Familia Familia

Familia Familia

Hopefully, this new year will bring a much less lazy me, so here I am back to blogging! So much has happened since my last post but by far the most exciting has been my family's visit here to Brazil. Mom, Dad, and Helen came down to see me so I could show them around my new home here in Alvorada. The weekend was mostly rainy so we spent a lot of time just hanging out and I got to enjoy Dad making breakfasts of omelets fresh fruit both mornings, even got a little teary seeing four plates at the table the first morning. We waited for the bus downtown in the rain Friday morning, ridiculously standing out in our raincoats (which Brazilians don't wear) and our inability to get on the bus correctly, probably my fault because I didn't explain the process well enough. Anne, my coordinator from ICYE met us downtown and walked around the touristy places with us while explaining a lot of the history of Porto Alegre that I didn't know. The night before flying to Rio we had the most amazing churrasco. It was amazing how we all managed to somewhat understand each other and I have never been so happy to see everyone I love in the same place. Taina and I spent the evening translating and the food was so good Helen said after the whole trip that it was the best she had in Brazil.

Christmas day at Praia Itacarazinho

Sunday morning we flew through Rio to Ilheus in the state of Bahia where we went with the wrong driver for about an hour before turning around to get in the right cab and finally make it to the beach. We spent the next few days, including Christmas, hanging out on beach chairs in Itacare, drinking coconut water and eating tapioca (essentially enormous savory or sweet tacos that could give Taco Bell a run for its money). My absolute favorite part about the beaches were the amazing palm trees that looked like they were out of a movie, all up and down the coastline. I tried to climb one of them to be kind of like Tarzan, not very much success there. After we were full of seafood and just burnt enough to not need any more sun we moved on to Salvador, the capital city of Bahia.

View of the beach in Salvador from a lighthouse

After the four of us took our first bus trip in South America in over 8 years, we hopped on a ferry to reach the peninsula Salvador is on. Within the first 10 minutes, I fell completely in love with the historic district we were staying in. Friday morning we took a trip down to walk along the water where we tried some Acarajé, Bahian street food made from a bean biscuit filled with shrimp, salad, and spicy, spicy, spicy sauce. I split mine with Dad and only realized after he had eaten all of his that he took the half of the biscuit she hadn't put the "picante" sauce on since my mouth was on fire and he seemed unfazed. We stopped by a touristy public market to get souvenirs, I bought some tapioca flour for my host family (to make me tapioca waffles) and took a very uneventful elevator ride up back up to the historic district.

Momma in Copacabana

Dad just loves smiling for pictures

Before our afternoon flight for the last part of our trip to Rio,  Mom, Dad, and I went morning swimming in water so clear we could see our toes in the sand. Flying into Rio was incredible, there are so many houses even on these huge hills that pop in random places all over. Since we were only there for two days, there wasn't time to see the whole city. We did make it to the most important places, Christo do Corcovado (now known as White Jesus among the Vance family), and stopped by the most amazing churro stand on Copacabana beach. Since all of us were flying out on New Year's Eve, Copacabana was all set up for the party they would have and we got to listen to them testing out the speakers for the tiny amount of time we managed to stay in the most crowded place I have ever been in my life.

Saying goodbye was hard, and I spent the entire Uber ride to the airport crying in the back of the car but the excitement to come back home to see my host family was enough to make New Years truly special when I returned.

I am so grateful to have the most amazing family on the planet, and I'm so glad they got to come to see me in my new home. (Tão grata!)