Chegou (Arrived)

I arrived in Brazil yesterday and making my way out of the airport I found my ride nice and easy. The airport was packed with taxi drivers as well as limo drivers offering rides luckily my driver was one of the first people I seen and soon enough were are on our way. The part of the city I am staying in is called the Rocinha Favela its was about an hour west of the airport, but it was quite the scenic route on the ride to Rocinha we seen all the touristy things that Rio is known for the first thing we drove past was the grand Maracana stadium where the world cup final was and where the Olympic ceremony will be in a little over a year. After seeing that I seen glimpses of the Christ the Redeemer statue as well as the Sugar Loaf Mountains and Copacabana beach. I'm hoping to visit all these sights within one of the free weekends that I have available while I am here. Upon arriving at my home for the next three weeks I was greeted by other volunteers working with Project Favela. The NGO Project Favela is ran by an American and it has close to thirty volunteers at any given time. Just yesterday I met people from all parts of Europe as well as a few Americans. 

After dropping off my bags in the flat I went to take a tour around the Rocinha Favela and Project Favela where I will be spending a lot of my time. The Favela streets are some of the narrowest and steepest streets I've ever seen in my life. Luckily, I got the slipping and falling out of the way on the first day, no bumps or bruises to show for it luckily. As we were walking around I could really feel a since of community within the Favela, from the books I read about Favela's before coming to Rio a lot of these families here have spent decades living within the Favela's and many of their grandparents still live in them. Also, with all the narrow streets and homes all looking very similar it is easy to get lost walking around in the Favela, managed to do that as well on the first day, but fortunately I retraced my steps and figured out where to go. 

For Wednesday, I along with a few other volunteers will be taking some of the students on a field trip to the planetarium for part of the day and the rest of the day I will start helping out with some of the English classes later on in the day. I'm every excited and also I've been on the lookout for monkeys.. apparently the balcony to our flat has trees in it and often times a monkey will swing by. I've been on the lookout to snap a quick picture if one swings by. I wasn't able to take many pictures yesterday, but I will be sure to post some soon!