2016's Very First Adventures

New Year's Eve this year was a freaking blast! More than 2 million went to the beaches to watch the fireworks displayed in front of Copacabana beach in Rio.

My friends and I decided to take a different route, though. We went to our friend's house (where we teach English on the weekends) at the top of Pavão Pavãozinho, a favela which happens to overlook Copacabana beach. I met tons of fun new people that night and got to hang out with some of my best friends from here in Rio. The people and the music were a blast...and then there was our view of the fireworks. >>

Our friend's rooftop had a couple of trees partially blocking the view so we went to one of his neighbor's houses to watch. Every time I go into the favela, I'm impressed again at how close everyone is. Everyone there is like family to one another so our friend could just take us to anyone's house with asking and it was no problem. It's really a beautiful community. We sat in our "VIP" seats to watch the show and then went back to his house after to dance the night away. It was a perfect night.

The English teachers from our Pavão Pavãozinho program <3
David, Zach & Gabriel

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Poor little Dawid, my amazing and hilarious friend from Poland, had already been feeling sick and then felt even worse the day after our big celebration so we decided to go on a hospital adventure together. The very first thing they did was give us both name tags that said Dawid:

I don't know why I had to wear the name of the patient I was with but it made us laugh.
It was fun to be a Polish dude for the day. ;)

Then things continued to be entertaining after that. First of all, any time that Dawid and I are together, we're laughing. He's ridiculously hilarious anyway and I was specifically trying to keep him entertained that day to make him feel better. We were cracking each other up from the moment we walked into the hospital until the moment we left.

This may not have been wise because, in these hospitals, they rank you from 1-4 when you come in based on how sick you are and they take the most urgent cases first--definitely a good thing because people who came in bleeding or passing out were taken care of before Dawid. However, this also meant we waited for a while.

At one point, we couldn't even tell if we were on the waiting list anymore so Dawid went to ask one of the receptionists (who otherwise sat there with her arms folded and, most of the time, with her eyes closed; she's not built for customer service). All in Portuguese of course, Dawid asked her if he was still on the list. Arms still folded and frown still in place, she shook her head slowly the entire time he spoke. At the end, she said "Não falo inglês" ("I don't speak English). Rude.

The lady that did eventually come to get Dawid was super impatient and demanding and we took to calling her "the bitch." Creative, I know. These were the only two causing problems though. Dawid and I had as much fun as possible while waiting and there was a lot to be grateful for that day. We saw multiple very ill people carried in (sometimes by strangers) and they were immediately taken care of, despite the fact that some of them were definitely homeless. There was no questioning about insurance (not for Dawid, either) and everyone was treated with respect and able to see a doctor without needing to worry about money.

Even Dawid's medicine was free! They have a pharmacy right there in the hospital and whatever is prescribed to you is free of charge. For all of you that aren't American, that probably sounds mundane but, for us, this is still novel and amazing! We're used to shelling out absurd amounts of money for our meds and our appointments, if we can even afford to go to the doctor in the first place. It's been changing in the last few years but I'm so used to the old system that I'm always pleasantly surprised by medical systems in other countries (especially when they treat those of us who aren't even from their country). It's beautiful. 

Just because we had some medical adventures, I of course had to watch this little guy again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65BlxjoaWNo  It will never get old.

(NYE photos courtesy of my friend, Silvia)