I'm writing this entry from a hotel room in Salvador, Bahia and I'm currently in the middle of this vacation. So far, the trip has been a good one overall, but it didn't exactly meet up to all of my expectations. I wish i could have written an entry earlier than this, but it's been hard to find time and an available internet connection that I can use long enough to throw some text into this blog. Fortunately, I've been writing a journal of my comings and goings to share with my GF when I get back to the US, so I'm able to reference that as I write up the following summaries:
Day 1-2 - Rio De Janeiro
I originally planned the trip to brazil with three of my roomies (all of us are Black), but then we found out that a group of guys from our class (all of whome are white) were going to be going to Brazil too, so we decided to coordinate a trip together. I thought this would be a great experience for me because I'd done a lot of kickin' it with many of my classmates, but I hadn't really hung out with this other group of cats yet.
The flight from Dulles to Rio was a long one (with a stop in Sao Paolo) so I was dead when i got to the hotel and met up with my peoples on the first day. We ended up going out to a nice dinner as a big group and our dinner restaurant converted to a club later in the evening. with all the stories I'd heard about the party scene in Rio, I was excited to see some wildness and people having more fun than I'd ever seen before. Also, I thought back to the Snoop Dogg 'Beautiful' video and was expecting Brazilian women to be on some goddess type stuff that would have everyone's jaws on the floor. Unfortunately, I was wrong on both counts. The club DJ was playing some of the most horrible techno music I've ever heard and there were a bunch of lazer and smoke effects that were just plain cheesy. And, the women in Rio were decent, but nothing unlike what one would see at any club in the US. The most shocking thing was that the Brazilian locals in the club couldn't dance for anything. I thought that these cats were born doing some ridiculous dancing, but, if that was the case, their rhythm must have faded in old age. That first night was decent, but a big letdown from a partying standpoint. Good thing I had my classmates with me or else I'd have been miserable.
The second night was a similar gameplan with us going out to dinner as a group and then trying to experience some Rio nightlife. The restaurant was a great Brazilian steak house with an all-you-can-eat buffet for about $35-40 each, but the after hours stuff fell flat again. We spent over an hour trying to buy our way into a club that we'd heard was supposed to be the jumpoff and never ended up getting in. next we moved to another spot that we'd heard would be so-so but we went there ebcause no one was ready to go to bed yet. Once we got there, the place was actually "so-so-minus"...the music was more bad techno and, this time, people just stood around without anyone dancing. It was just plain weird. It did give me time to converse with my classmates over drinks though, so it was all good. By the time we finished up those two days in Rio, I'd had a good time, but it was more because of the people I was there with and not Rio itself.
Day 3-4 - Buzios
On Friday, we took a 2.5 hour bus ride from Rio to Buzios for a couple of laid back days in the sun. After the disappointment with Rio, I wasn't expecting too much from Buzios, but I had a great time. The days were spent hanging out and sight seeing in the city's downtown area and the nights were filled with dinners out with the group and kickin' it in the bars and clubs until 3-4am. One of the highlights of my trip came on the first night in Buzios when I had a great convo with several of the people in my traveling group. It took place at about 1am at a bar in the downtown area and involved a conversation between me, my man Detavio, an asian female classmate, and two white male classmates...we spent a good 60+ minutes talking about our preconceptions about race and classmates when we entered the GSB and how those views had changed in the past 4 quarters. In fact, I found out that I started off last year with a noticeable chip on my shoulder about race that I knew was always there but thought I'd be able to hide. I've done a whole lot of growing in the past 15 months and that conversation and the additional bonding that it sparked were proof of that.
I left Buzios early this morning with 2 of my roomies and took the long bus ride back to Rio so we could catch a ride to Salvador, Bahia in the northern part of Brazil, which is supposed to be heavily made up of Black Brazilians (Brazil has more Black people in it than the US does). Now, I've got 4 days in Bahia and it should be much more laid-back and chill than the first half of the vacation. I think I'm just going to chill out on the beach with my roomies and do some sight-seeing around here. This vacation is just what i needed to unwind after a long quarter of classes, activities, and recruiting stuff. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to do another update soon after getting back to the US.
Posted by marquis930 at December 18, 2005 04:37 PM