Beautiful Brazil

Brazil day 7 

Wednesday 11-25-15

So you may not notice the difference between this before and after photo... The first is a picture of my feet in the sand before I went stand up paddle boarding. The second is my feet after I went!

Do you see it!? ITS GONE! My toe ring! The ocean stole it from me! I am SO SAD! I posted this photo on Facebook this morning. It was actually really nice and comforting to see the kind of responses that I got from my friends saying that they understood. Cause it seems like such an insignificant thing - but I have had that toe ring for over 15 years and I am sad that it is gone.

I didn't cry when I lost my toe ring... I actually didn't notice til this morning.  Yes I was really sad about losing it cause I have had it for so long. 

But this text message that my dad sent my mom made me tear up a little: 

Thanks for caring dad!
And everyone else - it makes me realize that I have good friends that care about things I care about cause they love me!

So TODAY!

We had a pretty lazy morning today. I don’t know why but we didn’t leave the apartment til noon. It was overcast but warm outside – so we decided to go to the Botanical Gardens.

What a BEAUTIFUL time we had!

We spent about 3.5 hours there and took some great photos!

 this one I LOVE! #nofilter 

AND WE SAW A MONKEY TODAY!!! Multiple monkeys! It's funny cause earlier I had said to mom, "Do you think there are monkeys that live here? If I were a monkey I would live in these gardens"

Well guess WHAT! not only did we see a few monkeys - but there was a baby one! I was very excited. They were all so cute!

The Christ Redeemer statue was covered most of the day – but he would peek out every once in a while: 

All day today my Gospel Doctrine/Institute teacher brain was composing lesson, analogies, and talk ideas about looking to Christ! 

On the way out of the gardens we saw a little art exhibit - guess where it was from!? YEP! NYC! a little piece of home here in Brazil:

After the Gardens we went for a walk on Ipanema beach! 

Loved this! 

We should all do it more often in many places!

Then we went and found some dinner. 

After we ate we went back to the beach and caught the last bit of the sunset - that was mostly covered because of the coulds - BUT the city was lighting up- that that was still beautiful! 

We walked along the beach and sat on some huge rocks. We watched men throw their nets into the water for fishing. 

It was another beautiful day! 

I am well versed in public transportation. (thanks for that New York City) Yet tonight was not my night. We walked to where we could catch a bus home and waited for the number we needed. Eventually another bus came along and I said, "Oh I think we can take this one too!" So we hopped on! I then realized that it was not going the right way. So we got back off the bus and walked a few blocks down to catch the same number bus that was going in the RIGHT direction. When we go to the bus stop we waited a few minutes - the bus pulled up and it was the EXACT same bus that we had just gotten off of. Apparently it WAS the right bus, and it just looped around a few blocks. We recognized the money changer- she also recognized us as well and was confused as so why we were getting BACK ON the same bus that we had just gotten off of- but a few blocks later. I communicated with her that I didn't understand the route that the bus was going to take. We had to pay again to get back on. Thankfully it is only 3.40 Reias to ride which is the equivalent of 75cents in the U.S. 

THEN we accidentally passed our stop. I caught it before too long but it added a few extra blocks that we had to walk to get home. Mom was making me laugh about the whole thing, being a bit overdramatic about my public transportation mistakes. 

Oh well- I think we have done pretty well so far all things considered.