Beer.

For some reason coming here I didn't think Brazilians drank as much as Americans; I was wrong. Their bars stay open until 5 or 6 in the morning, and their weekend starts on Thursday. There are a few microbrews around here, the best so far I've had has been Polar, a wheat beer. We were talking to natives about beer and a lot of them like American beer like Bud light. To each their own I suppose.

Jim, Zach and I were just a coffee shop where we met a few Brazilians and hung out with them while they warmed up for a heavy metal concert, unfortunately we didn't stay. There are so many things that seem out of place for us Americans but are completely common for Brazilians, like just today we went to the park at around 1700 (5:00 pm for non-Brazilians) and it was packed with people. On Sunday, everything shuts down (they take their "day of rest" seriously) and people just hang out. At the park it was a party! There were breakdancers, lots of music playing, people exercising and other people selling cotton candy. The thing that shocked me was that this happens every Sunday! I couldn't imagine people just going to the park every week in Ameica and socializing with each other as they do here.

We took a tour of some surrounding towns yesterday, and it was very interesting. We visited some surrounding towns, a gourmet chocolate factory, and saw a spectacular waterfall. To get to the waterfall, you have to go down 900 some odd stairs, which wasn't so bad going down, but coming back up was pretty difficult. The surrounding towns were neat to go to as well, since Caxias was settled by Italians primarily, the towns were settled primarily by Germans, and you could definitately see in the architecture and food. I have pictures, but I haven't had a chance to upload any yet, hopefully I will be able to soon. I can't promise anything though, we're going to be on campus at UCS every day this week from 9 am until 9 pm (at least) plus we have homework! By the end of these three and a half weeks I'll be totally ready to just relax in Rio for 4 days. That doesn't mean that I'm not having a great time already though!

See you next post, Dan