Rio de Janeiro

This week we went to Rio de Janeiro. We left on Friday. No one was there to pick us up so we took a bus to get close to our hotel then a taxi to the hotel.

Floats for Carnaval in storage

Monument in downtown Rio

We stayed in the Americana Copacabana Hotel, which was a few blocks from the beach. We caught a quick lunch around the corner from the hotel.

Quick lunch spot

 We then went down to Copacabana beach, the most famous beach in Brazil. It is lined with hotels, has a wide walkway, and a lot of sand so the sun worshipers are a ways from the walkway. There are a lot of small eating places, sand sculptures, and sports along the beach.

The famous Copacabana walkway

Sand castle

Playing a new sport like bad-mitten with a ball

 When we got to the end of Copacabana beach we found an old fort turned into a military museum.called Forte de Copacabana. It was very interesting.

Fort Copacabana with a helicopter landing

Sister Cannoneer

View of Sugar Loaf from the fort

Gateway to the fort

Fort artillery

A short walk from the fort is Ipanema, a beach made famous by the Bossa Nova song "Girl from Ipanema" written by Tom Jobim. The beach is much narrower and not as nice as Copacabana.

Paul with his friend Tom Jobim

The Girl from Iponema

We returned to the hotel tired after a long walk.

Saturday was our tour day. We made arrangements at the hotel for a driver who took us around the sights of Rio. We started by going to Corcovado, the mountain containing the statue of Christ - Cristo Redentor. This meant a ride downtown, getting tickets at a a praça called Lago do Marchado then a van ride up the mountain. It was really crowded because the area is quite small and a lot of people are trying to see the statue at the same time.

Cristo Redentor from our hotel room window

Going up the stairs to the Cristo

O Cristo Redentor

View of Rio de Janeiro from Corcovado

 I stopped by Rio on my way back from my mission and remember the aquaduct.

Passing through the Arcos de Lapa

 We went downtown to see the Metropolitan Cathedral. It reminded us of the cathedral in Brasília. It was very nice inside.

Metropolitan Cathedral

Inside the cathedral

One of the places I wanted to see was the national fine arts museum, since Rio was the art center of Brazil duing the 19th century. There really wasn´t much to see of Brazilian art;

Museu Nacional de Bellas Artes

Statues in the museum

 Right across the street was the Municipal Theater.

Teatro Municipal

The director

 We then went to see Pão de Açucar (Sugar Loaf) mountain, another icon of Rio. When I was there 50 years ago I met some sailors on top of Sugar Loaf. I greeted them in Portuguese (no response), then in German (no response), finally one of them asked, "Do you speak English?". I responded, "A little". They were from Poland. I felt bad that they had to speak my language to communicate. This time it happened again, except it was a nice couple from the Czech Republic. There is a lot more room on top of the mountain so it was much more peaceful than Corcovado.

View of Pão de Açucar

Riding the gondola

View from Morro da Urca, the half way mark

A walk through the Atlantic rain forest on top of the mountain

 We had been trying to contact Daniel, the Counsel Technology Specialist for Rio, without success. We finally got a call when we were on top of Corcovado to set up a meeting with him for Saturday evening and with the other technology specialists for Sunday evening. We took the metro from a stop close to our hotel to the Botofogo Ward building where we had our training meetings and church on Sunday.

Daniel, our CTS getting ready for the meeting

STS training (including one stake president)

It was very interesting in our hotel because there were teams from several countries training for the Olympics. We saw teams from Belarus, Germany, Austria, Israel, Portugal, and the gymnastics team from Romania. 

Austrian Olympics team

German gymnastics team

Monday was our day to visit chapels with the FM. We were to leave at 8 am, but didn´t get picked up until about 9:30 am. While waiting we made friends with some tourists from France who were also waiting for their tour to pick them up.

French friends ready for the beach

Arnoldo, one of the FMs from Rio

 While at one of the churches some young people from a school stopped by and offered to do work to raise money for the school. Arnaldo gave them kitchen duty. It was good to see Brazilian youth willing to work.

Working youth

Lunch with the FMs, Arnaldo and Jackson

 The highlight was stopping at the Rio de Janeiro temple lot. They are waiting for municipal approval before they can have the ground breaking. The lot looks like a sand dune, but also has a nature preserve with a lot of unique plants. The church will preserve the preserve.

Temple lot for the Rio de Janeiro temple

One of the many plants to be preserved

Colored seeds from the nature preserve

A couple at the temple lot

Tuesday we didn´t have anything planned so we decided to take a tour of Petrópolis, the city emperor Pedro II made his summer home. It is a 2-hour bus ride into the mountains close to Rio de Janeiro. It was a good break away from the city.

Ritzy hotel in Petrópolis

Summer palace of Pedro II

The queen

 We went to a traditional Brazilian buffet for lunch.

Lunch time

 We then went to St. Peter´s to see where Pedro II´s family was buried.

St Peters

Alternate transportation

What´s left of the royal family

 We went to see the house and model of an airplane of an early Brazilian aviator who won a flying contest in France.

It can´t carry all of our luggage back home

Someone to look up to

 We then went to the Crystal Palace where royalty held fancy parties, including one for former slaves after slavery was abolished.

Crystal Palace

This was a very nice city to visit. There are many more things we did not have time to see.

On Wednesday we had a later flight so we went to see the Botanical Garden, Which was created by João VI, king of Portugal who fled to Brazil while Napoleon was taking over Portugal. The Portuguese Kingdom was run from Brazil for 13 years until João VI returned to Portugal leaving his son to rule Brazil (who declared Brazil independent from Portugal becoming Pedro I, the first emperor of Brazil).

Giant water lilies of the Amazons

Fountain in the park

In the wilds

 Rio de Janeiro is a big city full of confusion (not as much as during Carnaval), but it is a beautiful city with a lot of special landmarks to see. I am glad we were able to see it.

Life of Seniors

You never can tell what a week will bring, even if it is planned. We had our first-of-the-month devotional on Monday, but almost no one was there. Everyone was gone for some reason or other. We had our regular Family Home Evening on Monday night.

Our neighborhood garage

 They said they were going to replace the carpet in the bedrooms with laminate wood flooring on Tuesday. It didn´t happen. Then again on Wednesday. It didn´t happen. In fact, it didn´t happen all week. On Tuesday, however we went over to Sodie Doce to celebrate Sister Zaugg´s birthday. Their daughter has been visiting from Germany so they just got back from seeing Florianópolis, Foz do Iguaçu, and Rio de Janeiro.

Birthday time

Tuesday and Thursday Diane went in for physical therapy again. On Thursday we got a message to see if we could teach Elder DePaula´s English class. He had a heart attack in the morning with emergency surgery. Those who gave prayers in the class offered nice prayers in his behalf.

Friday we found ourselves heading for the airport again. this time we are going to Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte for training. On the way to the airport a motorboy passed by and knocked off the side mirror of the taxi. I don´t know why some people like to destroy things.

Old Time Auto

Broken mirror

 While waiting for our plane (the gate was changed at the last minute so we had to rush across the airport) I was working a Sudoku puzzle. I had recently read the "I Was A Stranger" website and a thought came to me - "open your eyes, open your heart". I put away the Sudoku puzzle and opened my eyes to those around me. I opened my heart and wondered what was their story. Even though I didn´t speak to anyone it brought a sense of caring for others. It was an enjoyable experience to get out of myself and think about others of our Father´s children.

Here we go again

The next post will be our experiences in Rio de Janeiro.

General Conference

We just finished watching General Conference. It was especially interesting for three reasons. 1) Elder Mazzagardi spoke. He is in the Area Presidency here in Brazil. He often comes into the ICS office and we have had several deep gospel discussions. 2) Elder Anderson mentioned the faith of Zuleika from Alegrete. I knew her on my first mission to Brazil when she was 15. She is currently serving with her husband who is the mission president at the CTM (MTC) here in São Paulo. 3) A temple was announced for Belém, Brazil. Last October while we were doing training in Belém we rode past the lot that had been purchased for the temple. We really enjoyed the conference.

Other than conference this has not been a very eventful week. Diane had physical therapy on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings. Her foot seems to be getting better. It is the end of the month and quarter so she has been busy preparing reports.

Wednesday morning we were able to go through an endowment session at the temple. The session was full of missionaries from the CTM and we were asked to be the witness couple. When we finished we were invited to lunch at the Outback with the ICS department to celebrate Wagner's birthday. They forgot about us and all left so we caught a bus and met the group there. We got back just in time for the Portuguese class.

On Friday night we went with the other senior couples to see Batman vs Superman. It was about 3 hours of special effects with little redeeming value. I was reading the website of my author nephew, Jeff Wheeler where he talked about the concept of "virtus" the defining characteristic of a true hero. There was no "virtus" demonstrated in the move about super heros.

On Saturday morning we decided to take a little walk before General Conference (which starts at 1pm here). One of the things we miss is taking walks and seeing a little greenery.

City park

Exercising in the park

House on the way back from the park

Back alley on the way back from the park

 After getting back we checked at the health food store to see if they had any gluten-free bread. They haven't had any for a long time. The store is owned by church members. We were able to pick up the weeks groceries before conference started.

At the health food store

Steps along a sidewalk. These steps are actually sloping toward the street.
It looks like they are level but they are not.

Step by step we are making a little progress, but there is still a lot to do with little time to do it.