Long week, classes are going…

This has been a long week of class. I have found myself feel­ing over­whelmed and lethar­gic, hence the lack of blog­ging. Tri­cia is here, which is lovely. I do enjoy many peo­ple in the group, but I get a lit­tle bugged out by the group dynamic. I have never trav­eled in a group and now I know why. I have missed hang­ing out with my lovely Brazil­ian friends. Tonight though! There’s a festa jun­ina in St. Teresa.

Alright, let’s a quick visual recap:

Thurs­day I took more pic­tures of Fer­nanda after our Por­tuguese ses­sion. It was a good ses­sion and we chat­ted in Por­tuguese mostly about the var­i­ous men that are pur­su­ing her and about the antic­i­pated arrival of minha namorada…

Fri­day night was a lit­tle birth­day bash for Livia. We went to Ovelha Negra in Botafogo, a cham­pagne bar with good atmos­phere fre­quented by a rugged sophis­ti­cated crowd, as far as I could read.

I ended up hang­ing out with on of Livia’s friends’ Joanna after­wards, doing the good old plas­tic tables and beer on the side­walk. She’s fan­tas­tic. We just chat­tered for hours. Finally I decided to make my way home because I had to pick Tri­cia up from the air­port at 8:30 in the morn­ing. We wan­dered through the streets of Lapa and I even­tu­ally got into a cab. Lapa is one of the more con­gested night spots on Fri­days. Where we hung out was out­side the hub (so much so that Joanna’s friend joked that I should stop jab­ber­ing so loud in Eng­lish or we’d get robbed!), but the most crowded part was just over­flow­ing with peo­ple. Men would just come up and say crap like they loved you or other inane pick up lines in Eng­lish, and then per­sist regard­less of your response. I briefly ran into Stacy, and her friend Isabela. I hear peo­ple shout­ing from across the crowd, “Ida! Ida!” I felt so pop­u­lar! I would have staid, but I needed to get a lit­tle sleep.

The next day, I hung out in the air­port for a few hours as the flight was late and the inter­net was down at the apart­ment so I didn’t check the sta­tus before leav­ing. I hung out with Sara and Leon, two other stu­dents, who just got in and were wait­ing for the next flight of some 10 stu­dents. Even­tu­ally Tri­cia and the rest arrived and I leaped into her lap and it was a jubi­lant reunion in the air­port. Yay!

We mel­lowed out for the week­end, walk­ing on the beach and watch­ing the sun­set on Arpoador, the rocks between Copaca­bana beach and Ipanema. We even saw Peter trolling around with his medium for­mat cam­era. The rocks are gor­geous and I found it hard to not com­pul­sively take pic­tures. Peter is shoot­ing a port­fo­lio there, has been work­ing on it for maybe six months or more.

That night we had our open­ing din­ner for the course. The class ate at a restau­rant at Copaca­bana and then wan­dered around look­ing for some night hap­pen­ing to get crazy at. (Gosh, I’m feel­ing beat… I have a cold today, again.… I’ll con­tinue this soon.)