Rio's Rainy Season

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Brasil Brazil Travel Tourism Portuguese friends Rio Rio de Janeiro

It's the weeks leading up to Carnaval in Rio and it's the rainy season. It's raining. It's warm, but not too warm. Do you swim in the beautiful ocean when it's raining? Sure, why not? I haven't swam in the ocean yet, but I will. I haven't seen Cristo Redentor yet, but I will.

A new friend told me about Blocos in Rio which will be interesting. Blocos are a block party with tons of people in the street. The music is samba. It's something pretty unique. My friend told me that between Christmas and Carnaval is pretty much mired by parties. Imagine the entire month of January being a slow month because people are partying too much. I could deal with that. In Seattle, January is a fairly slow month usually because it's too cold. But that's never stopped me from working, mostly it has stopped me from partying.

Lavandarias. It's time for a talk about laundry. I'm wearing swimming trunks right now because of a laundry problem that has been following me since Friday. I've been wearing dirty clothes for 4 days now. You can blame this on me not being prepared, but that's not the real story. I have 4 sets of clothes. Like my father said, "shirt/pant/short/sock/day". So on Friday I have one set of clean clothes. Time to do laundry, right? It's São Paulo's anniversary, so the lavandaria is closed. No problem, they'll be open tomorrow. Saturday I show up on their doorstep and they are closed again. I go to a different lavandaria six blocks away. They quote me 100 Reals ($50). I'm ready to pay the extortionary rate because I don't want to wear dirty clothes for 2 days. They say, your clothes will be ready on Monday morning. It's 10am on Saturday. Could you please finish them by 5pm? Não. I lost it quietly and walked out of there with my dirty clothes. 100 Reals and 2 days? Remember that laundry in America involves $5 in quarters and 1.5 hours. I take the bus to Rio and arrive at 7pm. Lavandaria is closed of course, because they close at 5pm. How many laundry's survive only being open 9-5? So I buy some clothes to wear. This morning I go to the lavandaria at 10:30 and I hand over my clothes. It's only 30 Reals. 5pm tomorrow. Can you wash them by tomorrow morning? Não. She thinks I don't understand what she's saying. Amanha cinco tarde. It must take 16 hours to wash clothes at that lavandaria.

I wrote some horrible stuff on Saturday about it and here is the only part that is fit to print:

when you visit somewhere you are off put because it lacks x. you want the evil people to stop being evil. you want the good people to be happy, happier. so you write a letter and it sounds like this. what the fuck?

As usually I have met a bunch of really cool people in Brazil. The most interesting by far is the American lawyer who passed the bar in Brazil. He may be the only one.

Javantea out.