Olinda

Recife is hot as hell. I am practically on the equator, and this area of brazil doesn't get much wind (it's actually cooler further north, i.e. on the equator, cause of the wind). The sun here is more intense than any sun i've ever been exposed to. You look up into the clear sk y, block the sun with your finger, and you can still see those incredible halo around it. when clouds pass under it, they almost always make sundogs. I hit the beach yesterday and it was almost unbearable. thank god for the free beach umbrellas set up and the easy access to beer.

i moved out of the hotel to a youth hostel in ol inda. it's much cooler here. the people staying here are awesome, the place ahs a hammocks and a kitchen, olinda is safe enough to walk around...much more my style. little further from the beaches though.

last night i went out with a good group of kids who are also tstaying here; in town for some kind of pharmaceutical conventions. we played this game that's like a cross between indian poker and 20 questions: everyone gets a four-letter word and puts the paper on their head. they ask the group questions to try to figure out their word. we played for like at least 2 hours.

oh man, we laughed so hard at the dumbest shit. at one point, one girl' word was her own name (rafa). she learned that her word is generally at her house, but not right now, was very close to her at the time...i almost died when she guessed the word as "you" (voce). so close, and yet so far. her word before that was "two " (dois), a word i'd given her, and she spent the first hour just trying to figure out what class her word belonged to.

another girl got the word "alive/live" (vivo). right off the bat i thought it was real hard, so i jokingly whispered to the girl who gave her the word "what happens when she asks 'is it alive?' " oh man, she overheard the question and was like, "Ok, it's alive!" and then started asking a bunch of different animals and shit...it was so bad. then someone told her it was a verb conjugated to the first person singular, and her train just jumped the tracks. she just let out a string of four le tter verbs. it was so sad.

another kid got laugh, and was told that it was a part of him, and his was big, but it's not part of your body.

...clearly , i had a lot of fun with these kids. we went out to a nearby bar afterwards and drank and ate and listened to music...real goo dbunch, i think they're leaving today or tomorrow. too bad, too bad.

i was getting bummed out about travelling alone, but i like the hostel situation. did i mention it's also super cheap here?

allright, i'mn gonna go shower. fucking heat man....