Brazil

For reference if you want to look at them again or just have joined my journal:
http://picasaweb.google.com/paulistano, bryan also has some pictures of where he had been staying for the past two weeks and has taken some pictures of where he works.

All pictures can be found there, and they are all categorized by city, which is basically how the vacation went :)

Friday July 18th

We wake up, and decide to go to the beach. We went to the Copacabana/Ipanema beach in Rio. There are no pictures here because there was no way we were taking more than we absolutely had to since we both wanted to get into the water and play, and didn't want to risk our camera being stolen (since it apparently happens quite often with tourists). However, you can take my word for it that it was a BEAUTIFUL day, and was the perfect temp. I felt very out of place though as I had to wear one of Bryan's tank tops, a bra, and some gym shorts to be able to swim as I had no swimming suit to wear (not going to buy a swimming suit that I may only wear once in my life time!). Even if I had my typical modest one piece swim suit, or two piece swimsuit that covers everything that a one piece would, I would have still been completely out of place. I have never seen so many teeny tiny bikinis and soooooooooooooo many speedo like swimsuits. It was odd to see men wearing swim shorts/board shorts, and hardly ever did I see a woman wearing some kind of shorts or skirt (no matter how big she was) for the bottom part. It was an interesting feeling since I come from Utah where by comparison, swim suits are quite modest here.

Anyway, we spent about four hours there. We laid out for a bit (don't worry I had SPF 30 :) ), and then when we started getting hot, we went into the water. I got caught in an undertow, and refused to go deeper, as I was standing int he water yelling no to bryan's invitation to go further out, another wave caught me by surprise, and I got caught in that undertow as well. I would like to say it's EASY for me to get surprised and caught because I can't hear the waves coming, so if I'm facing the beach, I have no idea what's coming. But another part is, I've always been REALLY afraid of water and swimming. Hence why I suck at swimming. :) I was 15 before I would even jump off of the low diving board for class, and I had to do it, or else I would fail. That was the only reason why I didn't get an F in the class (I got a C+) for the swimming portion in middle school. Anyway, so Bryan keeps inviting me backin, I keep getting unreasonably grumpy at him, and shout no, and then eventually I brave past where the waves are usually breaking, and join him and just simply wave jump. It was soooooooooo nice, and the water was just an amazing temperature. The sand was great, just everything was awesome. We laid back out for a little while longer, then we went and got some lunch.

Afterwards we decided to go back to the hotel, shower, change and hurry over to the christ statue. You can see the picture of that portion of the trip at the website. I hated how out of place I felt there. Big white pregnant girl, with a very American accent (western one at that!), wearing very different clothes. It was funny because someone had asked me a question, and I just said sorry, i don't speak portugese, but he does and would point to Bryan. He would chat away with them (I didn't mind), and then I would catch them looking at me and the person saying "Americana?" They NEVER asked if Bryan was American, just me. I was a bit offended by that, because Bryan is just as American as I am! But it was still interesting to be the odd one out, and feel like the vacationer that everyone is looking at going "oh she's obviously not from here" I've never really been on that side before.

The train ride up to the christ state was a long one, and was so, oh my freaking heck, steep. I was glad we had paid the money to ride the train, or else we would have never made it up with me. With all the walking we had done combined by this point, I really had to consciously make my legs move if there was any sort of incline or stair to go up. It was getting more difficult to walk around. We get up to the Christ statue, and it's one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen in my life. I just wish we could've made all the other tourists disappear, and it would have just been that much more amazing. You can see how big it is, and everything from the pictures. There was also a chapel there from when the pope came and did a mass there. It was a pretty unique experience being in there. Then we get done, and take the train back. We get some dinner, and head to the movie where we watched Dark Knight. The sound was in English, and everything was subtitled in Portuguese, but that didn't help me much with my deafness :) It was still fun to watch and see the subtle differences in movie watching, and places of where to laugh and make other various noises were. Now this part I'm going to steal from a baby post I made:

"I think all the noise and the vibrations from how loud it was was just making the baby move a lot. As we were watching a pretty intense scene, a fighting one, i could feel the baby kicking pretty hard, so I took Bryan's hand and put it on my tummy (he didn't even seem to notice!), and he did feel it kick, just didn't realize what it was. So I waited for three more kicks, and finally, this was about the time the intense scene was over, I asked Bryan "did you feel that?!" He turns to me and says yes, then the light clicked on and he goes "OH MY GOSH!" :) That was definitely one of the biggest highlights of the trip. We were afraid he wouldn't get to feel the baby kick before I had to leave to come back, and I was leaving that following Monday, so we were starting to lose hope, or at least I was."

It was a fun experience :) Afterwards we went back to the hotel and slept and somewhat packed as we were leaving the next day to fly to Sao Paulo.