Visitors

I haven´t posted a blog in a while because I´ve had visitors from the US here and so have been pretty much off-line except for checking my email. It´s been really fun to have three folks here to hang out with and for an excuse to cancel some classes and take some time off. I´ll tell you a bit about what I did over the last week...

My friend Jodie arrived on Saturday the 13th, and we hung out a bit over the weekend, but she was mostly hanging out with this guy she´s dating, so my "time off" really didn´t start until Tuesday the 16th, when she came to stay at my house. On Wednesday we went up to Praia do Forte, which is a little resort town north of Salvador. It´s a great place to relax and get away from the city. There´s a pedestrian walkway, a beach, and a turtle sanctuary that hosts a "save the sea turtle" program. We checked out all of these, ate some amazing Italian food, shopped, and enjoyed just chilling out.

On Thursday we took a bus up to Muritiba with our capoeira teacher, who is also in town visiting. We got to go to Mestre Medicina´s capoeira class, which was cool for Jodie since she has never met him or been to his academy (he´s the founder of our capoeira group). We stayed at my friend Sonia´s house, and had fun hanging out and chatting. We wanted to stay longer, but Jodie´s friend was arriving on Saturday morning, so we had to be back in Salvador on Friday.

We arrived in Salvador on Friday afternoon and went back to my house to unpack and relax. Then my friend/student called and invited us to go out and drink some wine. We ended up going to this super cool bar with a beautiful outside patio for some snacks, drinks, and hilarious conversation. It was a great time, and he was nice enough to pick us up at the house and give us a ride there and back home.

Saturday morning we went to the airport to pick up Jodie´s friend Jane and from there we went straight to the beach! Jane only has 8 days here, so really wanted to make the most of them. Both Jane and Jodie surf, so we met up with our capoeira teacher, who also surfs, and hung out all day at this beach bar. We ended up meeting this guy who runs a surf school who rented boards to Jane and Jodie. Coincidentally, we stopped at a salon on the way home so that Jane could get waxed and ran into the surf school guy who offered us a ride back to Salvador. It was so nice to get a ride and not have to take a LONG bus ride home, especially with Jane´s luggage!

Saturday night was spent eating lots and lots of amazing food at a Brazilian steakhouse. Jodie and Jane treated Vilma and I, along with the surf school guy and his friend to dinner at Boi Preto (Black cow), which is one of the best steakhouses in Salvador. All I can say is: YUM! It was sooooo amazing and with great service too.

Sunday we got a ride up to the same beach with the surf school guy and spent the day in a similar manner as we did on Saturday. Swimming, surfing, sunbathing, drinking coconut water and caipirinhas, eating clams and beach snacks, and most of all RELAXING. It was heaven :)

Jodie and Jane took off Sunday night on the overnight bus to Itabuna. They are going to spend some time at a famous surf spot in Bahia and Jodie is going to a capoeira event called "Capoeirando" which is an international event held there every year. I wish I had more time off and money to go with them, but alas will just have to enjoy the stories afterwards. It´s not in the cards for me to go this time around.

I taught a couple of classes yesterday and today, but most of my students are taking a break until the week after New Years. So now I´m ready to enjoy some down time over the holidays and hopefully spend some more time at the beach.

Happy Holidays everyone!