Riooooooo

So... I'll give you one hint as to where I am right now...

(PS: the title of this song is "Girl From Ipanema")

YES THAT'S RIGHT!! I'm at Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro for what is about to be the best best best spring break of all time! After weeks and weeks of stressful site visits, lecture after lecture after lecture, and constant mental engagement, it is FINALLY vacation and it's time to enjoyyyyy.

(and sleep)

Getting to this point of total freedom from responsibility was, however, not quite easy; these past two days were packed full of hair-pulling stress, nerve-wracking warnings, and cut-it-with-a-steak-knife tension. Just to give you some idea:

STRESS:

30% of our grade for one class and 30% of our grade for another were due within 24 hours of one another and could only be done between Thursday and Friday night due to information/research restraints. So, while the assignments were quite interesting, attempting to complete them while also worrying about packing and trying to finish two classes midterms at once was kind of stressful. I didn't even watch Netflix for like two days.

WARNINGS:

Yesterday, after finishing one of our midterms, our country guide sat us down in order to explain to us the strong likelihood of an abrupt and tragic disaster due to political, medical, and/or personal factors. First off, we were told that she doesn't "trust our judgement" as we have shown her that we cannot take good care of ourselves.

my reaction tbh

Turns out she wasn't talking about me specifically but instead a group of peers who'd happened to get sick and lose a few important items (including one passport). But it was still kind of mean in my opinion, and I was like--

But then, we got into the real warnings that really freaked me out.

For example, Zika (which I like definitely have). They warned us that this is the PRIME TIME for mosquitoes, and should we experience any of the symptoms (which I absolutely have) we should contact a doctor immediately even though we may have to wait for hours in the office. I kind of sunk down, trying to hide my joint pain/fever/headache like--

But just as I was really investing my worry in Zika, we were alerted about another great source of fear--civil war!!!!

So as you may or may not know, Brazil is in the middle of this crazy political moment in which millions of Brazilians are calling for the impeachment of a corrupt president. Brazil's democracy is only 28 years old, so many fear that such a diversion from the democratic process could endanger the entire governmental structure of Brazil. Fun awesome yay! So we were warned not to wear the colors red, green, or yellow, because we may accidentally align ourselves with one side of the movement or the other and risk attracting "uncontrollable" aggression.

But don't worry, we have an excellent evacuation plan in case of the outbreak of civil war... which we haven't yet been told... We'll worry about that when we get there, apparently.

TENSION:

Ten weeks of constant (and I mean constant) interaction, has put all of us on edge a tiny bit. I feel like we are just one "can you move just a little bit so I can see the PowerPoint?" away from--

Sally made a great point in that we all have multiple "selves" in different contexts. These include the classroom self, the home self, the India/Brazil/America self, the site visit self, etc. etc. And it's gotten really hard to navigate all these selves and form a sense of identity when you are constantly in contact with everyone else in all of these different contexts. So I think we are all getting *slightly* tense, and that spring break came at just the right time.

~~

Sally, Jenn, and I hopped on our plane to Rio and endured the very short ride to a beautiful, compact airport at which we immediately got our bags and drove to our awesome Airbnb! We have views of two different beaches, and we are literally one minute away from the beach that inspired the above song. We are currently relaxing and napping, because we each (for three different reasons) slept for only three hours last night. Then, it'll be time to scarf down some Mexican food (yaaas @ guac), try some Rio caipirinhas, and enjoy some nightlife!!

So excited to explore another city in the country I've come to love!!!!

Feeling ~decidedly~ unstressed, unworried, and untense,

Spring Break Aubrey!!!