Rio de Janeiro Day Two: Blood and The Beach

We ended up staying with a missionary couple Sunday and Monday nights. They are professors at the nearby seminary, and great people. Mark and Helen took us in on very short notice, and we are very grateful. It was no small thing they did. It was more like a series of big things in the end.

I think they would have put up with us for the entire time we were there if they did not already have other plans. They were very gracious, and really bent over backward to help us out in our time of need.

Blood

In order to get the immigrant visa, one must submit to a rigorous medical exam that includes a blood test (or several, really). We had scheduled the exam for Tuesday so that the blood test would be ready by then, but we still had to go get the blood drawn.

We were staying in a neighborhood called Tijuca, but the place we needed to go was all the way over in Leblon. As the eagle flies, they are not that far away from each other, but none of us are eagles (or mountain climbers) so we took the bus.

The appointment was at 9:45 AM, so we left good and early at 8 AM to get there. There is a bus line that goes through both neighborhoods, so that is the one we got on. The problem was traffic, and lots of it.

We were a bit late, but the people were quite happy to take our money (and subsequently Nádya's blood) anyway. Once we got that over with, we wondered what to do next.

The Beach

Nádya's sister, Nyna, had been through this process only a month before, and had given us some advice on where to go. Turns out the beach is only two blocks away from the doctor's office where we were.

We could tell Kylie was getting hungry as we got to the walkway by the beach, so we sat down and fed her some of the soup she has been eating around lunch time. It was quite balmy. One of those just-about-perfect days. Not to hot, and not to cold with a nice sea breeze thrown in.

But as Kylie was finishing threatening rain clouds were starting to form over the granite hills that loom over Rio de Janeiro. No beach for us. Not today. Time to hit the bus stop and head "home." We thought maybe we would try to visit the next day after the appointment.

The bus ride home was faster because it was not rush hour, but it still took about an hour and a half because the bus winds through all the important neighborhoods it can. It rained off and on the whole way. Which made me glad we had not gone for a dip in the water as I saw that the gutter water from the city runs directly into the ocean there.

By the time we got to our destination the sun was shining (where we were, anyway), and we decided to grab a bite to eat before heading back to the apartment of our hosts. We had advised them that we planned to be back around three, and it was still only a bit past one. So they were not expecting to feed us.

We spent the afternoon resting, and I took some pictures of the area from the high vantage-point of the apartment. Mark said that he calls the living room window "the zoo" because one can see so many different things going on in the other apartments.

It was interesting to watch, but I could not escape the feeling that someone was watching me watch others. That was a bit odd.

There are several more photos from the day in our web album, but unfortunately we could not take the camera to the beach because we were to nervous about getting mugged (it is a pretty bulky camera). There are even a couple of pictures of Kylie in there.

Here is a panoramic view from their window (click the image for a larger version):

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