Bem-vindo To Brazil: Iguaçu Falls and More

So to start where I left off and my 8 week post. I went to my orientation in Jaú. Well, its more like I was fashionable late for my conference in Jaú. So after having a complete misunderstanding on times about the bus I completely missed the bus. And since there is only one bus to Jaú during the day I was out of luck arriving on time. I completely thought the time was at night. I have to this day no idea why I thought the time was at night. So i get a text at school at about 8:30 in the morning. Where are you?! I didn't have any credits to respond so I just left it. Well at noon my host mom called me asked me why I didn't get on the bus this morning. And I was like oh crap! Lucrezia and I were going to arrive the night before and sleep over at the presidents house because of the bus schedule. Well, I totally missed that. And to make matters worse, I would arrive after most of the stuff was over. So I got there the next day, way after everyone else and had to do all the activities alone. Boo. Afterwards though, we all got to hang out together and we went to the center of town where there is this plaza and goofed off and I think everyone thought we were crazy but its cool. We're exchange students. Its normal. ;) so after a little bit one of the ladies helping with the meeting drove us all to this bar where we could dance. They had a live band playing forro (pronounced fo-houa) and there were guys that work for the bar that go and dance with you and well teach you if you don't know which was what we all need. So just to let you know, I am the worst dancer in the history of the world. I honestly can't dance to save my life. Now forro is like the most difficult dance ever because it involves two people dancing together to fast paced music. Now I love listening to music and watching my friends dance because forro is really cool to see. But one of the dancers came over and asked to dance and I was like "não não. Eu não sei dançar." but all my friends were like "go go!" so I went because of peer pressure because I was thinking "maybe this time is different..." totally wasn't. I felt so bad for the guy. I kept tripping over his feet and I couldn't hear what he was saying because the music was so loud. So I kept nodding my head and saying "uh sim...?" after a while I thanked him for teaching me to dance and I'm sure he was relieved but he was a gentleman and thanked me for dancing and then kissed me on the cheek. We then hung around until about 1:30am when the band stopped playing and went back to the place we were staying to sleep. The next day we only slept until 7:30am when we got up to say good bye to some of the people that were leaving early. My bus wasn't leaving until 2:30pm so Lucrezia and I had lots of time until we needed to be at the bus station. Now, Jaú is kinda famous for its shopping and especially shoes because they are super cheap and there are lots of styles to choose from. Lucrezia asked if we could go to the mall to look around because she wanted to buy a pair of shoes. The lady that took us to the bar said sure so she took the rest if the students to the bus station and then took the rest of us who had buses at 2:30pm to the mall. When we arrived all I could think about was shoes. There was so many! And they were really cheap compared to Palmital, Assis, or Ourinhos. I still needed a pair of heels for my classes graduation and what better place than a mall full of shoes. We walked all over the mall but neither me nor Lucrezia could find anything. We were just about to give up hope when we saw this shop right before leaving. I bought a pair of silver heels for less than $20 and Lucrezia bought a pair for $25. It was great and I was so happy! We returned home about 7:40pm in Palmital. That night there was going to be a play in the church plaza. They had this big stage set up. It was suppose to start at 8pm but of course it was delayed almost 3 hours. It didn't start until close to 11:00pm. I had school the next day. Actually, I had an exam the next day but it doesn't really matter for me because my grades don't count for the school but it was much more difficult for me to concentrate. It was a great show with acrobatics and a cute comical story about two clowns. I love it! The only thing is that I arrived home at midnight and still had to take a shower and didn't end up falling asleep until around 12:45am. But that was how my weekend was.

The next Saturday I went to Assis to look for a dress for the graduation party. Everyone dresses up in these amazing dresses like for prom and then go and eat and dance and drink all night long. But anyways I'll tell you more about that later. So anyways, I went to this dress shop and well was kinda overwhelmed. For all that know me, I'm not a dress person and find it hard to find a dress that makes me happy. This room wasn't very big but there were a lot of dresses in so many different colors. I already thought up some colors that I knew would look good on me but when I saw all the dress, I was like "OMG so many dresses!" There are always people to help so a lady came up to me and said what are you looking for. I was like a long dress for graduation. Then she asked what color and well I said blue. Blue looks good one me because of my eyes and hair. She pulled out a few dresses from the bunch and put them on a rack for me to see. I did like two of them and she put the others back. Them she asked about other colors so I looked into purple and multicolored prints as well. In total, I had about 5 dresses to try on. I went into the changing room and I tried on one of the blue dresses. It was beautiful but it had a long train in the back and I didn't like it. Afterwards, I tried on a red dress but it just didn't look good at all so I went to the other blue dress. It was great. It looked really great on me. I decided not to finish all the dresses. Then the lady did some arranging and fixing and she marked down to add some straps because I didn't want to be pulling up my dress all night long. So I would have to go back the day before the dance to pick it up but everything was set with that.

Now that Monday I left for my final trip in Brazil. I went south this time to Foz do Iguaçu. To start, Lucrezia and I left for Ourinhos at 6:50pm. Then we got on another bus that would take us directly to the city Foz do Iguaçu. Now this bus ride was incredibly long. 11 hours to be exact. I brought my pillow and tried to sleep but I just couldn't get comfortable like normal. I don't know it was difficult. So when we arrived I was running on like 4 or 5 hours of sleep. To make matters worse, our bus arrived 45 minutes late. Someone from Belo Tours was there to meet us. We then waited for another bus from Barra Bonita to arrive and it was a great reunion with some old friends. We the left for the hotel which was a 15 minute ride in a van. We were the first ones there so we just sat down and started talking because our rooms weren't ready yet. It was still only 9 am so it kinda made sense. After a little bit the coordinator of our group and the president of Belo Brasil Tours brought us together to fill out papers and then we got out trip shirt which fit much better than the shirt from Pantanal. After awhile no one else arrived and a few people had their rooms ready so we decided to go to the pool. Well, the pool was being cleaned so we couldn't sit there.

Our next idea was to go to the shopping mall for lunch and then afterwards we saw a movie The Guardians. It was a great movie and I understood everything about the movie. Yes it was all in Portuguese without subtitles. But that's the beauty of children films. The language is easy to understand. Oh and the movie was in 3D and I only paid R$10 or about US$5 because of my international student ID card. It was a great day so far. Afterwards we walked back to the hotel and meet some new students that had arrived. There were lots of AFSers from Thailand. Almost half our group was from Thailand. Yeah that's a lot. The thing is too that they automatically group together and they talk a lot really fast. But Thais' are great friends and really nice people. Befriend thais' okay?

So anyways, everyone was saying hi to new and old friends and getting rooms and talking and filling out papers. I still didn't have my room yet. Actually, I didn't get my room until 4 pm. So when I finally got my room I went up and changed my clothes into my bikini and went down to the pool to join everyone else. The pool was nice and big and the water was warm which I didn't like. It was so hot but no relief came from the pool. I still stayed and talked with my friends and made new friends as well. Lucrezia had 5 other Italians to talk to in Italian so she was happy. There were two other Americans coming on this trip as well. First I met Sam who is from California and then I met Chelsea from Texas. They were really cool and I became really good friends with Chelsea and I talked to Sam a lot as well.

That night we ate dinner and afterwards had a meeting about what we were going to do the next three days. We met out chaperons and the next day we met our guides. Bernardo, our coordinator, told us about needing passports and that entering Argentina was going to be a long process so we had to leave early Friday. Other than that, the meeting wasn't very long so we had free time to do what we wanted. A group of my friends went to play a card game so I decided to join as well. I'm not very good at cards because I don't have luck and generally lose. Everyone decided to play a game called assassin which is when everyone gets a card and if its an Ace then you're a killer who winks at people to kill them, a king is a detective and tries to guess who the killer is, and a Queen is the prostitute and she blows kisses and brings people back to life. If you are a number card then you are a towns person who tries not to die. I lasted playing for an hour before I got tired from lack of sleep and went to bed.

The next morning we were leaving at 8 am to go to the Parques das Aves or the bird park. It was a walk through the park with a trail that passed by bird enclosures. Some of the enclosures even offered a chance to go inside and be super close to the birds. I got to be within 5 inches of toucans and macaws and other birds of Brasil and other countries. It was really interesting to see different types of birds from around the world. It goes to show you that our planet is very diverse. Next we went to the Brazilian side of the falls. It was a wonderful view and the waterfall was amazing! There was this walk way where you could walk right up to get right in front of the falls. You even got a little wet from the spray. I'm pretty sure Iguaçu falls is much bigger than Niagara. The waterfall was a little dry this time of year but there was still so much water falling down. It was incredible. Definitely worth seeing. We then went and had lunch. There was an optional activity where you could take a boat ride into the falls but it cost extra so I didn't bring the money to do this trip. So we went back to the hotel and hung out at the pool and talked. That night we all got dressed up and went to a Folk dance and a dinner. I had originally thought this was going to be some cheesy dance with a bunch of people doing something crazy but it wasn't. It was actually really cool. They had an Indian dace of the natives of Brasil, a dance from Paraguay, a dance from Argentina, Salsa, a couple other dances and to end it a samba with girls dressed in Carnival style clothes. There were even a group with drums that did a samba. This group of drums is called a bateria. I really enjoyed it and the dancers did a great job. The food was good too. It was buffet style and they had tons of different types of food and then you could go pick out some meat cooked BBQ style. To finish off dinner, there was an area with lots of Delicious looking desserts like pies, cobblers, ice cream and more. It was really busy and really hard to get stuff because there was so many people so I only ate a piece of lime pie and some papaya ice cream which was really good and I hadn't tried it before.

Wednesday we went to Paraguay to do some cheap shopping. To Brazilians, buying stuff in Paraguay is much cheaper because they don't have a duty tax. So many Brazilians travel there to go shopping. We left at 8 o'clock and passed over the Bridge of Friendship. It's an agreement between Paraguay and Brasil about letting people cross without need a visa to enter and no duty tax either. The plan was to start at this shopping mall and then we would have the ability to walk through shops on the street and even go to another shopping center about a 15 minute walk away. Well that plan was gone when the sky opened up and it started pouring down rain with thunder and lightning. So there was no chance to walk outside. And to make matters worse, the mall didn't have electricity so it was dark in most of the stores and some stores were closed. So after and hour and a half we left early and went back to Brasil. We went back to that mall that I had gone to the day before to eat lunch and we had an hour to look around. I found a store that sold Hershey bars so call me crazy but I bought one because I hadn't eaten Hershey's chocolate in so long. I like the chocolates they have in Brasil but it just isn't the same. It was one of those king size bars too. It was so good. I did share, so no, I did not eat the whole thing by myself. Afterwards, we left together to go to the biggest hydroelectric plant in the world, Itapu. When we arrived, we watched a short film about Itapu and then afterwards we got to go on a bus ride to see the whole plant. We stopped twice to take pictures. It had become cold and windy and was still raining a little so some people chose to stay on the bus and lots of people fell asleep. I didn't but the hydro electric plant was huge! I think it is definitely something the United States should look into more. Itapu generates electricity for many parts of Brasil and it is completely clean energy. Right now though, Japan is building a hydroelectric plant that is bigger than Itapu but the most out put of electricity is still Itapu. Itapu is also shared between Brasil and Paraguay. Afterwards, we went home

Friday, and our last day in Iguaçu, we left at 7:30am to go to the Argentina side of the falls. This process is long and you need your passport stamped and some people even needed visas to enter. Some people weren't allowed to go because they didn't have a visa so the Argentinean police took them off the bus and they had to go back to the hotel and wait for us to return. After waiting about an hour, we were finally off to the National park. When we got there we got our tickets and then rode a train to the trail that leads to the falls. The train takes right to the top of the trail and it's a nice ride because you get to see some nature and wildlife as well. The first trail we went on took us over the river that leads straight into the falls. It's about a 20 minute walk until you reach the waterfall. Before you arrive, you can hear the roar of the waterfall. Then you arrive to be right on top of the waterfall. It's an amazing experience being right over top and see the thousands of gallons of water falling over and crashing down below. The spray was refreshing as the wind blew over Iguaçu carrying water with it. I took some picture quickly and then put my camera away because I didn't want it to get to wet. We then took a group photo with one of the men who work for the park. All 60 or so of us joined together and we got a lovely picture together with the waterfall in the background. The picture was actually really cheap so I bought one and it turned out great. A great souvenir. Afterwards we walked back to the train and it took us back to where started. We went and had lunch, which was really expensive because we ate inside the park so they put the prices higher. So annoying but hey I was hungry from all the walking. After lunch we went to another trail called the upper trail. It takes you past all the waterfalls from a different view and you even go over some of them. We started off and got a lovely view of all the waterfalls in Argentina. It was great to see them all from such a great point. We walked a little more and they had a little area cleared for you to take good photos. We all got together and took a quick group photo because it started to rain. This time it was short but still it was a lot of rain so everyone who had brought their rain coats put them on and shared with people who didn't. Most of us got wet but it wasn't a problem because we arrived at an area that got super close to this waterfall where you can literally get like two yards away. So everyone got wet again so really we just took a whole bunch of baths that day. We took more pictures and enjoyed the spray from the waterfall before continuing on the trail. The next part took us up even higher that we actually walked over top of some of the smaller waterfalls. At this height we were able to get a full view of the entire area of waterfalls. It is quite a lot of area and water. It was really beautiful. Afterwards we walked back down it was late afternoon. We had one more stop to do before we would go back for dinner. We went to the Tres Fronteiras or the Three Borders. This is an area where you can see the countries of Brasil, Argentina, and Paraguay that is divided by the River Parana. It was cool to see all the countries I had been to the past three days and of course my new home Brasil.

Before entering Brasil we had to go back through the Border control where they had to stamp our passports again. This took less time thank goodness. To make up for the day before in Paraguay, we went to the Duty Free shop for an hour for anyone who wanted to do some shopping. Lots of people bought candy and was eating it on the way home. When we got back to the hotel it was time for dinner and even though we were some what dirty and sweaty, we ate dinner. Afterwards Bernardo had a meeting with us and he talked about exchange and the trip and what we thought. Some people spoke a little and then we filled out reviews of the trip. It actually takes awhile because there is like five pages. Next we had some time to say good bye. There was lots of hugging and crying. Something you should know about exchange students is that we become really attached to each other because who knows what you feeling then someone who has experienced the same thing. So yes, the end of trips usually end with crying because we don't know the next time we'll see each other because we are all scattered all over Brasil and some students like me will be going back their home countries in January. The next day we would all be leaving to go home at different times by different means. I woke up and had breakfast at 9 am. Some people had already gone. My bus was at 2:30pm so I had some time still. We were going to leave at 1:30 because there was a girl in my group who had a bus at 2:00pm. Well 1:45pm came and the van driver hadn't arrived yet. The girl was like freaking out because she had to catch that bus or she would miss the other bus to her city. So they ran outside and found another van driver. He called the other guy who was still at the airport. So he took us to the bus station. We arrived with 2 minutes to spare. the girl bought her ticket and said good bye then got on the bus. Our bus arrived a little later and we left but just like the first bus, this bus arrived in Ourinhos an hour late. We ended up arriving at 2am. We took a taxi to Lucrezia's sister's house (and the president of our committee) and fell asleep. At 9am we took another bus to Palmital. It was sad that our trip had ended so soon but it was worth wild.

So that is all I'm going to put in this post because it ended up being longer than I thought so I'll be writing about graduation and Christmas in another post and of course expect a post about New Years as well. Hope you enjoy my posts and my blog and that you learn something about Brasil and that you find Brasil to be different and better than what you thought and that future exchange students consider Brasil as their first country because it is a greater experience than you can imagine.

Cori