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| Ipanema Beach |
I've slacked off a lot lately in the blogging department, especially after starting to post my pictures on Facebook. If I try to go back and write about everything that has happened since my last post, I'll end up getting discouraged and not writing anything, so I guess I'll just go back a couple of days and then try to do better in the future. No promises, though.
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| Josh, Rachel, Hillary, and me |
This last weekend Josh and I had a great time spending five days with our friends Rachel and Hillary. They're currently living in Curitiba doing the same internship we are. Though the whole weekend
was great, my two favorite things we did would have to be spending a day on the famous Ipanema Beach and visiting Rio's famous botanical gardens. Ipanema is the most beautiful of the beaches I've seen here in Rio so far, and besides that has the reputation for drawing the most beautiful
people. A recent article in Rio's local newspaper reported that Rio has the largest, most consistent waves in all of Brazil and that April, May, and June have the biggest waves of the year. Well, we definitely enjoyed some of those waves. I'm not that great at body surfing, but I caught a couple of really big ones that carried me for quite awhile. I also "got caught" by a whole bunch of big waves that tossed me through some underwater triple front flips. Good times.
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| One of the greenhouses in the Botanical Gardens |
On Saturday we visited the Botanical Gardens, which I have to say, were completely breathtaking. The garden was first built by Dom João XI of Portugal when he moved with his family to the then colony of Brazil. It was basically a piece of the Atlantic rain forest in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world. Amazing! I hadn't seen so much green in the previous two months. It was drizzling on and off the whole time we were there, and the surrounding hills were covered in mist and fog that seemed like some kind of life force that the trees were breathing out into the rest of the city. The botanical garden may not be the reason the most people visit Rio, but perhaps it should be. It quickly became one of my favorite parts of the entire summer so far.
My last bit of news is that I'm currently in the airport in São Paulo waiting for President and Sister Pizzirani (my second mission president and wife--wife of my second mission president and not my second wife) to arrive from Brasília. They finished their mission today and are returning home. I can't wait to see them! I can hardly believe that I'm only a week short of having been home for two years. Wow. While I'm here, I'll also get to visit three mission companions: Elder Batista, Elder F. Santana, and Elder Guilherme. Saturday I'm flying to Vitória to go to Elder Batista's wedding, and then I'll come back here for his sealing ceremony on Tuesday. Shortly after the sealing, I'll be going back to Vitória to teach the Self-Employment Workshop with Josh, and then we'll finally go back to Rio on July 9th. I've never been on some my flights in such a short period of time! I probably shouldn't get too used to it.
