Sick in Hammock

This morn­ing I woke up with a ter­ri­ble head cold. I fig­ured it would hap­pen sooner or later because I have encoun­tered many peo­ple with colds. Some­thing about the cool, but humid win­ter weather must be doing it. I spent the day in my ham­mock read­ing and work­ing on some gram­mar exercises.

Even my gram­mar book is antic­i­pat­ing the Cae­tano Veloso con­cert on Tuesday!

Yes­ter­day I ended up in Barra by acci­dent. Barra is described by my guide­book at a neigh­bor­hood styled after an Amer­i­can sub­urb which is to be avoided. I was going to meet some friends for a hike, but there was some mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion about when we were meet­ing and how long it would take to get there. I met Stacy to catch the bus in Copaca­bana and we headed west. By the time we reached Barra where we were sup­posed to switch to the bus to take us to the nature reserve, it was get­ting close to sun­set. Best not to go then… Stacy wanted to get her­self a sweater while we were there, so we ven­tured into the shop­ping mall, Barra’s biggest attrac­tion. I almost imploded. The place was so crowded! At least three time more crowded than any mall in the US I have been in. I did my best to be polite and patient, but when one of Stacy’s friends showed up and wanted to wait for more friends to hang out in the neigh­bor­hood, I had enough. I got on the bus by myself and headed back. I should have taken pic­tures as I had my cam­era on me and it would have been totally safe. I would also have coped bet­ter with the oppres­sive atmos­phere if I had some­thing to focus on. I was just so over­whelmed and irri­tated that I spaced. The bus ride out there was quite pretty though, espe­cially this strip of high­way. Just stunning.

One shop­ping trip I did enjoy this week was going to get some swim wear with Fer­nanda, my Por­tuguese tutor. First store we went into, 20 min­utes, well priced, easy!

Obvi­ously I need to get myself into the sun! I match the closet!