My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Hey Y'all,
      Sorry for the lack of updates but things have been hectic here. For this blog post I'm going back to October 31st which was my first day in Bonito and what goes down in history as my most embarrassing day ever. Ever. It was painful and for your viewing enjoyment I'm going to relieve it all. Every humiliating detail. Here we go...
                                                                                                                                                                   

My day started at the ungodly hour of six am. I'm exhausted and we all pile in to our luxury bus to head out for our day activities. After a drive, that was unfortunately too short for sleep, we arrive once again in the middle of no where. Theres one of those small vans, the kind associated with either hippies or child abductors, waiting for us. I and five others pile into this strange van that might be taking us to our death and off we go. It was another small drive right up a bumpy hill. It's important for everyone to know that I'm not graceful. I don't have a single graceful bone. I'm just clumsy through and through but this really took the cake. I'm the last person to exit our hippie van and the young good looking driver is holding the door open for me, so what do I do? I get tangled in a seat belt, cut my leg on a sharp part of the seat, bang my knee into the door, and trip and fall, literally, on my face. Yep... I had a large bleeding cut and a bruise on my leg all just from getting out of a car.

Activity one of the day is a canopy walk. Now, I'm afraid of heights but I'm also picturing a nice bridge like structure over the top of the trees for us to stroll on. I could totally handle something like that. Wrong. It was an obstacle course in the trees. An obstacle course complete with trees to use as steps, walking on long thin poles that swing , and a net to climb. I made it through eight of the activities before I started crying big fat crocodile tears and then shaking. One of our leaders was able to convince me to do two more activities before I had a panic attack. I was shaking so hard it looked like I was vibrating, crying huge sobs, and hyperventilating. One of the guides had to take me back but since I hadn't made it far enough to be repelled down I had to turn back and redo the part I'd already completed. During this trip back, the guide walked backwards to hold the obstacles steady since I was shaking so much, I started dry heaving, and at one point I was crouched down clutching a tree and whimpering. He dropped me off on the ground and went to catch up with the others and left me to my own devices in the forest. So of course I sat down and cried for an hour before calling my mother. It was not a proud moment. Only one other person didn't finish. Heights suck.

Don't I look so naive and innocent? Poor child.

I'm the second girl. You can't tell but as this picture was being taken
I was telling the photographer that if he didn't stop shaking the ladder I would
murder him painfully. Canada translated for me. He looked a little scared of me after that. 

Second Activity was archery. Nothing big happened here. No panic attacks here. I won't be the next Katniss Everdeen but I wasn't terrible either.

The photographer probably wouldn't be too happy to see me with a weapon.

Third activity was tubing. This one was my favorite by far but there was still a little humiliation to be had. We walk out there and are preparing to get in our tubes and the man in charge has told us to belly flop onto them (he's clearly Satan). Canada tried to belly flop on but didn't get the right distribution and  went flying into the water. Since I'm such a great best friend I'm standing on the little dock laughing my butt off because what else are friends for? As I'm laughing the man tells me to get on my but I'm still laughing and now I'm also walking so of course I trip over a step and go face first into the water and on to my tube. The distribution was, unsurprisingly, wrong so I go flying into the water. Did I mention there was a photographer there to capture this wonderful moment? Yep...Frame by frame.

As the photographer took it I said,
 "Do you think I want a picture of this?!"

So overall the day involved a lot of humiliation and threatening photographers. As embarrassing as it was I still enjoyed the da, minus the canopy walk. Overall I had fun with most of the activities and now I know to keep my feet firmly on the ground. Tchau!

Pantanal Experience

Hey Y'all,
  I spent about three days in Pantanal.  According to wiki, "The Pantanal is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland area. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and portions of Bolivia and Paraguay."  It's a gorgeous place filled with jaguars, monkeys, capivaras, exotic birds, and caimans. Our inn was a gorgeous place dedicated to eco tourism.The cows, horses, and pigs roamed free around the property and were often standing by the windows next to the dining hall. 

Wonderful dining hall

We had many activities to accomplish while we were here so we began the first night with horseback riding.I rode a beautiful and very stubborn horse. In the beginning he refused to move so my instructor gave me a branch to tap him with and get him moving. Towards the end he refused to stop or even slow down. I've always loved horseback riding and had a great time riding and getting to know everyone.

Brat and me

The next day we had Piranha fishing and a safari. I've never liked fishing. You just stand there with a pole waiting for a fish to bite and as someone seriously lacking in patience and the ability to stand still, this has always driven me insane. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that I didn't catch any fish but oh well I had fun looking at all the caiman that came over to check us out. The safari was a great chance to check out all the local wildlife. We got glimpses of monkeys and tortoises. It was interesting getting to trek through this jungle like era but as we weren't allowed to talk it was a little boring. The most interesting part was the evil cows at the end who surrounded us. One of them was a giant. I'm not kidding! This guy was twice as big as the other cows. 

Caiman lurking

Preparing to fish

Frankenstein cow next to regular cow

I found Curious George

Other activities we participated in were another safari walk and a campout. The campout was amazing! It's where I made friends with other countries including Germany, three Belgians, and Australia. I also hung out with the friends I'd already made like Canada, Zimbabwe, and Arkansas. It was an awesome opportunity to talk to people about our countries. It was interesting to hear what other countries thought about America. We also talked about the politics and crime rates in our own countries. The only thing bad about this campout was the lack of s'mores. S'mores are only in America and this is some of the saddest news I've ever heard. I'm making it my mission to introduce as many people to s'mores as possible. We left Pantanal after three unforgettable days. The only thing I regret is that we didn't get to stay longer. Tcahu!

Here we have (from left to right); Germany, Australia,
Netherlands, Zimbabwe. The two in the back are
Denmark and Arkansas.

Where's Catherine?

Hey Y'all,
      Some people have commented that I haven't updated recently and the reason for that is *drum roll please*.... I've been in Pantanal and Bonito! I went on a ten day trip to these beautiful locations with the travel company Belo Brasil. These trips were specifically designed for exchange students and I can honestly say these have been the best weeks of my life. Belo Brasil is an amazing company that really caters to their clientele and our guides were two young girls in their twenties who were a blast to hang out with. So before I get into the nitty gritty details, I'm going to give y'all a little bit of background information. Pantanal and Bonito are in the south of Brasil in the middle of no where. In Pantanal the closest living things were jaguars and cows. Bonito was a little bit better. It's a tourist town that is thrives on eco tourism. I highly recommend taking an eco tour as it's the best way to truly see the untouched land and animals and it helps protect the environment. As I said earlier, our tour was for exchange students from all around the world that our studying here in Brasil with different high school programs. There were about 90 of us total and we were put into two different luxury buses and we rarely saw the other bus. I'm going to try and tell you all about this trip but it'll take several blog posts so please be patient. Okay, now that we have some background lets get started.
                                                                                                                                                                  

My trip started at 4 am with a bang. I scrambled out of bed, downloaded the new Taylor Swift album (it's amazing!), and jumped into the waiting cab and,just because I'm me, I hit my head getting into the cab. Way to go, Catherine. I had a nice relaxing cab drive into Sao Paulo and to the hotel where all of the exchange students were gathering. When I got to the hotel I was greeted by nervous exchange students all milling around the lobby. To give me something to do and to keep people from talking to me (it was 5am!), I started looking for my phone to text my host mother to tell her I'd arrived. I panicked when I realized I left it in the cab! I was forced to have the guide call my mom and have her call the cab to come back and deliver my phone. I also had to double the cab fare. Not a great start. Thankfully, I was distracted by all the other exchange students from all over the world. Bus 1 boarded their bus and left the rest of us to wait on our bus 2. I met a girl from Canada and we chatted for awhile before she declared, "You're going to be my best friend for this trip." She was right. After we decided that,  we made it a point to always sit together, save each other seats at meals, and just generally have each others back when things went wrong. It was great having someone to look for in that giant crowd of people.

Canada and me at the beginning.

One thing I noticed is our buses lack of boys. We had a total of about 40 exchange students on our bus but only 9 of them were boys. Yes, I even counted. Disappointing but since the rules of this trip were no drinking, drugs, or dating, it might have ended up being a good thing. On the first day, we drove for 16 hours before checking in at a hotel for the night. This is the hotel where I left my phone charger. Oops. So for the trip I had no way to get in contact with anyone. This was both good and bad. Bad because people were expecting to hear from me and good cause it allowed to focus on what was going on around me. The next day we drove 8 hours. We were in the middle of nowhere. This was like the Siberia of Brazil. All we saw for miles was chickens and cows. Not normal cute cows but God forsaken evil cows that looked like they wanted to murder you.

You can just tell by it's eyes that it's plotting your death.

Our guides tell us that our luxury bus won't make it through the off roading that's required to get to Pantanal so we'll be trading buses. No problem, right? Wrong. Instead of getting on the new bus, I and eight other exchange students are shuffled off to the side to get into the back of a truck. At this point I just started saying good-bye in my head as I was sure the nine of us were about to be sold into slavery.

Our death mobile.

We're in this truck, bumping along through the mud and demonic cows when suddenly it starts pouring rain. Just absolutely pouring! We're all soaked and cracking up, sure that we're about to die at any moment. We finally arrive at our destination and race into the dining area where all the lucky exchange students on the bus have gathered. After filling out your typical boring paperwork we were whisked off to our first activity. That'll be part of my next post. Tchau!