bairros (neighborhoods). We also were jamming out to samba, and I now know why it’s such a popular music style here: it’s the perfect rhythm to complement the brown sugar sand, blue waters, and swaying palm trees.

We stopped for lunch near the naval base at the Pão de Açúcar (“sugar loaf” mountain named for its unique shape) and ate at a nice kilo restaurant, which is very typical in Brazil. It’s sort of like a buffet where you go around and put on your plate what you would like to eat, but, unlike in the United States, you weigh your plate at the end of the line and pay based on how many kilograms of food you’re taking. We had an absolute gorgeous view directly in front of our table looking out over a beautiful beach. It was also a great way to try a lot of different Brazilian foods at once, and even better to learn the names of the food based on the cards.

I tried a little bit of everything – there were several different types of fish, chicken, and meat, some pastas (including a fettuccine alfredo and lasagna), vegetables such as eggplant and a creamy corn dish, and of course, feijoada, the most typical Brazilian dish (sort of like a stew with beans and lots of different meats).

After lunch, Rosi had to go to work, so Luis and I walked from the Pão de Açúcar to the “shopping” (what Brazilians call a mall) in Rio Branco and then grabbed a bus down to Ipanema (which you’ve probably heard of in the song “Girl from Ipanema”). After enjoying our walk along the beach and stopping to watch some surfers, we continued

on to Copacabana Beach (the most famous beach in Brazil, and also featured in song). I was excited to come across a well-known bench with the statue of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a famous Brazilian author that I studied last semester, when a band appeared all of a sudden and gave me the pandeiro (like a tambourine) to participate in a jam session..all in all, random and hilarious.

We then caught a ferry from Praça XV over to Niterói, a city right across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. It was right around sunset (which happens around 5:30 here since it is winter, despite the beautiful weather) and really beautiful views from all around. From there, we met back up with Rosi and she took us back to her house on the outskirts of Niterói to eat a dinner of Brazilian fruits (Caja, Goiaba, Manga [Mango], and Caqui) and lasagna. Though I was absolutely exhausted, Rosi invited us out with another friend, so we ended up making the hour or so drive to Lapa (a neighborhood in Rio) to go to Carioca da Gema, where they had a live samba band. It was a blast and I finally learned how to dance samba, which made it even more fun!

All in all, it was a perfect introduction to what I have to look forward to for the six weeks I’m in Rio and a great crash course to Carioca culture (cariocas = residents of Rio de Janeiro).

Well, this post is getting long and I even uploaded pictures for you all, so I'll have so save any other thoughts for another time.

Até logo! Coli