Brasil

Well, this is long overdue, but I thought I'd share some images from my Brasil vacation in March. I took this vacation since my brother would be traveling to Brasil on business. I thought I'd take advantage of the fact that I could stay in his hotel room for free and have someone to hang out with at night time.

For 2 years, I lived in Brasil as a service missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I met many people there and made lots of friends. I have already been back once, but my trip was only for 2 days. I've been wanting to go back and spend more time there to visit for a while now.

Since Lucas was soon on his way, I figured this might be my last chance to see Brasil in a long time. So, I took the plunge.

It Starts -- New York
On my way to Atlanta, I noticed the flight was full to Sao Paulo. So, I decided to goto JFK instead. The flight from JFK was open and I'd only get in a few hours later. Well, unfortunately a connection was delayed on another airline so a lot of passengers were guaranteed a seat on the JFK-Sao Paulo flight. Long story short, I chose the wrong flight. ATL-Sao Paulo went out with empty seats and I got stuck in JFK for 24 extra hours.

So, I saw the city....again:

Times Square

Ground Zero

And an iPod vending machine in the JFK airport! Seriously...who buys an iPod from a vending machine?

And no offense to any New Yorkers who might ever read this post, but JFK is an absolute dump. I hope I never have to go back to that airport again.

Brasil
So, I finally make it to Brasil. Luckily, t-mobile did exactly OPPOSITE of what I asked and instead of activating international roaming...they deactivated it. I was without a working phone for about 5 hours.

My first day, I used public transportation to get wherever I needed to go. After coming home completely sweaty, tired, and late, I decided it was time to get a car. I used a rental car the rest of the trip and it was the best decision I've ever made.

Here's a photo of my sweet ride

My time was spent in the day time visiting friends and families that I met on my mission. In the evening I'd usually pick up my brother and we'd find something to do. A lot of the time we'd just drive around and see the city. Traffic is SO bad during the day time, it once took me 2 hours to travel 4 km's. At nighttime, the city is pretty quiet and you can get from one side to the other pretty fast. We'd drive around and see all sorts of cool buildings, tunnels, places, etc.

The best part about driving at nighttime is the "unwritten" rule that after 10pm, stop lights are optional. Car jackings are so common, that after 10pm, most people stop at a light, make sure they're clear and then run the light. If a car is stopped for too long, the risk of being car jacked increases significantly. So, we'd drive through red lights at 11pm while we toured the city in our rental car. :)

So, on with the pictures:

Municipal Market

Açaí na tigela - This stuff is SOOO delicious...hence the huge açaí craze here in the states.

Fruit Stand
Sanduiche de Mortadela -- This is a world famous mortadella sandwich. It had over a pound of mortadella on it and was not as fun to eat as I had hoped. There was so much greasy meat on it that my urine smelled like mortadella for like 2 days.

World Trade Center Bridge

Me in front of the Albert Einstein Hospital, where I spent 18 days of my mission

We went to the São Paulo Symphony

Here's our unique view of the orchestra. They were called "chorus" seats. They were the cheapest but for some reason I didn't realize that we'd be sitting right BEHIND the orchestra. It was still good. :)

City Center and the Sé Cathedral

Municipal Theater

Praça dos Banderantes

São Paulo Temple

Brasil -- Living Accomodations

Just for fun, I thought I'd include just a few photos of the apartments I lived in while on my mission. Here are 3 of the 5 houses I lived in:

Jardim Bonfiglioli - Notice the huge gap at the top of the door? Yeah, you could almost fit your hand through.

Sorocaba - This is probably the nicest apartment I lived in. It was baby blue when I lived there, now it's yellow.

Itapevi - This was my first apartment (and probably my worst). That dark color on the lower part of the brick is all mold, feel safe? :P

While I was away, Katie and I talked everyday through Skype. We both borrowed a webcam so that we could see each other once a day. It worked out pretty well and Katie's sisters helped keep her company while I was away.

I had a really good time and loved being able to visit and see friends again. But, I was SO glad to be home. I'm glad that I made it there and back safe and wanted to thank my brother for making this trip possible.