Brasília-- the wrap up

It was a fun trip, and I´m so so glad I went. I knew in going that I was going to put myself in a major case of self induced culture shock, because I was traveling with all Brazilians, to the capitol of Brazil, to a Brazilian wedding and to see a Brazilian national sporting event. And culture shocked I did get, for about 3 hours on Friday. But even when I was frustrated out of my mind, I knew that in a week I´d look back on it and think it was one of the funnest times ever. Now it´s been a week and I can readily say that yes, it was. :)

Here are some random favorite photos!




Ivan, Enidilson and Jorge-- manly men!



Enrique, possibly the cutest kid ever. :)



This picture kind of freak me out, but I think it´s really cool. Aníbal does really cool stuff without a flash on his camera.



Aníbal took this picture on our late night tour of Brasília with Enidilson and Enrique. From left to right it´s Ivan, Edinilson, Enrique, me, Jandira.



Another one of those non-flash photos. I like the colors in this one so much. I knew Aníbal was getting ready to take a picture, but I didn´t know when he took it. Hence the half-posed look. Very cool.



Ha, I love this! Another irreverent picture in the Congressional Palace. :)



I love this picture too! Liberdade!



A too-sweet, Janibal special. :) And I took it, thank you very much. ;)



Jandira and I



Remember the blog about being late to the airport? This is a picture from that time... look at those faces! hahahahaha... :)

That´s all folks! And as always, there are more great photos (at least I think so) in the album. Yay webshots! Yay advertising! Yay give me free stuff! ;)

Brasília-- the wedding

The whole point of our trip was to go for the wedding of our friend, Luís. It was pretty interesting. I was surprised at how... normal it seemed. :) I just thought maybe weddings would be a lot different here. Probably Catholic weddings are, but for us Evangelicals, it´s not too different.

The major different I guess to me was that they don´t have wedding parties like we have in the States. Instead of groom´s men for the groom and bride´s maids for the bride, each couple has a designated number of couples. And traditionally they´re real couples (dating, engaged, married), but not always. And everyone wears their own clothes that they choose. They actually try NOT to match! :) Cool! There was a bit of talk at this wedding when one of the madrinhas (little mothers literally, but bride´s maids) wore a white pants suit. She looked hot though! :)

So here are some pictures. Yes, there´s a lot of me, but it´s my blog and I can be vain if I want to. ;)



The beautiful bride and handsome groom-- Dora e Luís.



My beautiful, beloved friends.



Me and Antenor


Antenor and Phyllis

If you don´t know Antenor and Phyllis, you´re missing out. They are some of the greatest folks ever.



Marúsia and I lookin´ hot... I think perhaps I look a little too hot. Try to ignore the bright pink sunburn. :)



Guto and I-- we were apparently the unofficial photographers for the wedding, with 5 cameras between us. :)



Jorge´s tie getting cut. Apparently it´s a tradition to cut off pieces of the groom´s tie and "sell them" at the reception to help fund the honeymoon for the couple. But our group was occupied with pictures, so they got his brother to stand in instead.

There are lots more great photos in my online webshots photo album, for which the link can be found at the right. In fact I just got all of my friend Aníbal´s photos and put them in an album today. In a few days I will meld them together into my original Brasília album, but for now they´re separate so you die hard Sojochick Blog fans won´t need to look through all the repeats to see the new ones. Aníbal is a pretty cool photographer, so check it out. :)

This is the penultimate post on Brasília. I plan to do just one more "what I learned from this trip" and random photo blog. Thanks for sticking with me through this!

Sorry my pictures are screwy. I am having a dang hard time finding a good way to put pictures on my blog. Any advice?

Brasília-- Government Stuff

Brasília is the capitol of Brazil, and it´s actually an interesting story. The city was designed in the 50s and 60s by civil engineers for the purpose of being a very modern, organized, capitol city for Brasil. The original shape of the city was a cross, but as it´s grown it´s become more of an airplane. And the city is much different from any other Brazilian city I´ve been to-- so organized!

So we did some sightseeing and took the opportunity to see some government stuff. Honestly, this didn´t interest me much because I don´t know that much about these buildings and monuments and such. But it was cool and we did have some fun. :)

My favorite place was the Congressional Palace, which I guess is like our senate place thing. I am really ignorant about this stuff. :) I liked it because it was inside and air conditioned. Ha, no it was very cool, no pun intended.





As you can see it´s a very modern building, with the cereal bowl and upside down bowl things. I´m sure it´s all very symbolic, I just don´t know what it means. And then behind it is the building with the towers. Very beautiful!

I won´t bore you with a civics lesson, so here is some of the fun we had there. We were, ahem, a little irreverent at times I think. :)



This is Aníbal arm wrestling a statue.



Me sticking my head through a piece of national art.



Ivan pretending to be a senator



This was an interesting man. He saw me reading the famous quotes from the inaguration of Brasília inscribed on the wall, and came up to me and said, "I´ve been reading this for 50 years, and it is more beautiful every time." I´m not exactly sure what his political connection is, but he was apparently at the inagural mass for the city of Brasília. (yes, the inagural mass-- Catholic countries can do that!) Very nice guy, 78 years old.

This night we also took a late night tour of Brasília with one of our friends (the same ones who took us to the airport in the earlier post).



This is Jandira and I in front of Lula´s house. He´s the president.


And this it the JK Bridge. Very beautiful. JK stands for Juscelino Kubitschek, the President of Brazil who directed the building of Brasília. Pretty much half the city is monuments to this guy. :)

That´s all the photos I´ll put here, but you can see more at my webshots page.