Because I got back this morning at 7am. I decided to stay up until 8am, have breakfast, then go to bed (breakfast at my hostel was free from 8am to 10am). I was planning to go to the beach today, however I got up at 3pm.

Once I got up, I was determined to go to the beach anyway. I arrived at Copacabana beach at 4pm. Rio de Janeiro has many beaches, however the most popular ones are Ipanema and Copacabana. It was a bit cold to go in the water (19 degrees is cold for Brazilians), so I just went around and visited.

On the beach, there were beach soccer games going on. They were not games that were being played for fun, they were actual competition games. These were games of the Copacabana Futbol Club. I spent most of my time seeing how the Brazilians play (as well as the referees). While looking at the games, I realized a crucial difference between Argentina and Brazil. While Peru, Bolivia, and Chile barely have anything that identifies them to soccer, Argentina has a bunch of soccer stores every block to identify them with the sport, however I would see no one playing as much. Brazil, on the other hand, does not need to have soccer shops to identify them to soccer, soccer is in their blood, they are taught this as soon as they start walking and it shows. Everywhere I went, there was someone playing soccer or had a soccer ball in their hand.

Another thing that I noticed is that people in Rio de Janeiro are really superficial. First of all, it is important to be tanned, if you are not tanned, you are not that attractive. Second, you have to be fit. There are chin-up bars and weight benches on the beach for everyone to use, and there were a lot of guys actually using them!

There was a little festival going on near the beach where there was a live group playing samba. There was also a market that sold artisanal things. It seems like they have them everywhere in South America.

When I got back to the hostel, I went grocery shopping again and made myself a gourmet rigatoni and chicken dinner with a coconut cake for dessert (all for a fraction of what I would have paid in a restaurant). One of my roommates was in the hostel kitchen and we had a long conversation on Brazilian culture. He had trouble speaking English so we spoke in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Daniela came and picked me up at 10pm. We went to pick up two of her friends: Sula and Joanna. Joanna spoke perfect French because she lived in France for a year. In another car was another one of Daniela's friends with her German boyfriend and two of his friends. Daniela told me that we were going to the favelas to party tonight. A favela is like a slum or a neighbourhood of poor people. In Brazil, if you really wanted to experience Brazilian funk (a type of music), you had to go there.

Before we got in, Daniela grabbed me and said:"You are going to hear and see things that are different then what you have seen before. By any means, do not stare at the girls unless you want to get beat up." I wasn't sure what she meant, but I was soon going to find out...

The club was in a big warehouse. Girls were dressed extremely sexy, and guys were either dressed like thugs or had no shirt on. Brazilian funk is like Brazil's hip hop where people dirty dance. However instead of the songs talking about the streets (like hip hop), all the songs talked about sex. Girls would just kiss random guys and it wasn't just normal kissing, it was kissing in a way that they were practically having sex with the hands going everywhere and without a care that there were people around. Girls took off their shirts as well, shaking their asses and hoping for a guy to come dance with them. There were clearly underage people as well. Even though Brazil passed a law stating that you can't smoke in clubs anymore, everyone here was smoking. This place seemed like a place that the police visited rarely either because they were too scared to come, or out of pure neglect.

We had a lot of fun dancing to the rhythms (especially because I was only used to samba the other nights). I could not help but look what was going on around me. We partied until 4am until we went back home. This was definitely a crazy experience and a night to remember...