Out on The Town With a Flock of Foreigners
I have found that weekends are boring if you don’t ask your friends to hang out with you. The other exchange students in Londrina have also found that to be true. At one of our Portuguese classes, we all decided to hang out on the weekends. Our first attempt was hiking to a waterfall a little out of town, but our host parents shot down our idea. We eventually settled on walking around Lake Igapo in Londrina and seeing where the day takes us. We all want to get out and explore. We were supposed to meet at the I Love Londrina sign at nine in the morning. I didn’t count on the fact that Brazilians are famous for being late. Lake Igapo is small and manmade; you can’t swim in it without contracting an odd disease like giardia or the plague. The only thing you can do on it is boat around on small crafts. About a quarter mile down the shore, there was a little boat rental hut for swan and pirate ship pedal boats. All the exchange students climbed into the boats, and we raced each other around the lake. It was great to be on the water again; I miss Lake Superior so much. We moved on after a while and docked our boats. While docking, we saw a Crain standing on the crowded dock, minding his business. We held up a lot of people trying to get a good picture. After our lake excursion, we decided to walk around the lake and find our next activity. We followed a dirt path and complained about how we couldn't go in the lake; we weighed the outcome of whether it was worth it to contract something if we swam. On our walk, we crossed a wooden bridge and saw a family of ducks; they were ceiling on a little patch of grass looking for food. At the lake's end was a cute little Acai shop, and we decided to stop there. All of us were a little tired and dehydrated. Pedaling a swan boat is a lot more cardio than you would think. I got an Acai smoothie with fruit. I was expecting a plastic cup, but to my surprise, it was made of a massive coconut, and little fruit slices bordered the edge of the coconut (10/10). It was around 11:30 when two more exchange students joined us. They were from out of town, and getting to Londrina took a while. We sat down and collectively decided that we were going to go to the country club and spend the rest of the day basking by the pool. The temperature outside had reached a whopping 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and we were all desperate to cool off. When we reached the club, we spent five minutes in the pool before we decided we were done swimming. We just sat by the pool, talking and laughing for the next two hours. Hailey, the exchange student from Nebraska, and I were the first to leave. Hailey invited me to go with her to a Japanese festival on the outskirts of Londrina. The festival consisted of a long row of stands with either food or cheap items that someone was trying to make too much money from. We visited a few unique stands. There was a pin stand where I got two pins for my rotary blazer. There was a jewelry stand where I bought a pair of earrings; the jeweler said they were homemade. We walked around for an hour just exploring when we found the holy grail of festival rides. The mechanical bull. I had always wanted to ride one, and there it was. We both rode it four times, and it's safe to say that I stayed on the longest. The guy running the ride thought it was funny that two teenage girls wanted to ride a kid's ride. We ended the day by sharing a box of macaroons and rating the flavors. My favorite was the raspberry. My host mom picked us up, and we went home. I was exhausted and sunburnt, so I went to bed.
The Swan Boat Was Faster
Slow Pirate Ship
I Think Thats a Crane
Look At The Baby Ducks
10/10 Acai
I Fell Of The Mechanical Bull
Macarons For Dinner
