Boa noite!

I'm finally starting to settle in a bit here. Yesterday was kind of crazy, but in a really fun way. We all slept in, which was much needed. Breakfast is included at the hostel, which includes several kind of fresh fruit, fresh bread, and eggs/pancakes made to order, plus Brazilian coffee.

There was a little bit of chaos at first, trying to decide what we wanted to do. We tried going to the mall to exchange money, but due to it being Sunday, the mall opened much, much later. We got a few supplies from the local grocery store, and then headed down to the beach. We're staying on the very tip of Salvador, so we have two beaches very close by: the surfing beach, which has a TON of waves and lots of rocks, and the swimming beach, which is much calmer. We decided to forgo the surfing for now in favor of actual swimming.

The water was amazing. It was warm, but still refreshing, and just enough waves to do a little bit of body surfing. We swam out to where there were some stairs. It didn't seem that far but it was a great workout due to the current. I made friends with some little boys who were jumping off boats. The beach itself was kind of funny. The beaches here are actually pretty narrow, so people are crammed into each other. Vendors peddle all kinds of food and jewelry. Specialities include coconut water and grilled cheese....which is a hunk of parmesan literally grilled over the fire.

After the beach we went to mall to exchange money and look around for a bit. There is a movie theatre in the mall, so Harry Potter in Brazil might be a possibility. Most of the other students are HP nerds as well, so it feels right at home :)

The UFBa staff (basically, our professors) took us out to dinner at this really good seafood restaurant on the beach. Brent and I ordered something called Merascado, which turned out to be some sort of seafood stew. It had oysters, lobster, squid, fish, crab, and shrimp all mixed together. It was little bit intimidating to eat (the squid chunks had very large tentacles!), but very tasty. I also ordered a carafe of sangria, which was the best I've ever had.

After dinner, we decided to go out walking and look for ice cream, which we did find at "Gelateria de Barra". I had a mixture of chocolate cookie and cream. Then we walked back and hung out in the courtyard of the hostel and swapped stories with some of the other guests. Besides us, there are travelers from Ireland, England, Colorado, and Australia.

Today we had to wake up VERY VERY VERY EARLY for class. Okay, it was only 6:30, but it felt much earlier. We spent from from 8 until 12:30 in the classroom, listening to two different guest professors. The first lecture was on changing health concerns in Brazil, and the second lecture was on the anthropology of Brazil. We had lunch at a very cute restaurant near the university, and met the university director.

So far, I really like Brazil. It's very chaotic, for sure, but very fun. And everyone is so nice! I know way less Portuguese than I thought I did, and outside the university very few people know more than few words of English, but somehow we all smile and cobble together our own sort of language. We've dubbed it "Michiguese".

Well, that's about it for today. Dinner is going to be served soon, and we're all thinking about picking up some beer and heading down to the beach for our own mini 4th of July party.

Ate logo!

-Brit