Day 7: I ate it…
…and not in a good way.
Today was completely free. After getting home around 1:30am last night I slept in till 9:00am and for the first time ever and much to my surprise, my first thought was “I REQUIRE COFFEE!” The forecast called from thunderstorms all day but at 11:00am the thunderstorms were moving out and I could see blue skies (sort of). We decided to head down and check out Porto da Barra. It’s about a 30-40 minute walk down to the coast from ACBEU, mostly down hill, as Breana’s Mãe puts it, “you walk to Porto da Barra, you take a bus or taxi back.” We all (Naomi, Angie, Anu, Breana, Carla, Victoria and I) at ACBEU around 1:30pm. I got there a little earlier and had an interesting run in with the security guard for ACBEU. So I’ve been here about a week and though I can now keep up a conversation at home with Mãe in VERY broken Portuguese, I am by no means fluent or understand 100% of what I’m told. So I say “Bom Dia” to the guard and he starts talking to me, he clearly thinks I’m there by some mistake. Anyways, I try to tell him that I’m just waiting for mis amigas who are meeting me “ahora” (I was trying to say “now”), in Spanish “ahora” means “now” unfortunately that is not the case (as I found out) in Portuguese, when pronounced, “ahora” or something close to that means “class” in Portuguese, so when I thought I was saying “meeting my friends now” he thought I was saying “my friends and I have class now.” So his response was “not now, tomorrow (amanhã).” So we started going back and forth me saying “ahora” and he saying “amanhã.” I finally started laughing, rolled my eyes, huffed, crossed my arms and sat down on the bench next to him to wait.
Once we made it to Porto da Barra we did a little shopping, got some beer, marveled at the men in speedos (they all have six packs), and head up the coast towards Shopping Barra.
Along the way we passed by Morro do Cristo (Hill of Christ) with a statue of Jesus Christ the Redeemer on top. Being the adventure that I am, I decided I wanted to go down the “cliff” a little ways to get a better shot of Christ. Needless to say, I busted my butt, good thing I have plenty of padding back there. Nothing was hurt but my ego which has taken plenty of hits this week due to the obvious tourist status I exude on a daily basis.
(the shot that busted my butt)