Days of the Week- Final

Saturday
I woke up at 5 in the morning, extremely happy. I pulled back my curtains to smile at the sun… oh, the sun hadn’t risen yet. As I waited for it to rise I played music and danced and painted my toenails and ate a small breakfast and left the house at 6 to arrive at school at 6:45, along with about 100 other international students who were dumb enough to sign up for a field trip that left at such an ungodly hour. We went to a farm in the middle of nowhere Brazil, walked through a rainforest that had huge bright blue butterflies, paddled on a boat covered with huge spindly swimming spiders, and swam in a pool and drank a little too much alcohol; including a “mix drink” that was merely cachaca and honey. Luis and I paddled a small boat around the lake they had and chatted and enjoyed the tranquility. Renata completed the extremely hard obstacle course (go Renata!) while Christian tried and failed at it twice. Luis and I looked at them struggling and he taught me a phrase in Spanish. “Estoy borracha, perro no penteja.” I am drunk, but I am not an idiot.
That night I stood by the lake, looking out into the night, when I saw a flash of light. What was it? My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I realized that there were fireflies everywhere. I grabbed Josh, my one friend who would truly appreciate it, and together we gazed at the fireflies, which made the hills in front of us look like they were sparkling. Later we walked out onto the front lawn on the farm and lay on the grass and stared at the stars for about half an hour. All of the constellations were different here in the southern hemisphere.
Once we got back my friends and I stumbled to a post on the beach and drank agua de cocos (coconut water- they literally take a huge knife and pierce a hole in the top of a coconut and put a straw in it). A bunch of Spanish people joined us and I came to the realization that even though everyone in this country speaks Portuguese, I would have to learn Spanish just to be able to understand the people that I hang out with. I watched Josu chain smoke. Pretty much every one of the international students from Spain or Mexico smokes cigarettes, but none quite like Josu smoked this night. As soon as he finished one cigarette he immediately grabbed another one and lit. It was fascinating and worrying at the same time, watching him.
Sunday
Cristian invited me to coffee at 7 pm. We went to the only Starbucks in Rio de Janeiro and walked around the city talking.
Cristian is seriously a cool person. He is a good man, a hard worker, and he is intelligent. He loves Mexico City and spent a lot of time telling me about Mexico’s history. He was once living off of Welfare with his mom in a basement and today his neighbor is Gabriel Garcia Marquez (he says her wife looks scary and has a beehive hairdo! Hahaha). He also lives in the same neighborhood as Carlos Slim, who was the richest man in the world last year. He says that Slim drives in an old VW bug. That makes me happy. We talked about everything, from our life stories to our past relationships to our future goals in life and next thing I know we are walking through the drizzle along the beach in Copacabana and it is midnight. We had been talking for 5 hours!