Weekend

Haven´t really had a chance to update in a few days, everything has been great here though.

On Saturday we went to the Tomarro Project which is on a beach around an hour outside of Salvador. The drive out was interesting because in the direction we were going we went through around 20 favelas, it was amazing to see how many there are. The houses are all packed on the hill so close that you can only get up through tiny staircases. Its been interesting to see how they compare to what we thought they would be like...all Americans really know about favelas is from City of God so we assume that they´re all violent and controlled by drug lords. That movie is about one specific favela in Rio which is one specific city in Brazil, so when you see how many people live in favelas you realize how ridiculous it is to assume they´re all the same. Most of them are also not really violent, just really really poor, and its kind of stupid how much we focus on the violence compared to the poverty which is so much more overwhelming of a problem.

Anyway the Tomarro Project was nice and we got to hang out on the beaches around there all day with a lot of the Brazilian students. I like the beaches here so much better than on the islands I´ve been to because they basically go on forever...in the Dominican and Jamaica its like small resorts with a small beach and then the next resort with their beach. The beaches in Brazil you can basically walk on forever, even the city beaches feel untouched compared to the other places I´ve been to. The town that was by Tomarro was really nice too and everyone did a lot of shopping there.

On Sunday we went back to Pelourinho which is the area that has most of the cool touristy things in Salvador. The neighboorhood has tons of cool architecture and all the buildings are crazy colors, its the first place where the Portuguese first settled in Brazil so they went pretty crazy with everything. When you walk through Pelourinho you eventually get to a point where you´re about 8 stories up looking out over the bay with water all around you, and there´s an elevator that goes down to the lower city that has a lot of shopping and more cool things to see like capoirera. I got a really nice painting there on Sunday for 25 Reais, which is about 15 dollars.

On Sunday night Gabrielle and Pedro, who are 2 of the Brazilian students, took a few of us to a concert. It was Motumba...there´s tons of videos on Youtube if you want to check out what its like. It was really fun, it was in a huge open air place and I couldn´t believe how many people were there and how crazy everyone went. The band had drummers, horn players, tons of girls dancing, and constant crazy lighting and cofetti. Between that watching all the Brazilians dance there was way too much going on to keep track of it all, it went by really quick.

Anyway that´s about it for now. My eyes are exhausted from looking at the computer screen, I guess I´ve stopped staring at it as often so they aren´t as used to it.