January 24, 2011 (Day 1)
After a 9hr flight, I finally arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Once I got to the airport, I was able to meet up with the SAS group that was also participating in the Rio Like A Native trip. One of the first things that I noticed was that people only spoke Portuguese. Fortunately for me, I was able to speak Spanish, which was better understood than English for many of the locals. My roommate for the trip were Malachi, who I had met previously while on the ship, and Alex who I had just seen for the firs time.
After everyone got settled in the hotel from the bike tour on Copacabana beach that I had missed, the group took a tour to one of the local favelas ( a place of poverty). I had never heard of favelas prior to the trip and wouldnt normally think of this type of poverty existing when I previously though of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Our tour guide gave us a background on the history of Rio, informing us of the year in which slavery was abolished (around 1874), which was 10 + years after the Emancipation Proclamation was created in the United States.
The people living in favelas are the part of the population that live below the poverty line in Rio. This favela (referred to as a community in order to refrain from being offensive) was actually the location where Michael Jacksons They Dont Care About Us video was filmed. Because he helped this community (financially), there was a painting of a stamp (portrait), along with a statue of him in the heart of the community. It was amazing to me how these people had schools, stores, church, bars, etc., all within their very small community in which they lived in. We were allowed to go into the home of one family living in the community. This older couple (around 78) allowed teenage parents to keep their kids while they went off to work, as long as the children did well in school and helped around the house.
Later on that night we went to a bar on Copacabana Beach and saw a lot of prostitutes walking around. Come to find out, our hotel was in the Red Light District of Rio. I guess that SAS forgot to do their research on that end, or maybe they didnt care. After all, its not as though Im at Pepperdine.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Moment For Life
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Man I did a google search on Copacabana Beach and it looked really busy and FUN!It almost looks as heavily populated as Santa Monica on a summer day. Did you take any pictures while you were there?
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