Her name was Lola...

It's our weekend off in Rio and it freaking won't stop raining!  Yesterday we abandoned plans to take the Sugarloaf cable car (what's the point in challenging my gut-wrenching fear of heights when the entire city is shrouded in fog?) in favor of a hike through the rainforest in Tijuca National Park...which was positively lovely, but I still resent the foiling of my plans to spend the morning roasting on the beach. 

I had intended to rectify yesterday's thwarting by spending this morning sprawled on the Copacabana beach in my itty-bitty Brazilian Bikini (which will never see the light of day in any country other than this one), before heading to the hippy market in Ipanema this afternoon, but alas the weather had other ideas.  Hopefully the sun will make an appearance later today and we'll be able to get a few hours of beach time in before sunset.  My super-pasty-self needs a TAN!!

Also we drove past the Ipanema beach yesterday on our way back from the rainforest, and the men there were significantly hotter than in Copacabana.

Icky weekend weather aside, I absolutely love Rio.  The sprawl is intense--flying over on the way in I could hardly fathom the vastness of this place.  Wedged between enormous green, rocky mountains, every inch of flat land is positively covered.  In some places the sprawl continues up the sides of the mountains until the cliff faces become too sheer and the buildings appear as if they could simply slide off.  Even the favelas mimic the mountainous landscape, teetering asymetrically on top of one another in colourfully haphazard clusters.

I wish that our professors hadn't begun this experince by instilling us with a far-from-healthy level of paranoia about crime.  Thus far I have never felt threatened or unsafe, and I resent being made to feel that I must leave my  camera in the hotel or else... The result is that I have very few photos of this experience, and thus am doing my best to keep a mental record of what I love about Rio.

I especially love the beaches, which are beautiful, and the women, who come in all shapes and sizes, and who all wear the tiniest of bikinis, cellulite and stretch-marks be-damned.  Never in my life (or at least since puberty) have I felt less self-conscious on the beach--hence the purchasing of a nearly-non-existent bikini which now may never see the light of day.

I wish I had more time here--or more time outside the classroom. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that this will not be my last visit.