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It's hard to believe we have been in Sao Paulo for 8 weeks now.  Things have calmed down recently since the World Cup is over. I've been able to get into a daily routine that stays pretty constant which is nice for me. The university is still on strike and from what I understand it will continue to be for a while. The strike does cause some bumps in the road that are sometimes difficult to traverse but most of the time we can work around it. 

I have found my Portuguese vocabulary is growing tremendously.  I recently joined a CrossFit gym and have been forced to learn to speak Portuguese as only a handful of the members can speak English.  I have met some awesome people here and they have all been very welcoming and make it lots of fun.  Its nice to have a group of native Brazilians to hang around and also get some competition.  

Today after I left the gym I jumped on a bus to go to the lab. I overheard a person speaking English to the transit employees so I decided to strike up a conversation with him.  His name was Stephen and was from Memphis.  It turns out he was a MHIRT student in 2012 and was visiting Sao Paulo.  How crazy for us to be on the same bus in a city of 20 million people? I couldn't believe it.  

Last weekend I visited Rio de Janeiro.  Like Adriana said the views from the mountain tops and from Sugarloaf were amazing but the people weren't as friendly as they are here in Sao Paulo.  After I had visited all the touristy destinations I found myself ready to get back to Sao Paulo where I am more comfortable and the food isn't so expensive (50 reais on average for a meal, no thanks!)