This morning I met one of my roommates, Peter, which was a professional techno DJ from Belgium. Her was in Brazil because he had been dating a Brazilian girl that he met on the internet for 8 months, and this was the first time that he met her. He was madly in love with her. She had two kids and they were going to try to find a way to make there relationship work. His story was truly heartwarming and it made me happy to see that stories like that still exist.

I met Renata at 11am. We took the metro to see Natalia at an opera theater in the center of town. Where we were going had shows like this every day at 12pm. Today, Natalia and this other guy were the main performers. The show lasted one hour and Natalia was really an amazing singer. You don't expect that from her when you see her. After the recital, Natalia pointed me and Reneta to a very good buffet for lunch, but couldn't be there herself because she had to go to work (she is also an English teacher).

During lunch, Renata and I planned out our day. She was going to take me to different sites around the city, but places that were fairly close to one another in order to avoid taking the metro everytime. Sao Paulo is the third biggest city in the world with 17 million people living there, I am sure that there was lots to see, but I had only two days here, so I trusted Renata and Natalia in showing me the best places.

Our first destination was the center of the city (No joke, there is actually a landmark stating the center of the city). Then, we walked around to see the different famous parks and buildings, notably the building where Sao Paulo was founded. We then walked along a street, called 25 de Marso, that had everything and anything you wanted to buy. Most of it was stolen, but is was incredible to see the amount of people in the streets looking for stuff to buy at a cheap price (and it was just Tuesday!).

Renata then brought me to the Central Market, then to the Rock district. Here, people can get tatoos, buy Metallica gear, and anything you can think of that has to do with Rock. Over lunch, Renata had talked about getting another peircing (she already has on on her lip). When I asked her where would she like to get her next peircing, she told me that she was thinking of her nipple. Therefore, I thought to myself that this would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

When I told Renata of the idea, she did not seem to sure, so I told her that we can just go see the price and the types of jewlery they have for the peircings. When we got there, the guy in the shop told us that a nipple peircing costs 25 Reals. This seemed to be a cheap price for Renata. After a bit more convincing, Renata finally decided to get the nipple peircing...with me by her side...after meeting her only once before!!!

I have to say that the peircing really looked good on her (sorry, I have no pictures to show, though). It was really something that was crazy for the both of us. Even the guy who did the peircing was shocked when he found out that we had just met each other.

After the peircing, Renata had to go to a class. We were going to meet up later to go out. I went back to my hostel to change into going out clothes. I then left to go meet Natalia, and she was going to show me around some more. We went to Paulista, a very famous area that had lots of famous buildings. I had about 450 pictures left on my camera, so we went around taking pictures of random things as well.

At around 10pm, we met up with Renata again and went for a beer. I really wanted to party hard tonight since it was the last night of my trip. Natalia, however, was getting really tired and thought it would be best that she go home and sleep since she was getting up at 6am tomorrow morning to teach.

At 12am, we said goodbye to Natalia, and Reneta and I went looking for a club that was open...on a Tuesday night. Reneta met up with one of her friends, Marcus. He was one of her many gay friends, and he told us that not much was open except for his favorite gay club (which also seemed to be Renata's favorite place as well) called Loca. I have never been to a gay club before so this was going to be very interesting...

Marcus got us all in for free (apparently he is a regular). It was a very nice club that played mostly electronic music. There were a few straight people there as well. However, the presence of topless male dancers and a crossdresser DJ made it impossible to think that this was anything but a gay club.

I was told that Sao Paolo has one of the biggest gay population in the world (no surprise since it has 17 million people living there). During the night, I danced with Renata and her friend Marcus, until he found a partner...afterwards, there was a guy that came up to me and started talking to me in protuguese after I told him that I only spoke English, French or Spanish, he told me in Spanish that he thought I was really good looking and he wanted to kiss me.

I told him that I was flattered, but I was straight. He asked me if I knew that this was a gay club. I told him that it was obvious that it was, but it was the only place that was open tonight. He asked me if I was sure that I was straight (I know, stupid question), but after I reconfirmed to him that I was, he was really dissapointed, but we ended up having a great conversation anyways about Sao Paolo and Rio.

About 30 minutes later, I got hit on by another guy. At this point, I was starting to wonder if I was sending a vibe or something...This other guy was a bit more agressive. He would try to kiss me and I would be constantly trying to back up. He was drunk, though, however, the experience was definitely traumatizing...

We partied until 5am (I think we had to since the metro did not open until then). Despite everything that happened, I really did have fun, and I was kind of flattered to know that I please both guys and girls...