This is the day that gave me the most pictures. We were picture crazy here! This day was about doing and seeing. We didn't really have much time for reflection, or much reason to for that matter.
I don't care who you are or where you are going, nobody wakes up on a plane and is happy to be there. If you're going somewhere fun, you wake up wishing you could just be there already. If you're going somewhere you don't want to go, you wake up wishing you were going somewhere else. There is no comfortable way to sleep, and it's just horrible. I was not in a good mood at all when I woke up!
Although my fears calmed significantly during this flight, every time the plane would make any kind of movement, I would dream that we were crashing. We never experienced any real turbulence, either. It was just a little shaky from time-to-time. I just never really got used to sleeping with that feeling of flying. I probably had 20 plane crash dreams.
I had been getting annoyed rather frequently throughout the night because there was a group of people being rather rudely loud. I remember thinking, "I know who would be brave enough to ask them to be quiet...Richard." I turned to find Richard and discovered that he was the one making the noise! Apparently Matt Maher was on our plane a few rows behind us, and Richard thought it necessary to talk EXTREMELY loud with him throughout the night.
They ran out of coffee cake (I kept thinking about Brian Regan's joke about the cold fish head. Look him up. He's hilarious) by the time the food cart got to us, so we had to have the breakfast sandwich. The sandwich was ok. The green tea and mint pastry was kind of gross. But since I didn't have my toothbrush with me, I was ok with eating a minty thing.
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| Airplane Breakfast |
I was really irritated about breakfast. I didn't want this, but I knew that I should eat it anyway. After I stopped pouting about breakfast, Christa asked me if we were going to eat lunch today. I told her that I assumed we would get lunch, but that my plan was to just eat whenever we got the chance, no matter what they gave us, and to be grateful for it. I realized shortly afterwards that I was such a hypocrite! I already started out not being grateful for my food. I did eat it, but not with a good attitude. That was the first moment when I realized that this was going to be harder than I thought.
Airplanes are amazing thing, and so are flight attendants and baggage claim. It's kind of a miracle, actually, that more bags aren't lost. It seems like they should never be able to get to their location, especially if you have a connecting flight. How do they do it? And flight attendants and pilots must have such strange lives. How do they adjust to time changes, place changes? If the flight is short, do they get to come home immediately? I couldn't do it.
We got off the plane and started the tour for the day. We were told that we wouldn't be allowed to access any of the bags that we put under the tour bus until we got to our housing late that night. Those bags had my toothbrush. I so badly wanted to brush my teeth, but it didn't look like I'd get a chance.
We drove through town. It was a cold day. There was a lot of fog. The tour guide was fun to listen to, even though we were all exhausted from our flight. His name was Ricardo. He told us about the Favelas, about the origin of the name "Rio de Janiero" which means "River of January." He told us all about the ways that they are preparing for the World Cup and the Olympics, and about the protests that those events are bringing along with them. He also gave us the bad news that this coming week was when Rio de Janiero was going to experience the worst cold front in history, or something like that. Maybe he said generations. Either way, it was going to be bad. And it was going to be bad when we were there, outside, with not many ways of seeking protection. What happy news.
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| Rio de Janiero |
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| Graffiti everywhere |
Did you know that there are penguins in Rio de Janiero? I didn't either. It's sad, though. Apparently by the time they show up there, they are dying. But their zoos are packed with penguins. The city also has a cat paradise, where people bring stray cats. They are fed and looked after there. Hundreds of cats. That seems strange to me.
We were almost immediately disappointed because the fog was so thick that you couldn't see the Christ the Redeemer Cross from the city. The fog was covering JUST the cross, too, not the rest of the mountain. I felt like we were being teased with the fog.
We drove to the beaches to get to see them, but we weren't able to stop. The two most famous beaches in Brazil are right next to each other: Copacabana and Ipanema, and both beaches have songs about them.
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| We passed the pilgrimage cross and icon of Mary on Copacabana |
Our first stop was at Sugar Loaf Mountain. It was here that we took our first group picture with a group from another country: Argentina, where our Pope is from! This would be the first time we would hear the words, "Photo?" or "Exchange?"
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| "Photo?" |
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| "We are going up there?!" |
I could have done without the gondola ride immediately following a plane ride. Two things in a row like that was really challenging for me. I am just not good with heights. It was kind of horrible getting to the top.
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| Gondola |
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| Pictures on the gondola. |
I was very excited to see monkeys! Monkeys are to Brazilians what squirrels are to Americans. I don't care if THEY hate them. I loved them!
The view from the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain was totally worth the scary gondola ride! It was so beautiful up there!
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| Panorama View from the top! Cra-mazing! |
We ate lunch at Sugar Loaf and had our first real experience ordering food in another language. They had something there called "Pizza," which is what I ordered, because I figured it was something I'd like. This is what I got. It was basically a grilled cheese sandwich. It was just cheese and a tomato grilled. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't pizza.
We went to Rio de Janiero's Cathedral, which is unlike any church I've ever been to before. If I had been driving by and not been told that this was the cathedral, I would never in a million years guess that this is it. I don't know what it looks like, but not a church.
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| St. Sebastian Cathedral |
The inside was unbelievable. It really did draw your eyes up towards Heaven, which I suppose is the point.
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| The view of the alter from the doors as you enter the Cathedral. |
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| Saint Sebastian |
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| More St. Sebastian |
We left the Cathedral and got to see the aqueducts and some protestors. Then we just drove around the city for a while, because our tickets for Corcovada Mountain Tour were a little later.
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| Aqueducts |
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| Protestors |
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| The building to get tickets and get on the train to go up the Mountain |
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| Inside Corcovado Station |
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| Inside Corcovado Station |
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| The train that took us to the Cross |
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| Inside the train |
And that it was!
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| Christ the Redeemer |
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| This balcony extended so you could get a better view. The problem is, you have to be able to get ON the balcony through the crowd! |
Because it is winter there now, the sun sets around 5:30 pm, which was something that I know I never adjusted to. We had a packed day, and when the sun went down, it felt like it was 9:00 or later. But we still had a lot of day to go!
We went to eat dinner at a typical Brazilian Buffet. I was really hesitant to try anything because I couldn't read the descriptions. So I got a really simple meal. The rice and broccoli was actually really delicious, and the little chicken roll things were amazing, too.
After we ate, it was FINALLY time to go to our accommodations. We drove across the bridge from Rio de Janiero into Niteroi, the city where we were staying. It took a little while to get there. When we finally pulled up to the church where we were staying, they parishioners greeted us with cheers and excitement! They helped us to carry our bags into the church. But we weren't staying at the church, so we had to stand around for a little while to wait for more instructions. It didn't really take very long, but it felt like it did! We were tired, in need of showers, and ready to get settled.
We discovered that we were staying with groups from England, Washington DC and Vermont (and groups from African countries, but I never figured out if they were the South African group that I'll write more about later, or if they were a different group) in the school where we were staying. We quickly got our stuff settled, but we had a problem. It was Sunday, it was night, we were tired, but we hadn't had mass yet. But luckily we had a priest with us who was able to do mass for us! Thank God for Father Chris!
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| Our room, which we shared with the England group. We actually had the less crowded room, too. |
We literally hadn't stopped moving for over 24 hours. We were either on a plane, in a bus, on a gondola or on a train. Many of us had this strange feeling like the ground was swallowing us once we stopped moving for the day. We think that it was from all of the movement. We felt dizzy and weird. It didn't seem like that sensation would ever go away, and it was horrible.
We were tired, but the suffering had not really even begun.
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| Nighttime view from our accommodations |
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