A Cultural Day, Wow!!!

Today we were cultural, shocking stuff!! (Had of course intended to be cultural whilst here, just hadn't got round to it until now what with one thing and another..!)

Last night in Lapa was pretty good. Cos of the rain it wasn't so much of a street party as the week before, and almost as soon as we arrived one girl had her camera stolen from right out of her hands as she was taking a photo so that sort of put a bit of a downer on things. However, Danni and me and another volunteer called Becky branched off and ended up going to 2 different clubs. The first was realllly weird. We could here the music from outside, and it was pretty cool electro dance stuff so we decided to go in. To do this, you had to pay a woman through a tiny slit in a big concrete wall and you got a sort of credit card affair. You then walked down to another gap in the concrete wall and handed this to a big bouncer who frisked you and then let you into 'the club'(turned out to be concrete walls covered in a corrugated tin roof...!). It was alright inside, but cos no-one was dancing we felt a bit out of place and decided to head on. We found another club which was playing more English music (interesting hearing Brazilians singing along!) which was totally rammed. Got a bit felt up on the way through the dance floor, but managed to shake everyone off and avoid being kissed!!

Today we got up a bit late (yes we did get in late, but it didn't help that a few hours later one of the guys from the house called Trevor came into our room and turned the light on and shouted 'Party Time'... tried to get us to get up again, no way!). But then we headed off to the cathedral and another smaller church and back to the tea rooms again (couldn't resist it, the others in the group hadn't been before and there was no way we could turn it down!!!)

The cathedral is the oddest building. From the outside it is hideous: a huge and dirty concrete cone with loads of slats in the side. But inside, there are 4 huge stained glass windows going up to a translucent cross which makes the ceiling, and all of the slats are actually open to let in the air and means that the whole place is lit naturally. It really was fascinating walking in because the impression from the outside was far from cathedral-esque.

I took quite a few photos today to try to show the cathedral, and also some of inside the tea rooms so you can see why it's such a lovely place to go. I even tried taking some of the cakes on display, but the photos don't really do them justice!!

We're going to have a quiet night in tonight. May head down to 'the local'(haha!) breifly, but we wan't to be on top form for our second day of culture. We are going to venture over to the Modern Art Museum on Niteroi which involves taking a ferry (very exciting for Becky!). Should be good....

xxx