Rio is ''litrally mental''

Rio. Rio. Rio. Rio. Rio. omg Rio. I want to live here one day. Or at least have a vacation home here. This city is absolutely amazing, and I don't think I would ever get tired of being here if my life was anything like what it's been like the last week.

The bus ride down from Salvador ended up taking 30 hours. Sounds absolutely terrible, right? The distance is about the equivalent of the distance between New York City and Miami.  Luckily for me, South America is big on bus travel, and long distance buses are generally good, and are definitely fine in Brazil.  The seats are spacious, they recline almost all the way back, provide a leg rest, plus blankets, ear plugs, and movies. It's just like being on a plane, and almost better since planes are so cramped.  I got onto the bus to see that a cute girl was in my seat. I figured it wasn't a big deal, so I went and sat by some friends, expecting that it wouldn't be a problem. But this is my life, so of course at the next stop, a man comes and tells me I'm in his seat so I get kicked out of it.  I move up a few rows and settle into my next seat and within 10 minutes, the guy who kicked me out of my first seat has moved to a new set of seats near me.  What the heck? Ugh. Fine. I let it go. I'm thinking the odds of me having to move again are slim.  Wrong again.  Next stop, I am ONCE AGAIN in someone else's seat.  This time, a friend I've met from Scotland who's been volunteering outside of Rio helps me kick the 5 year old girl out of my seat because I felt too bad doing it.  I settle into my new seat, surrounded by a family of girls who are staring at me and talking about me in portuguese and saying that I don't understand it anyway when their mom scolded them. The mom is carrying an infant in her arms, and it was really cute, but I knew with the way my luck was going, when it was time to sleep, I would not be getting much. They're actually a really cute family of girls, and they offered me a sample of any cookie or snack they were eating.  The first one was horrible, but they got much better once they started eating cookies. They rejected my Soy Joys though. At some point during the trip, I noticed that the girl I was sitting by was breathing pretty heavily and it sounded like she was crying.  I tried to figure out what was going on then because she had a towel up against her mouth and I was really hoping she was just trying not to cough. Nope. She had thrown up or spit something up into the aisle and into the towel she was holding. Ewwwwww.  Thank god her sister cleaned it up asap and she made it to the bathroom before any real damage was done to my breathing space. But 10 minutes after the crisis happened, the mom had the bus driver pull over and the entire family of 5 women got off in the middle of nowhere. So weird! I hope they´re ok.

Just like Salvador, Rio was hot and muggy and just another sweat fest waiting to happen.  I got to my hostel and the first thing I noticed when I walked in was this huge Israeli flag.  I have nothing against Isreal, but I have yet to meet an Israeli who is fun and friendly.  I was so worried that the hostel was going to be full of antisocial Israelis..haha.  It wasn´t though--thank god.  I was actually supposed to be in room 6, but the owner moved me to room 8 because there weren´t any girls in room 6. I thought that was nice of him, and ended up meeting two Swiss girls who I hung out with.  We went to a samba club in Lapa which is where the craziness of carnaval happens.  I attempted to learn how to samba, but I was pretty unsuccessful.  It was amazing to watch the Brazilians go at it though!  They´re so fluid and smooth, and they need at least 6 feet of space all around them.  I think they´re all just born with this innate ability to dance.  Plus they´re born with good looks and big butts.  Nice life. 

Next morning, I was told I would have to move to room 6 but 15 minutes later the owner´s wife, said I wouldn´t have to. Okkkk. Another day with the swiss girls.  We went up to see the Chris the Redeemer statue. It´s really big. haha. No, it´s quite beautiful, and it gives great views of Rio.  Unfortuantely, the Swiss girls stink at taking pictures, so I was really unhappy because they never took a good picture of me at the statue. We spent the afternoon walking around Centro, the business area of Rio (I even saw the library!) and finished off our afternoon with some frozen yogurt from my new favorite place in the world, Yoforia (what an amazing name. haha.) and some time at Copacabana beach. What do you think of when you hear Copacabana?  That fun song?  Really pretty sand and water?  Well my friends, it is not as great as we thought. ha.  It was disappointing actually.  The water was not that pretty azul blue you see in pictures, it was actually a brownish color. I hoped that Ipanema would be better. I didn´t go out on Friday night because I ended up meeting people and talking to them for too long. No worries though.  I met new friends and took a day to recharge myself before the real craziness started.

Saturday morning and the hostel owner´s wife tells me I really do have to switch rooms because they asked someone in my room to switch and the guy had refused.  She said I could talk to him and maybe convince him to move to the room with all boys if I wanted.  Turns out, the guy who I´m supposed to have move is the guy who I just helped out getting settled into the breakfast routine. I was nice to a guy who was retarded and refused to switch rooms with me.  So I moved into a room with 5 guys--3 english and 2 sweeds.  Interesante.  Turns out, it was the best thing to have happened to me.  I hit it off really well with the English guys, and they became my new friends for the entire week.  The hostel owners always saw us together and kept asking if I was doing ok and telling the guys they had to take care of me. It was kinda funny.  We went out that night and were out until the sun came up that morning (our first sunrise of many more to come).  We went to Copacabana on the way home at 6:30am and ended up meeting some others from the hostel and we did a sunrise swim in the ocean. 

I spent my days with the boys just hanging out at Ipanema beach, watching the sunset there, and comparing things back and forth about England and the States.  They thought the way I talked was hilarious, and I had to point out that the things I said were pretty singular to me, and definitely not representative of America as a whole.  I´m pretty sure most people in America don´t say ``What the shit?!`` and ``O-m-g, that´s f´íng crazy!`` or `´j.k j.k.´´  The only thing that ever came out of their mouths to describe anything was ´´That is literally mental!´´ in the english accent of course where the ´e´ in literally is erased.  We went to the Sambadrome one night to watch the samba schools, and it was insane!!! The costumes, the concepts and the floats were absolutely amazing and beautiful!! I befriended the woman sitting in front of us, and she started to teach me how to sing along to the theme song of my favorite samba school whose theme song involved singing about books..haha, why I am I not surprised?  She was impressed with my pronunciation, but grew disappointed everytime she´d tell me to start singing along and I´d mess it up.  I can barely speak portuguese, I´m not sure how she expected me to be amazing at the singing. haha.  I´m bummed my favorite didn´t win--they even had a religions theme segment where they included hinduism. Yes those are Ganesh-es you see. Apparently, the owner of the winning samba school wins $10 MILLION. woah. I have some videos of the sambadrome (there are 100,000 ppl each night!).  Will try to get them up on fb.

I met Jen, my irish travel buddy, at 7am after our sunrise dip in the ocean. She is really sweet, and was super excited to meet me. It was really nice! Unfortunately, that was more or less the most time we spent together the entire time we were in Rio because we were in different rooms and both doing different things. I guess there will be more time to meet her later...the first being our 18 hour bus ride to Florianopolis. I also met 4 Americans and none of them made a good impression on anyone. One of these Americans was indian and our conversation went something like this:

Drunk Indian:  You´re American? Where are you from?
Me:  Chicago
Drunk Indian: Where in Chicago?
Me: Streeterville.
Drunk Indian:  Where in streeterville?
Me: Off Michigan Ave.
Drunk Indian:  Where off Michigan??
Me: Do you want my exact address or something so you can show up at my door? I live near the Water Tower Mall.
Drunk Indian:  Oh but you´re not from Chicago.  I bet you´re from Naperville.
Me:  No, I am NOT from Naperville. I´m from Indiana.
Drunk Indian (sensing the irritation in my voice): Oh I didn´t mean to offend you--you just look like the Naperville type.
Me: What does that even mean? Nevermind.  Nice meeting you, have a good night.
Drunk Indian Idiot:  Oh can I give you some advice?  I feel like I need to give you advice because I would give advice to my sister if she was alone in South America.
Me: No, I don´t want your advice, and I´m not alone. I am with these 3 guys here.
Drunk Indian: I really want to give you advice.

At this point, one of my english friends notices my annoyance and comes over and escorts me away from the idiot.  What the heck was that? And he wasn´t the only american to try to bascially get my address in Chicago by trying to pinpoint my EXACT location in chicago. Americans are weirdos abroad, and so far, no one I have met has made a good impression, and unfortunately, my foreign friends feel the same way about the ones they´ve met. Ugh. Good one America. Way to send weirdos to represent us. (not me though!)

I ended my stint in Rio peeling like crazy (ew), super tired, and with a cough that still won´t go away.  Unfortunately, Jen and I were not able to get a bus down to Florianopolis because there was only ONE seat left...so we´re detouring to Sao Paulo and we´ll head down after.  Overall, Rio was completely amazing, and although I didn´t spend carnaval in an inebriated state like 99.9% of the city, I still had a fantastic time, and cannot wait to come back! World Cup 2014?? Olympics 2016??