Day 4: Rio de Janeiro

Directly after breakfast, we boarded the bus and drove along the coast and past the future Olympic stadium (Rio de Janeiro is a candidate city for 2016) to a samba school in the suburbs. Upon our arrival, the samba school students performed a few songs for us. Then, we performed a song, the South Africans did one of their pieces, and then we sang two pieces together. After we finished, a group of children from the surrounding shantytown community performed a pageant to a song by one of Brazil's most famous composers. Following that, we watched a kickboxing demonstration by local kids.

Later, a percussion group started to jam as a few samba dancers came out and danced for us. The dancers dragged a few of us out onto the dance floor, and the gradually the whole choir (and the whole audience) was dancing. Towards the end of the jam session, the samba school fed us a lunch of rice, beans, and various pig parts. As we finished lunch, we started the Pony Game. Though it was hard to hear over the samba music that was playing in the background, we eventually drew the South African choir and several of the samba school children into our game.



Eventually, the percussion group started up again, putting an end to our game. More dancers appeared and danced a flag dance, the traditional dance for saying goodbye. Meanwhile, the percussion ensemble had snagged a few of our singers for their ensemble.

Once the last of us had loaded the bus, we headed to a pavilion that featured vendors from the northeast of Brazil. Wandering through a forest of blue tents enclosed in a modernist arena, we explored stores that sold products ranging from inflatable Hello Kitty balloons to various wooden trinkets of unknown purpose.

From there, we went to Sugarloaf Mountain, the enormous, pointy mountain at the entrance to Rio de Janeiro's harbor. After riding the two cable cars to the top, we had time to explore the summit and browse the gift shop. As the sun was setting, we found ourselves breaking into song, inspired by the breathtaking beauty and the mysterious mood added by passing clouds.




Having returned to Earth, we finished off the evening with a pizza dinner (yes, there's Domino's in Brazil) and a quick rehearsal.