The last couple of days

So far, so good. I take back what I said about the lack of Brazilian hospitality. Yesterday (which was my birthday, and it was great!) we met quite a few very friendly Brazilian folks who made me feel very welcome in their country. And a lot of them who spoke English. I had a broken English/Spanish/Portuguese with this hippie dude at school who I bought some souveniers from. He was pretty nice. Because of the language barriers, we weren´t able to talk about anything important, but I got out of him that he and his wife make all of their handicrafts and it´s the only source of income they have. So that was interesting.
We visited a bay yesterday, San Antonio de Lisboa and I loved it. I took lots of pictures there. It reminded me a lot of Europe, cobblestone streets, colorful buildings, but definitely with a Latin twist. It was very tropical and the weather was beautiful. Everybody keeps making fun of me because everytime I walk outside I comment on how nice it is. Seriously, like every single time! I can´t help it though- it really is nice here!
My classmates took me out for my birthday and it was a lot of fun. We had middle eastern food and then went dancing. And I love me some Brazilian music! It´s so wonderful and I´m going to miss it when I get back home. I´ll have to make an attempt to find some Brazilian musicians in L.A. Needless to say, we were all walking zombies in class today.
For our assignment in class, we were supposed to talk to more Brazilians to ask them about media ownership, basically to see how much they know about it. Thus far, I´ll be honest, I have not asked anybody yet. Mainly because, I caught a stupid cold. I feel terrible. I had to order room service to bring up a thermos of hot water for me so I can have some tea. Ideally I would love to have some soup, but vegetable soup is non-existent here. I´m almost tempted to just bite the bullet and order some chicken noodle soup. But if I do, please don´t tease me about it. I just want to
feel better. If I could make my own soup, I would. Humph!
So tomorrow, I´m determined to walk up the hill and trail that go along the back of the hotel. I´ve been saying this for days, but something keeps coming up that prevents me from doing it. Today it was being sick, and having to do my laundry.
I went to the little store and bought what I thought was landry detergent, but when I got back to the hotel to wash my clothes in the sink, I discovered that I had bought a huge jug of fabric softener... so my hands are super soft right now, but I´m not sure my clothes are as clean as they could be!
I was going to type more, but I forgot.