Palaces, Sky Decks, and "cayaque"

This past week, just about every person I’ve talked to has explained the city of Brasilia to me. They have all explained it

differently, but I think parts of this might be true: The city was founded in 1960 to draw people away from the coast (Rio) and to make the capital of Brazil a more popular place to be. They designed it like an airplane and once you know the numbers and patterns, its pretty simple to find your way around.

Since it is the capital, last weekend I got to see the “President’s Palace.” I was hoping for a building that looked like it came from a Disney movie, but this place was still impressive, I guess… (dream big… TIU). They also have these guards by all of the important buildings in the city. It’s apparently a high honor to be chosen as a guard, but if I were a young boy, I would definitely rather dream of being the next Pele(soccer star...duh), Andreas Pavel (Inventor of the walkman), or to follow in the footsteps of some other famous Brazilian!

Me and Janelle (daughter of my host family and student at BIS)

President's Palace... almost like the palace from Aladdin!

From there, we went to the TV tower. This is the tallest building in Brasilia, so they let people go up and get a great view of the entire city. It’s Brasilia’s version of the "sky

deck" at the Willis tower in Chicago with a few little

differences:

1. 1. It is barely enclosed

2. 2. There’s one elevator that fits 10 comfortably but 20 rather uncomfortably and sounds like it’s about to crash through the earth at any point

3. You can in fact spit over the edge (don't worry mom, I didn't do it)

From the tower, we could see one of the Stadiums for the 2014 World Cup (hosted by Brazil) being built.

Just yesterday, we went kayaking (or “cayaque”) on one of the major lakes, “Lago Sul” (the south lake). Because of all of the big boats going by, I got in a little surfing on my kayak also. One very famous landmark in Brazil is the JK bridge which was right next to where we were kayaking. It was probably 80 and very sunny, so I got to get my tan on. Oh yeaaa! J I was also VERY tempted to join one of the many pick up games of soccer going on, but decided against it so that I wouldn't shoot down any of the dreams of the many Brazilian natives who dream of one day being as famous as Pele or Ronaldinho.