Adventures with Bri: No, no obrigado

greetings from rio friends!!!! we have been having a blast here, quite the life. Yesterday we woke up to amazing weather... upon recommendation we decided to get all the tourist attractions with views out of the way. So we hopped a bus and took a tour of the city. the citys included pao de azucar (sugar loaf), the beaches (copacabana, ipanema, etc), macarana staduim (the host to the 2014 world cup), the cathedral metropolitana de sao sebastiao, the samba street, corovado (aka Jesus!!), and these crazy famous steps that are mosaic that i am drawing a blank on right now....

we had a great time, well except for the fact that kat-ie felt like death. fortunately the rec. here wrote down medicine in portuguese for us to we could go to the drogria for some meds so she is feeling better today. We also had a lasting impression on our tour guide, anrdres, as he invited us to go out with him tonight.... now before you all have a hissy fit, we consulted the rec (who are girls) who informed us that andres is very nice, has taken many vistors out, and is safe. There so do not fear, we will not be sold to the drug lords, well tonight at least, hehehe. but also the selling point of joining andres is he speaks both english and prtuguese and we will have a male companion joining us to protect us along with our pepper spray!

today we headed to the copacabana beach... which was awesome except for the intense wind... it would blow the sand up and it felt like you were getting pelleted to death by small little needles.... i dunno if that makes sense, but basically it was painful.... we also saw many many man speedos and lady thongs... the surprising thing is we were expecting everyone to look like Gisele. And will there were a few (and yes mark I have pictures for you) there was also quite the range of body types, making katie and i feel at home. After a few hours of being assulted by the sand, we headed to the beachside bar in which we got coconuts and the rum sugar drink the make here, cannot even begin to spell it our, so sorry you will not be getting the proper name. We sat on the boardwalk watched the water and was assulted by numerous street vendors. Which I do not know why. i mean katie can vouch for me, i have been trying to blend with the natives, yesterday bright yellow shorts and a pink shirt, and today a neon fanny pack. but alas, we are sized up as tourist everytime. so much that they hand us english menus (which they thankfully have) as soon as we walk in. Also an interesting observation from today, like i mentioned before, the men here are less agressive,,, but are... lets say assertive, in their own way... what do i mean, well rather than coming up to you and trying to offer you a gift (aka a kiss) or yelling at you like they do in brazil, here they stare and stare and stare and stare and stare and stare and stare and stare and stare, never ever breaking their line of vision, except to blink, then once you walk away they blow kisses at you... hahaha. i have tried the stare them down approach but that only seems to encourage them because they never break their stare, so my new approach is to be equally as agressive. We tested it today, in which after a solid hour of smiling at us and staring, i went up to dude and said can i take a picture with you. in which case he became very self aware, shy, and embarassed especially since his friends stared teasing him, worked like a charm, took the photo and he minded his own business. hahaha priceless,

shortly after, it stared to pour, not as bad as argentina but enough to hurry us back to the hostel to change and figure out lunch... so that is it for now....

here are some pics...

jungle on sugar loaf