Curitiba

I have so many good pictures that need to be posted from Iguaçu, just no time. Access to computers is rare.

We are now in Curitiba. We arrived at the city after a 10 hour bus ride from Foz do Iguaçu. It was a good little ride. We were on a sleeper bus that gave us treats and left right on time. We met a cool guy on the bus, Tomatiho, who helped us open the bathroom door. He has his hair in a braid all the way down to his rear. He has a coffee shop somewhere in Curitiba that we~ll probably stop by and say hey to him again.

We got to the city at 7 am, and it was freezing freezing freezing. We walked about a kilometer to our hostel. When I saw it from down the street, I immediately got concerned. It was sick. But, don~t judge a book by it~s cover, right? So we went in and the lobby was nice. We were then taken to our room. It was small, dirty, and smelled like urine. I asked for a different room, but none was available immediately. We were still tired and Rach is pretty sick (poor girl) so we decided to just sleep for a while. We were wet from the mist in the air walking, our room was freezing and stinky, we didn~t want to touch anything yet we were so tired...ugh it wasn~t a pretty picture. Also, the shower water was only cold. Ahhh...we were so spoiled in Iguaçu! We finally got another room, which still smelled like pee but not as bad. When I realized things weren~t getting any better, I found us another hostel and we checked out as soon as possible.

Our new hostel is beautiful and clean and smells good. The maid cleaned our walls even before we got in. It is like a little cabin resort back here. We~re out of the main city, so that helps things. Any Wilbur Family reading this: remember that little cabin place we went to a few times for reunions? It~s like that but prettier because it~s Brazil.

We made it to the temple today! Hooray! We found a bus that goes directly to it. There we met a missionary couple from Ogden who don~t speak Portuguese, Elder and Sister Bljiueirjka (can~t remember right now). When they found us to be English speakers, they were beyond excited. We are staying with them for the rest of the weekend and they are taking us all over the city and to church, etc. There is another little man at the temple that speaks English, Elder Nakuto, who is so so cute. He is Japanese Brasilian and speaks moderate Eng. We are spending the day in the templar tomorrow, so I am sure we will be bff with him and his lovely espousa by nightfall.

Bus ride today: at the bus stop, I asked a man standing there too if we were going the right direction. He asked me if I spoke English, but then continued to speak to me in some sort of weird Portuguese (I may not be able to speak Portuguese, but I can tell when something is off). I left him after getting my answer, and he came up to us a few seconds later to start up a conversation. He said he spoke Italian and English, but never actually spoke English. I think he thought Italian was English. Who knows. Anyway, he told us he was a policeman and showed us his badge. That didn~t do much for me because I could smell alcohol on his breath. Dude, your flashy little badge doesn~t make up for your bad breath. So he kept talking to us despite the fact that we were ignoring him. I was getting so annoyed that I finally started talking to him in English really fast, just to slow him down. I told him all about the run I went on this morning during which I got totally lost in downtown Curitiba, but found my way back because I recognized a building labeled Philadelphia and a weird manican (how to you spell?) shop. He didn~t understand me and finally left us alone. So, we finally got on the bus and got to our stop. The Policeman got off before us, and I darted away from him as quickly as I could. When I looked back to make sure Rachel was behind me, I inadvertently stepped right into someone~s pirated DVD loot that they had spread out on a blanket. This big man with a cigarette yelled at me to stop. So I did, and when I realized where I was I had no time to change my course. The big cigaretted guy just came and grabbed me from the middle of his pile in a bear hug, got me off his stuff and put me back down. He was obviously amused by his strength. I was laughing and choked out Descupla!! and ran away toward Rachel. (I would use quotation marks for this story, except that I can~t find them, nor the apostrophe key, because I~m on a Brasilian keyboard and it~s different.)

At least we got away from The Policeman.

So that is it for now. I still need to write about Iguaçu. Dang. Just prepare for me to be telling everyone that you HAVE to go there!