The 'Carioca' Chronicles Part I: Hellooo Rio
Wow, so somehow over a month sneakily wriggled by without me posting a single character. How times flies (whether you're having fun or not). The first half of May was not so fun for me unfortunately. The deadline for my final project of the year was looming so that was a time of major academic hustle- seriously no sleeping, no eating and extremely few smiles. But as with all tough times, the end came (thank God) and then at the end of the month I jetted off to sunny old Brazil!
I guess you could say the mindset of my last post inspired me to 'create' a meaningful summer so I planned to combine my desire to help in a way that I knew how (teaching English) with my obsession with Brazil and so I had six awesome weeks in Rio to look forward to!
I've been in Rio for two weeks now and I think I've said the word amazing on snapchat about a million times (sorry guys). Rio is just such a beautiful city; I've travelled to a decent amount of places over the years and this is definitely one of the prettiest. Below are the touristy things I've done so far.
A motorcycle ride and 40 minutes of hiking later- the view at the top of Dois Irmaos (Two Brothers) mountain.
The beautiful Jardim Botanico (Botanical Gardens). I saw baby monkeys :D
Watching the Sun set over Rio- The view from the top of Pao de Acucar (Sugar Loaf) mountain.
When I think about the long journey it took to get here- and I don't just mean the 12.5 hours of flying- and how happy I am to finally be here, it makes me realise how important it is to fight for what you want, how imperative it is to be active when dreaming not just to say 'it'd be nice' for such and such to happen.
If I had an actual bucket list, going to Brazil would've been first on the list for years, it's just something I've always really wanted to do and during the process of organising this trip there were so many times when I doubted myself or thought plans would fall through or was just frustrated at things not working out. But do you know what? I don't think I would appreciate being here now as much if things had been all smooth sailing from start to finish.
And I was just thinking today that it's basically the same with any goals or visions you have in life, sometimes you have to really work hard and the struggles seem endless but if you just hang on because there is ALWAYS an end to tough times, finally reaching your goal feels amazing!
And that's not to say it'll be all rainbows and unicorns once you get there. I've had some struggles in Rio; the biggest that I'm still working on being the language barrier- barely anyone speaks English here so I have to rely on my limited Portugese and my excellent charades skills which let me tell you gets tiring at times... But those setbacks still don't take away from my accomplishment of one of my goals and my growth as a person through it.
Quite a peppy post I've done here but my friend sent me some uplifting words yesterday so I thought I'd pass on the pep.
And on the fashiony side of life; Rio is perfect weather for my wardrobe, I seem to have an attraction to summer clothes all year round, even though I live in the UK. The thing I've enjoyed wearing the most here so far definitely has to be my high-waisted shorts, the ones from the vintage fair. They're good for accentuating long-limbedness.
Top- H&M
Shorts - Levi's
Shoes- Primark