Saturday, March 18, 2006

Though the sun was sizzling and the ocean looked gorgeous, we couldn’t convince anyone else to go to the beach with us today. Instead, after Institute, David, Leandro, Daniel, Helamã, Flávia, Élida, and I went to the Beira Mar Shopping mall for lunch and hung out for a bit. The mall was beautifully designed with at least 5 floors and has been nicely maintained. The stores were similar to those in the U.S. (everything way too expensive), the only obvious difference I spotted being the jewelry – which have more of a Latin flare expressed by its colors, size, and design.

From downtown Floripa, Leandro, David and I took a taxi back to Leandro’s place on the mainland where we watched the Crusades – an awfully bloody movie that also had a surprisingly profound and deep script. I really enjoyed the message it passed about the importance of being a better person and making a difference in the world, not just for yourself, but helping everyone around you.

Since Leandro wasn’t too big on cooking, I used his food and made us some ham & cheese hamburgers, along with his cheese bread and Fanta – grape soda. He’ll be the first to admit he doesn’t know how to make anything.

Getting home was rather interesting. To get back we had to catch a bus over the bridge to downtown (going further from our hotel), where we’d get another bus back to the continent and up to São José, where we live. The bus stop by Leandro’s house is located at the bottom of a curving hill and consequently, it took us over thirty minutes to recognize and flag down the right bus before it zoomed by. We got to the downtown terminal at 11:30 pm, just as the last bus to our neighborhood was rolling out! Unsure what to do, we decided to take another bus that would drop us off 15 minutes from our hotel; luckily as we waited for that bus, we learned of another that was not on the departure screen, but that would go past our hotel at midnight.

We made it home fine.