tudu bem? tudu bem!

brazil:

i feel in love with brazil. it is a city on the ocean (a wonderful nod to cape town) but this time instead of being cradled by just mountains, it is the beautiful jungle. THE JUNGLE. oh my word it was incredible. eloquence has escaped me in describing the city because the greatness of it has made me revert to my elementary instincts. while there i drank açai juice at least twice a day. i ate steaks, went to the beach, listened to samba and spent time with 7 other lovely ladies. to think that 8 girls could go on a trip together and not want to kill every single other one before the end of the trip is incredible. we stayed for 4 nights in copacabana in a gorgeous penthouse apartment that i dont know how we snagged. it was rooftop and 3 blocks away from the beach. we had an outdoor shower. i WILL live n a house with an outdoor shower. its not a question. it is something i prioritize i'm pretty sure. on our first day in the city we started the day off right with fresh fruits and juice, a bit of morning work to free up the rest of the vacation and headed over the see Cristo Redentor, the large jesus statue that guards the city which we lovingly refer to now as "Big Jesus". Whilst waiting for the train up the mountain, we ate corn on the streets and made friends with a local woman at a grocery store/ bakery while enjoying fresh coconut water and pão de queijo: delicious yuca bread filled with cheese. we did more sight seeing and ended up going out to the area Lapa, a nightlight district like ive never seen before. they sell drinks on the streets, kabobs of meat sizzling at stands, music blaring and then you go into these clubs and are engulfed by samba music. trumpets, percussion, clapping, stomping, hips, sweat: it was all so much to take in. after dancing like the unabashed white girls we are, some locals taught us to dance the samba in a dialect we made up that is a combination of spanish, english, and portuguese. i am not saying that i can dance the samba, but i know how it should look. needless to say the rest of our trip to rio was incredible.
after being there for 4 days we took a bus to the beach town of buzios. again, i had my heart stolen by this gorgeous city on the water. it was touristy as anything but i dont even care. it was wonderful. we stayed in a hostel on the water, i got up every morning and went for runs on the beach with my friend gaby, directly followed by dips in the ocean and açai, then more fruit and a short bus ride to a white sand beach and crystal clear ocean with waves and corn on the beach. ugh, recounting it makes me salivate. i'm pretty sure as long as i am in or around the water, everything else could be terrible and i would still be happy. any beach is just the best place in the whole world.

emily prepping for a breakfast of real champions 

view from cristo redentor

big jesus

a casual brazilian lunch. they said it was portioned for 2...

giving buzios some lovin

rio rio rio

this was the view from my hostel steps... 

we asked for a picture con muchas muchas carne

sugar loaf: the beautiful monolith that towers over the coast of rio

some of the ladies

chinchin con meat

me and sabina on beautiful rio steps

fail jump shot a big jesus 

*i am still developing my film. the photo credit goes to gaby sena

its been a while

so it is not like last semester when i was constantly updating, but my absence should read as "im having a great time"....

went to tea when seanie was here!

i hang out at fun graffiti bars with my friends

there is so much corn on the beach! how could i not love it!

this is all pre my trip to brazil of which i will comment more on in just a bit:

pre brazil updates: 

never before in my life have i had so much free time while still feeling productive. i feel like the luckiest girl in the whole entire world. i am taking interesting classes. i have classes that start at 11 and end every day at 5. i go to the movies during the week. i do all my homework whilst sitting at beautiful cafés that pepper the city. it is actually incredible. i have an incredible and genuine group of friends that i wish to know for much longer than this program extends to. of course i have some complaints but they are minor ie in the style of teaching in some of my classes: im just not used to it. and it is strange to be in classes where clearly not all the students have done the work or just dont say a single word when the teacher poses questions to the class. but i dont care that much. the topics of my classes are interesting and almost always engaging. 

i have not traveled outside the city as much as i would have thought i would but its okay because i am growing very comfortable and familiar with buenos aires. the city itself is incredible and asks to be explored. i keep finding new cafés, new graffiti walls and book stores to enjoy. the city is so conducive to this sort of lifestyle. 

basically killin it

because i am lazy and i don't want to type this stuff out again, here is an excerpt from an e-mail i just sent to mi padre:

...

besides that i had my first test in 9 months today! it was for intensive elementary spanish and i spent close to 12 hours studying for it... i think i over did it, but i cant help it #reedkidproblems and now i can tell you just about every object you would find in an office or classroom and tell the time. i'm basically killin it over here :) 

i tried to tell my host mother than im giving up dulce de leche for lent (basically cuz i dont want another "africa body" as i so fondly call it) which will be hard because that stuff is basically like a carmel-ly liquid deliciousness of a topping the argentines dollop and drip on any sustenance that will accept it - its like salt and ketchup for americans but more of a sugar rush to the melon - she wouldn't have any of it and gave me the tiniest cracker with dulce on it tonight after dinner. her name is silvia and she's adorable and cute. i really love living here. 

I went to the beaches of Cariló this weekend with my new NYU friends. It was a 4 and half hour bus ride which is nothing because the buses here are like first class American Airlines. The seats recline back to a comfortable sleeping position and a friendly hostess checks on you to make sure you are comfortable and if you have enough snacks. i'm taking buses everywhere. anyway the vacay was what id like to call "bitches do the beach". We got there, went grocery shopping for pizza/pasta fixings and more delicious fruit and veggies that would put straubs to shame. We then used said fruit to make champagne clerico (http://www.chow.com/recipes/10326-clerico-sangria-blanco) which we proceeded to drink whilst watching sex and the city for hours as rain soaked our day 1. not to worry tho, we made a bomb pizza, had an early night and woke up at noon to the sun shining and the beach calling our name. We were there for three days and did almost nothing but tan, concoct delicious meals, eat champagne soaked fruit, plan a clueless inspired theme party for later this week and i even wrote a college essay or two. twas very nice to say the very least. 

...

it ends here because the internet does not need to know all about my life and what i write to the fam.

i recently came by an old point and shoot kodak camera which is why the pics are lacking, but hopefully it is worth more than i got it for and by that i mean i hope it works. if it does i will post new photos soon, but here is a strange taste of my life here...

you might think this is a joke, but we got to draw pictures of our classmates and decorate them to hang out our elementary spanish class. this is a classmate's rendering of my good friend brooke (brooke is very beautiful in real life). #wedrawpicturesinmyspanishclass and i love it

beaucoup de choix of snacks on the bus to Cariló

if i didn't have to go to school (which is great too) i wouldn't have left

zanzibar, school closings and happy thanksgiving

so much has happened since my last posting.

i got sick and had to take cipro. it sucked. however am feeling much better.

i went to zanzibar with some 3 very great ladies from canada and one from scotland.

more on zanzibar:
i arrived in zanzibar on a precision air flight only to be engulfed by the butter-consistency humidity that coats the island and met by the girls in a private dala to take us to our lodgings in kendwa - a small town on the north end of the island. it is a beautiful spot with almost no town but pristine white sand beaches. we woke up on our first morning to find sun and a well stocked buffet of mangoes, papaya and hard boiled eggs. it started to sprinkle shortly after we gorged ourself on the plenties of african breakfast cuisine, but we didn't let this deter us in one bit. the rain was warm and the ocean warmer. we spent the morning swimming in the wave-less indian ocean and getting henna on our feet from silk-draped women on the beach. we finished the afternoon off with some sun and happy hour cocktails on the dunes. not a bad first real day in paradise.
the rain was already coming down the next morning when we woke in our treehouse bungalow, but again we didn't let it get to us and sat under canopies of palm leaves and read our books on the beach for house punctuated by quick naps and dips in the ocean. in the afternoon we played volleyball on the beach with some other hotel goers and locals who had just finished a work out at the "gym" (the gym is one set of barbells and a complicated monkey bar set, it looked harder than any work out ive ever done). twas very nice. this puts us at saturday night which is the biggest party night in kendwa and the party was at our backpackers. we had a barbeque on the beach beforehand of lobster, prawns, mahi mahi and so much more fresh fresh seafood. then we danced into the night only to be woken up by perfect sun the next morning. we swam away any reminders of the night before and were having such a good time doing it, we all ended up crispy by the end of the day. it was such a nice place to stay, i even ended up meeting some other kids from the states who we just happened to have mutual friends from school! its a tiny world.
we ended up catching a shuttle to stone town that evening. im in love with stone town. it is a unesco protected historical site so everything there is so old and wonderful. one of the girls, lauren, and i spent the day planning how to walk all around the city to see everything and visit every museum we had our eyes on, but only to be contradicted when after visiting a giant catholic church that served as a main slave holding site in the past our church guide offered to show us around all day to wherever we wanted to go for only USD$10. score! im so glad we had him (elvis was his name), because much like venice was, stone town is a maze of cobblestone streets just wide enough for two to easily pass thru and where maps would be more confusion than helpful. we saw it all, painted with local artists, found spices, ate falafel and hummus, and absorbed as much of we could of the vibrant town that is stone town. we topped off the trip with a visit to the night food market, i got a rock lobster spiced pizza, which was essentially a crepe with lobster, egg, spices, and a bit of cheese, cooked to a crisp on both sides and then cut like a pizza. my favorite meal ive had in tanzania. it was so delicious!
the next morning we caught the 7am ferry from stone town to dar es salaam and drove the 10 hours back to the always rough arusha. needless to say, i would have much rather stayed.

i had my last day of school! i got back on tuesday night and went to school that following morning. it was a normal day. the kids had exams the day before so we were just going over their tests and singing songs to fill in the free time. after break one girl started singing under her breath, "no schuul tomarrow no schuul tomarrow", i corrected her and told her this was not the case. she corrected me again. i went outside and asked a teacher, she didn't know. we found the director sitting, doing nothing in his office. he had forgotten to tell us there would be no school. its funny how things work in africa. surprise last day of school! it was so sad and sweet. we walked back into the classroom after talking to the dim director and we told the kids the bad news. some started to cry and others stared with blank look then one kid, derek (the kids call him "dereki") slowly broke out in the hokey pokey, the song i taught them during my first week which has since become our unofficial class song. it was so damn cute. we danced the hokey pokey for the last fifteen minutes of school and then off on the packed bus again one more time. it was good. 

livin the beach dream

saturday was a day spent at big bay, another beach town just about an hours walk or a 20 min bus ride to a rocking beach break with waves that can be small and easy going or as thick as a prairie house, bigger than one too. we, the two sophies and i, went down to go support the slew of body boarders (or boogie boarders as some of us know them as) that have been staying at the backpackers with us for the past week. they are a professional team sponsored by reef and a whole truck full of legit companies called the boland team. the boland boys are truly leka fun with the most leka attitude. they taught me this word "leka" - the slang version of "lekker" - which essentially means everything from "great", "chill", "perfect", "hilarious", "interesting", "delicious", "huge", etc...  i think. Anyway, we had a leka day on the beach cheering on the boys and just having a good time to celebrate their 7 riders in the South Africa Bodyboarding Championships. the swell was huge and crowd was so good. the boys did great and we had a great time just hanging on the beach, followed by a night of celebration and fun. today was super fun and mellow. we just went to the beach again, ate some bomb pizza, gave the dogs a bath at salty's and generally had a nice mellow day after a first week of work peppered with celebrating, 30 bodyboarders in tiny salty's and getting used to life in south africa. i already love it here and dont wanna go back... anywho bed ways is best ways so leka slaap

cape town and big bay

this guy was great

 eastern bizzzzzzare for lunch

beautiful flower market in downtown

chillin with canada and germany in big bay to support the boys

boland boiiiis!!!

the boland boys for the win! 

simon's town

the penguin rocks in simon's town

the kids seeing their first penguins!

please look under your car for penguins

a lesson on the beach taught by canadian sophie

a pretty leka pool if you ask me