Rockin' in Rio

According to my internship director, I'm a boss at writing proposals. An original gangster, I think he said. I did a fantastic job with last week's assignment for National Geographic, so now we're just waiting on their official return letter!

Let's see, this is gonna be a Sparknotes entry because I'm super busy and behind schedule with these blog posts. Last Tuesday I ended a long day at school with some intense futsal competition with Gustavo at the apartment complex next door. It was hecka fun and both of us played pretty well. Wednesday was mostly spent writing the proposal, Thursday was school, and Friday was beach exercise and letter writing. On Saturday, the director of my internship rented a recording studio in Botafogo for me and two other program friends. We jammed for five hours on his three guitars and bass, and a professional drummer accompanied us for part of the time. It was SO much fun! We played everything from Johnny Cash to Oasis, Chuck Berry to Los Lonely Boys. It's been a while since I've played electric guitar, so that was sweet. After the studio session, I went back home quickly and got dressed up a bit. I walked to Ipanema and met some friends to confront the pizza rodizio once again. This time we definitely won the battle. I ate about 16 pieces, which was well worth the US$9. Somehow we were able to stand up after a few hours of stuffing ourselves, and we made our way to a housewarming party in Leme. Four girls in the program just moved in to an unbelievable apartment overlooking the beach; it belongs to a family friend of one of the girls, so they're getting it ridiculously cheap. There was loud music, lively conversation, and a table full of food that made me sick to look at for the first couple hours. I knew I was going to stay late, and since Leme is pretty far from Leblon, I just stayed over the whole night with a bunch of other people. We didn't sleep a wink. The sunrise was gorgeous, and I would have been down to take a dip in the ocean if others went, but instead a few of us caught a bus home at 6:30am.

I slept soundly for six hours, woke up, ate lunch, and headed straight back to the beach. I spent Sunday afternoon playing soccer and swimming in the ocean, then watched the second half of the Flamengo-Internacional game and took a bus home. On Monday I met my friend David at PUC to talk about our impending trip. We made some hostel reservations, so now it is totally official. Today we're gonna go to a travel agent to buy our bus and plane tickets, and then we'll be set. The itinerary is basically the same as I described in the last post, except that we'll finish in Porto Alegre for two days before flying back to Rio. We'll just happen to be there on the day of the Gre-Nal (the soccer game between rivals Grêmio and Internacional, the southern equivalent of the Fla-Flu in Rio), so we'll definitely check that out. Monday night I played pick-up soccer for a couple hours, and my team dominated those barefoot 15-year-olds. Haha that doesn't seem like a very big feat, but it is. Trust me.