Day Four

I got off to a late start today. Because I knew we had the day off, I woke up at around 1 p.m. and realized the day was almost gone. Our entire class slept in though, so I didn't feel too guilty. Today is a holiday in Brazil. From what I gather from one of the people who work in the hotel, today is their equivalent to our Christmas, but without presents and gift giving. Most businesses have the day off and the streets are empty. It was also raining most of the day, which made it difficult to want to leave the hotel.

My roommate, Emily, gathered our whole class together and we went to the Yyamada for lunch.

The Yyamada seems to be a very central location for the people of Belém. Not only is it a grocery store, but it also sells clothing, makeup, toys and it has restaurants and a food court. Everyone in my class calls it the Brazilian WalMart, but I think it's more like a Costco than anything else.
After getting lunch, most of our class stayed and went shopping. I found a pair of Havianas with the Brazilian flag on them. I'm so excited because I have wanted a pair of sandals like the ones I bought for years.

I got some really great pictures of street graffiti today. I think it adds more character to the city and makes the streets more colorful. Some of the graffiti is much more amazing than work I've seen in the states.

Another quality I have noticed about this city is that people put their trash everywhere. It is actually really sad because there are just bags of trash piled up all over the place. This city has so much beauty, but seeing trash everywhere makes it seem like Belém is a dirty city. To all of my readers I don't want to give the impression that Belém looks like a giant dump, but I also don't want to be misleading by writing how beautiful and wonderful Belém is. João, a really nice gentleman who works at the front desk at our hotel, assured us that someone does come and pick up the piles of trash on the side of the road.

We also are working on our projects today. Emily and I have made a ten-minute video and now we're working on our paper about the museu we went to yesterday. Technology has not worked in our favor regarding the paper. Both of our cameras died at the Museu so we only had a small amount of video footage to add in our slide show. I also had to upload all the pictures I took on my phone to my computer. It took a while to go through, but we finally finished our slide show and we're very excited to post it on our blog.

On a separate note, our class went to a really good restaurant/bar last night called Favella. The place was decorated with a lot of random objects; for example, an entire wall was covered in bird house lights hanging from the ceilings used pants as shades. We all had dinner together and the food was probably the best food I've eaten this entire trip.

After our professor decided to leave because he didn't feel well, the rest of us started to order drinks and that's when the night started to get crazy. The soccer game was on (Brazil vs. Paraguay) so everyone was drinking and cheering for Brazil. The game was close and Brazil won by one point.

Our class ended up staying out all night. Our bill came to a total of 705 reais (Brazilian currency), which is the equivalent to about $350. It was quite a shocker at first, but we had enough between all of us.

Tomorrow we are going to the beach!! I'm really excited to see what Brazilian beaches are like. We have to drive two hours to get there, but I think it will be well worth the wait. Well I must close this entry and go work on the rest of my paper. Hopefully I'll have some really great pictures to post tomorrow.