A walk in the park...

Mon. 6/28
Well I think I mentioned before that our school visit for today got cancelled because it was a “national holiday.” This was probably a good thing since we are without Tamo and Olavo who are in Sao Paulo until tomorrow and whose translation skills are useful!
So we decided to sleep in a bit and then take the bus to Jardim Botanico, which is an enormous hidden getaway of acres and acres of natural goodness. In other words, it is a well-known collection of Brazilian and exotic flora. Dr. Finke would love this and I have to thank her botany class at X for turning this place into a green playground for me! Ahhh it was so beautiful and peaceful especially in contrast to the noise of the city on the outside. It had everything from waterfalls, to palm trees, to bamboo forests, to orchids, to lily pads that were four feet in diameter! There was also a Biblical garden and an Amazon region which made me feel as I was channeling my inner Bear Grylls. No sightings of lemon-flavored ants though. My favorite part was the medical plant garden. Oh mahhh goodness. I was in hog-heaven (or I suppose “homeopathic heaven” would be more appropriate) and I’m pretty sure I took a picture of about 75 % of the descriptive signs for the dozens of medical plants they had. I was amazed at how many biological/anatomical/medicinal words look similar in Portuguese to what they are in English meaning I could read about what all of the plants are used for. God bless Latin root words!! I kept saying that I would love to work there and I had an interesting conversation with Dmitri about one of his professors who did research in Mexico on the use of medicinal plants among women. Hmm, I think I hear wheels turning…
Minor side note: There were a lot of people wearing green and yellow and jerseys today. And after taking a nap on the beach mid-afternoon we got up to go sit at a table at kiosk and order some beverages and snacks and every tv at every kiosk had the SAME CHANNEL ON! What is wrong with these people?! I just wanted to watch Oprah (which believe it or not is on here in Rio, complete with Portuguese subtitles) and all they had on was some soccer game. Sheesh. And then the strangest thing happened. Three, count ‘em THREE times during the 2 hours that we sat enjoying our nosh and bev the city erupted in noise and firecrackers and horns and the waiter would run around yelling GGGOOOOOOAAAALLL!!!!! The waiters even stopped serving during the game so they could watch! It was so weird. I don’t know why everyone made such a big deal out if it but boy was I glad that I happened to have my Brazil flag sarong, green/yellow earrings and Brazil flag headband on…..without that I fear I would have felt slightly left out….! And so I used context clues to come to the conclusion that the Brazilian soccer team was playing in a very important match in something called the Copa de Mundo against a neighboring country, Chile and that it was a really good thing that they won….because now I guess they get to play again or something? I don’t know, it all seems a little crazy to me. Almost as crazy as the street parties that commenced after this and are still audible outside my window right now as I sit here watching a documentary on Ronaldinho and eating kiwi. These cariocas really take this soccer thing seriously….maybe I should join in the fun….