Brazil revisited

Our students took all of the photos in this blog entry; some of them are gorgeous. You can see the Christ Redeemer statue from all over Rio de Janeiro. Here's one that a student took during one of our trips around the city.

I mentioned in a preious post how huge Sao Paulo is. One of our students must have taken this shot out of the window of our plane as we were landing.

Here are some more shots of the favela. Houses in the favela are built really, really close together. Two people can't walk down the alleys side-by-side.

Wires were strung all over the place. Everyone seemed to have electricity in their homes, but electrical fires have to be very common.

This photo was taken at the edge of the favela.

Street vendors in Brazil are very aggressive. They hang around where busses and taxis drop people off, and they accost foreigners relentlessly, sometimes following them around for blocks. We learned to smile and say no politely, and then avoid eye contact.

We visited the stock exchange in Sao Paulo; it's called Bovespa. It's the fourth largest stock exchange in the world. Them Brazilians take their investing seriously.

Here's the trading "pit" -- just like the game. Everything is going to be converted to electronic trading in the next few months, sadly. This kind of trading looked like fun.