So Baroque!

This weekend Alissa, Anthony, and I took a short but nice trip to Ouro Preto. Ouro Preto, or "Black Gold," earned its name from tarnished gold nuggets mined in the surrounding areas. The town became wealthy due to its mining and is a colonial town that is covered in Baroque architecture with beautiful churches and museums. Travels were somewhat long since we had to go from Juiz de Fora to Lafaiete to Ouro Preto. Once we arrived there we realized that everything was within walking distance. We ended spending two nights in Ouro Preto at a very nice hostel called "La em Casa". Our hostel was located at the very center of the city in Praca Tiradentes. Speaking of Tiradentes, Ouro Preto was the base of the Inconfidencia rebellion led by Tiradentes against the Portuguese colonists. That's pretty neat!

For the first day we were there we managed to cover a lot of ground. We went to the Museu da Incofidencia, which featured relics related to the Inconfidents and different pieces of history and art. After that we headed to the Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Carmo, which has various pieces by a famous sculptor named Aleijandinho. Close to this church was the local theater which they claimed to be the oldest functioning theater in all of the Americas. We then trekked over to the Igreja de Sao Francisco de Assis, which is one of Latin Americ's most important Rococo buildings. This church also featured work from Alejandinho and a famous painter that went by the name of Mestre Athayde. Thankfully with the ticket to enter this church we also got a ticket to the Museu de Alejandinho that is located in the church Matriz de Nossa Senhora da Conceicao, which was also gorgeous. With that our first day was at an end and we decided to get some R and R.

For our second day we  still had plenty of ground to cover in Ouro Preto. We got acquainted with other parts of the city and bought groceries to cook dinner that night. Simply walking around the town was a site seeing experience. We then visited a couple more churches that were impressive, but might have been overshadowed by the churches we had witnessed the day before. We visited yet another museum, Casa dos Contos, which was once the gold exchange but is now a museum dedicated to money and finance. We also took a walk through a nice park that goes right through the town next to a stream. Once we reached the end of the park, we were right next to the Matriz de Nossa Senhora de Pilar, a church which has the second most gold in Brazil. I unfortunately could not get a picture of this church. The only reason I have pictures of any of the other churches is because I went stealth mode and took a few shots when no one was looking. We then decided to call it a day and enjoy some good food and good company.

Finally we made an early departure back home on the third day. Ouro Preto did not fail to impress me one last time before leaving since it was covered entirely in a fog that looked beautiful with the architecture of the town.
 

Museu da Inconfidencia

Nossa Senhora do Carmo

Nossa Senhora do Carmo

Nossa Senhora do Carmo

Ouro Preto

Sao Francisco de Assis

Sao Francisco de Assis

Sao Francisco de Assis

Sao Francisco de Assis

 Ouro Preto

Ouro Preto

Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo is what some people call the New York of Latin America. It is currently the seventh largest city in the world with a population of almost nineteen million people. This past weekend my friends and I decided it would be a good idea to take advantage of our six day weekend by going to visit said city.

Day 1: We arrived in Sao Paulo at 5:40 in the morning after a seven hour bus ride. We then took the metro to Tanyu's cousin's house, where we resided for our short stay. We stayed in the neighborhood of Liberdade, a predominately Japanese neighborhood. We kicked off the day by going to Ibirapuera park and the Mercado Municipal where we had its most famous food, the mortadella sandwich. We went to the exact same place that Anthony Bourdain went, for anyone that watches the travel channel. After the Mercado we went to an international market that is on the street 25 de Marzo. It was quite busy, but we were on a mission. Alissa (another foreigner here in Juiz) had conned us into getting tickets to see the ballet. Although the men were reluctant, we decided we would make that sacrifice. We bought the tickets, went back home, dressed up and headed back to the Teatro Municipal. There, we endured one hour of what Alissa referred to as "modern dance". To say the least, it was a great experience and I thank her for dragging us along.

Day 2: After taking in a little bit of culture, we decided that it was time for some fun. We took a bus to the Sao Paulo Zoo where we spent a few hours taking in all sorts of wildlife. When I say wildlife, I am also including the enormous school groups of young elementary children running around yelling and laughing. After the Zoo we headed over to the Museo de Lingua Portuguesa. A museum that is only about the Portuguese language. I am going to be honest here, I did not really learn that much, but man they had some really cool displays. Lots of visual entertainment and definitely worth a visit with a student price of three reais. We finally returned and decided to call it a night.

Day 3: This day we decided to live the good life. We went to Avenida Paulista, which is the business district of Sao Paulo. There we proceeded to window shop at the mall and pretend like we had the money to buy something. Our next destination was Tandoor, an Indian restaurant. You see, in Brazil they don't have as much ethnic diversity in their food choices so this was a real treat. The food was ok for the price and lacked in spices in my opinion. We didn't just stop there, we decided that a good way to finish the night was by paying a visit to the hotel Unique. At this hotel they had a bar, the Skye Bar to be exact, that was at the very top of the building. There we took in the ~320 degree view of Sao Paulo and pretended that we could actually afford this lifestyle. We then took the metro back home and looked fondly upon the glamorous life we once lived.

Day 4: This might have been the best part of our stay. We went to the semifinals of the Copa Paulista and watched Santos play Sao Paulo. Here is Anthony's play by play of the game.

Game begins. São Paulo on the offensive, Santos absorbing pressuring and then breaking forward quickly to find Neymar’s feet as often as possible. PK. Neymar 1, São Paulo 0. São Paulo rallies to find a header rejected by the post off a set piece. Neymar recieves the ball on the left side of the field, just in front of where we are fortunate enough to be sitting, and toys with a defender. A cut to the right, pause, a sharp cut to left. Another cut to the right, another sharp cut to the left. The defender dives, Neymar gets fouled in classic fashion. The crowd is as impressed as it is angry. Just before halftime, a leisurely Neymar receives the ball in the middle, close to São Paulo’s goal. Easily drifting around a defender, he exposes a gaping hole in São Paulo’s defense and effortlessly tucks away a second. Neymar 2, São Paulo 0.
Second half. São Paulo shifts tactics, realizes they can’t leave a large gap between the midfield and defense to allow Santos a race against numbers on a fast break. They commit more players to Neymar, removing him from the game for a few minutes. As São Paulo creeps closer to getting a goal back, Santos slips away and Neymar finds the post on what looked to be a sure close to his hat trick. After breathtakingly close attempts, São Paulo finally finds the net as Willian cuts one way, keeps his composure and calmly finishes in the opposite corner, giving the crowd a breath of life. Neymar 2, São Paulo 1. Just as São Paulo is looking to equalize and send the game into extra time, Neymar resurfaces and takes a crack from a ways out. Keeper error. Neymar 3, São Paulo 1. Crowd is silent.

I really had the opportunity to watch some outstanding soccer. Can't complain about having the chance to watch Neymar, the best player in the world according to Pele.

Day 5: We had to leave at ten forty that night so it turned out to be a pretty low key day. We pretty much just ate some food, such as takoyaki, and hung out at the house all day. We also played a lot of poker, not only that day but during the evenings of most of our stay. We then said our goodbyes around nine and headed back to good ol' Juiz de Fora.

I am not really the kind of person that enjoys large cities, but I really did enjoy my stay in Sao Paulo and had a lot of fun. I am looking forward to my next adventure. Here is a link to a video that Tanyu made of our trip to Rio. I left a day earlier since I had already been to Christ Redeemer and I was not able to go to the soccer game since I was dropping Evan off at the airport. Enjoy!

http://vimeo.com/40428060

As an end note: Sorry for the out of order pictures and Sao Paulo has a little squiggly line above the first "a".

Ibirapuera Park

Morumbi Stadium after the game

Neymar in the blue

Torcida de Sao Paulo

View from Skye Bar

Ant Eaters

Brazilian Jungle Cat

 

 Museo de Lingua Portuguesa

Estacao da Luz (next to museum)

Tucan

Some South American bears

Giraffe...

Spider Monkey

Teatro Municipal

Teatro Municipal

Teatro Municipal

Mercado Municipal

 

Teatro again

Home of the mortadella sandwich ("Bourdainin' it")

Mercado Municipal

A little bit of Sao Paulo

Yes, I am still blogging

Some may say that I have been somewhat neglectful of my blog. This is true.

After spending two months in Brazil I am finally not asking myself "what to do?" everyday. I am attending four classes at the University here: Spanish Literature (taught completely in Spanish), Politics 1 (Taught in Portuguese), and Religions of Brazil (Taught in Portuguese and considered a graduate/undergraduate course), and finally there is Soccer (hardest class...). Conveniently I take all sixteen credit hours, which is full time student material, Monday through Wednesday. I know, it's pretty neat that I have a four day weekend every week.

So what have I been up to since Ibitipoca (the waterfall place)? Not a whole heck of a lot.

Mostly I have been going to classes and going to the gym here. From time to time all four American foreigners will organize together and we will engage in some sort of activity, but nothing too exciting. After living here for a couple months I have a grasp on the city in general. I know where to go and where not to go and most importantly where to eat. The food here is tasty but I have to say I miss having all the variety there is back home. If you go out to eat there are zero options for spicy food and there aren't any Indian or Thai places to eat at. I did happen to eat some good pizza and sushi here though.

Anyway, onto more interesting things.

The last two weeks I was able to spend sometime with Kristin and Evan which was really nice. they were both here for a duration of a week one after the other. With Kristin we mostly hung out in Juiz de Fora and relaxed. The night she left, we got to Rio early and I took her to Christ Redeemer which was still as breathtaking as the first time. When Evan came down here we did mostly the same things except that we got two full days in Rio. We got there on Friday and stayed next to the Arcs of Lapa, which I had not seen yet. Since it was Easter weekend, Rio was pretty busy. We got to the hostel, left our stuff there and headed down to Ipanema beach. Came back to the Rio Bohemia hostel and enjoyed the famous night life of Lapa.

The next day we went to see Christ Redeemer but we got there at 12:30 and the next available ticket was for 3:30. Unfortunately, Evan had a flight to catch that night and I did not want to risk not making it to the airport on time. I felt pretty bummed for him, but we went to Pista Claudio by the Sugar Loaf and we were able to see some monkeys up close and to also see a sea turtle. We ended up going back to Lapa grabbed some dinner and Evan ate his last acai beverage.

Here are some pics, there may be a few more to come!

Juiz de Fora at night

Morro do Christo

 Social area at the hostel

View from outside the hostel

Arcs of Lapa shot from the hostel

Pub in the hostel (and Tony)

A short yet great video of our trip to Ibitipoca

Here is the link to the video of the trip Tanyu and I made to Ibitipoca last week. This video was filmed and edited by Tanyu and I have to say that he did a great job. I hope that you enjoy.

Click here to see the video!

Ibitipoca, Hiking, and Waterfalls

So it has been over a couple week since I first got to Juiz de Fora. I have been doing a lot of walking all over the town and know my way around now. I will begin to attend the university this Monday and I would say it is just about time to start going to classes anyway. Now that I will be going to class I have the chance to meet some more people, hopefully, and to also have something to occupy all the free time I have during the day. It will be interesting to see how classes will be in Portuguese.

Juiz de Fora

 

Metropolitan Church (I believe...)

Today I just got back from the state park of Ibitipoca. Tanyu and I felt that with a week with zero classes we could not just stay in Juiz de Fora so we decided to go somewhere new. Our Journey started on Tuesday with our bus ride to Lima Duarte at 6:30 in the morning. Once we arrived there, we realized that Tanyu had been misinformed about the bus schedule and that we would have to wait until 3:15. The visitor center for Lima Duarte suggested that we hitchhike to Ibitipoca. We ended up walking to the hitchhiker hot spot and threw our thumbs up for a few hours without any luck. We finally gave up and decided to grab a bite to eat and watch the day go by.

Thankfully, we also managed to take a nap on a bench in the park. Once we got on the bus we had a rough ride to the small village in the mountains. We ended up making a new friend on the bus who told us about the cheapest place to stay and the cheapest place to eat. The village of Ibitipoca seemed like a place that relied heavily on tourism. Although it was very small it was also very "cute". All the roads were either built with stone or brick. Seemed like they also had some music festivals such as Ibitipoca Reggae and Ibitipoca Blues. The day after we arrived we got up bright and early and walked 3k to the entrance of the park. At first we had a 16k loop in mind for our hike but we decided to go for it all instead and did the entire park loop. At the end of the day we managed to do a total of 30k (18 miles) of hiking. The park was fantastic and also not very busy. I could try to explain it but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

  

 Our Pousada

Church in Ibitipoca

Road to the Cemetery 

Behind the church

Our humble room

Millipede 

Cruzeiro (Tallest point in the park)

Entrance to a Gruta

 

Top of the Cachoeirinha

 

 

Janela do Ceu (Window of the Sky)

Waterfall at the Janela

Cachoeirinha

Cachoeira dos Macacos

After our long day of hiking we ate at a buffet, with all you can eat homemade food for the cost of 10 reais. We went to bed at the late hour of 7pm and headed back to Juiz de Fora at 8:30 in the morning. I am glad to say that we were able to find our way around in Portuguese with ease and also received many compliments on our speaking. Many people thought we were tourist from Sao Paulo! I cannot wait to see what adventures I will have next.