The past week's been pretty good. The first few days were just school and just hanging out afterward, but on Thursday me and some guys went and bought sungas (brazilian speedos, there the rectangle ones instead of triangles), then went out to the beach to play some soccer with brazilians. Turned out pretty good. Friday we went to "Favela Paintball", theres a guy that went to PUC-Rio last year and just decided to stay, a few months ago he helped start a paintball business in one of the favelas, so a group of probably 30 gringos were walking through Santa Marta friday afternoon to play paintball at the top of the hill. It was fun, and the view was great, the favelas always have the best views of the city since they're on the hillside.
Saturday we went to Petropolis, a city about an hour away, it was a tour with the school, so not as fun as it could have been. Its where the portuguese royal family hung out, and I think it was the capitol at one point. The also have a few breweries and drink factories. We went to a museum and ate, and thats about it. But in the museum you had to put slippers over your shoes to not scratch the wood and marble. The slippers were, well, slippery, so you could slide, so that made it at least a little more fun.We also went to the house of some dude who they claims to be the first person to fly, in 1906. One guy was a little pissed at the anti-american propaganda. Overall a pretty good day.
Today I bought tickets to watch the parade of champions during carnival, supposed to be pretty cool. Then later going to get tickets for a Flamengos game (the club that Ronaldinho used to play for) that on wednesday, then to a pre-carnival samba practice or something, not really sure. Should be good though.
This is the last week of portuguese classes, over on thursday, then start back around the first of march with real classes. Still trying to figure out what I'm doing for the break. Ill let y'all know how it all goes.

Right before the last post I had my first samba experience and forgot about it. It was my host brothers birthday party, his 32nd I think. He went to a samba club in a favela pretty close by, it was pretty sweet. The took one of those caged in public basketball courts, decorated it and put in a sound system. It was pretty sweet. Two hours after we got they finally started dancing (they kept telling me they weren't drunk enough yet). It was pretty cool at first, since it was new I guess, but it was really loud and crowded so it got old kinda fast.

The week between now and then was pretty normal. Had a test on Thursday and a day off on Friday though. With the day off we decided to hike up Pedra da Gavea, i was told it was the best hike in Rio. On the way to meet a guy who lived near the base we took a little tour through Rocinha, supposedly the largest favela in South America, just looks like a crappy neighborhood anywhere else I guess. We meet on the other side of Rocinha and start walking where we were told to. Apparently there was a communication failure, the brazilians thought we wanted to go to the rock you hang glide off of. It took us a while and to figure this out though, so it was too late to go back to the original plan. We ended up checking out an ok waterfall and heading back home. It was pretty fun though.

Yesterday we did, however, make it to the right spot, with new directions. The hike was really cool, took about 3 hours up. And you can see the whole city from the top.  Well worth the wait. Kennedy, when y'all come we'll go there for sure.

Got here almost two weeks ago. I'm at a homestay with a brasilian family, they're pretty cool. And I live in a, I guess, upper middle class neighborhood called Ipanema. There's apparently a song out there called "The Girl from Ipanema". Haven't heard it yet. Classes started last monday, just portuguese for now then other stuff in late february. Haven't done anything too exciting yet. A lot of walking around the city I guess. Been out to the beach but it always really crowded so... not so nice. Friday is a holiday, so we'll have a long weekend, researching some trips into the national forest behind the school. well, I'll let ya'll know how it goes, and maybe keep this a regular thing, we'll see.

Katy told me I should start a blog so I wouldn't have to right a bunch of emails, so here it is. Hopefully it'll go better than Kennedy's China one.