Morning

Sao Paulo City Tour

A highlight was stopping on the side of the road to buy soccer shirts.  We quickly realized that our varying levels of Spanish were not going to help us much in the price negotiation process – as the vendors only spoke Portuguese.  It was fun to witness Kristen Resor’s victorious negotiations.  I think she got everyone a great deal.  (Rosanna)

Afternoon

We ate lunch at a Churrascuria (Brazilian BBQ) restaurant.  I had heard about Brazilian BBQ but had never seen anything like this.  Although, I did not get much good vegetarian food, the sight of my friends (Brant in particular) enjoying the meats was pretty fascinating. (Sonal)

The salad bar was phenomenal and the beef was excellent.  We even had great desserts.  It was the best meal I can remember having.   (Brant)

Evening

Famiglia Mancini

The highlight of the day was samba dancing at Carioca Club.  Carioca is a term used to describe people from Rio de Janeiro.  Just like São Paulo has Paulistas and Buenos Aires has Porteños, Rio has a name for their people.  Samba dancing is by far the coolest dancing I have every seen.  It has a Tango feel to it, but it is much faster and more energetic.  The basic step is fairly simple; we all learned it at the lesson they gave us.  But shortly after the lesson ended, the “experts” took over the floor and put on a show.  (Chad)

During the evening we went to a Samba dancing place.  We gringos aren’t very good at Samba. (Jon)