Here you go Susie

Brazil is amazing! We walked around Manaus Sunday afternoon, and it was really crowded, but nice. There are parks and courtyards everywhere. Sunday night, there was a Samba school of dance. (Sidenote: the drivers here are nuts! Our cab driver backed up an entire street without turning around going about 40 mph! He also put in the Beatles for us!) At the samba dance thing, the entire street was just full of Brazilian dancers (some with little drums and tambourines). They let us all dance with them and play their instruments. It was fun. Then on our walk back to the ship, I heard that the Steelers won the football game, and even though I have no Pittsburgh pride, I started singing the Pittsburgh’s going to the superbowl song (really loudly) with Erin.

Monday we got to go piranha fishing (I caught one!) and see baby crocodiles. Everyone got to hold it, but when it was my turn I freaked out when it started squirming around and dropped it in our canoe. It was a huge fiasco because we all jumped up onto our seats and had to wait for our guide to catch it again so that it wouldn’t bite any of us. Our guide was crazy! She drank the water from the Amazon and walked waist deep in the river at night barefoot to catch the crocodile with her bare hands! Then we went back to the “lodge” to sleep, but Charli, Emmy, and I were too scared to sleep in the beds they had made for us because people found cockroaches and lizards in their beds. So we got to sleep in hammocks. It was actually really comfortable.

Everyone here speaks Portuguese, but most of the time the language barrier isn’t too difficult. We’ve just been pointing and miming a lot to get our point across. They do understand some words though (like beer, thank God). And everyone is very friendly. Shelly and I were at the mall in a shoe store, and after pointing to our size, all three workers in the store just kept bringing us shoe after shoe to try on.