Finally in Curitiba

Well, the group finally arrived in Curitiba a few hours ago. I only posted once from Floripa but I figured you could extrapolate that one post and gather that pretty much all we did was hang out at the beach, relax, and enjoy the scenery. It was a welcome vacation, and extremely relaxing!

We took a (relatively) short bus ride through the mountains to arrive in Curitiba around 7:30 this evening. Some people slept, but I read an issue of Utne magazine and watched Flight of the Conchords for most of the ride. It was a much smoother ride than previous ones - because I sat in the second row and I had two seats to myself!

Jen and I have decided that this is our favorite hotel room, or apartment as they call them here, by far! There are two rooms - one is a bedroom with two single beds, a closet, and a decent sized balcony that has a great view. We have an actual normal sized bathroom. This is exciting because all of the other bathrooms have been about the size of a cruise ship bathroom, rather uncomfortably small! A full sized shower, and at this point, hot water - are luxuries to us!! Aside from the bedroom is a small living room with a couch (with a pull out bed), a little table with two chairs (which we have dubbed to be our breakfast nook), a window with a garden on the ledge, and best of all - a little kitchen!! Its nothing major but there's a refrigerator, a stove, a sink, and storage for food and utensils. At this point, we are thrilled to have the opportunity to cook for ourselves. Eating out has been semi-expensive and it feels like we're always scavenging for food.

The goals for tomorrow are as follows:
- find a place to do laundry - we are out of clean clothes!
- find a place to buy some groceries and hopefully a pot and pan (none are provided by the hotel)
- talk to travel agent - we have this coming Friday and Monday off from school, so a few of us are going to take the opportunity to go to Rio!!
- finally, go to class. Yeah, vacation is over, back to work

Oh, my dad asked about the weather/temperature. Floripa was extremely warm during the day - probably in the upper 80's lower 90's but with a nice cool breeze. At night it could be a little chilly, in the upper 60's but also with a breeze. We expected Curitiba to be very cold (from what Floripan's and others had told us) but when we arrived I was wearing shorts and a light shirt and was pretty comfortable. I would say its in the mid 60's right now. However I think that it will start to get colder in the next few weeks (just a guess)