Micos!!
So, today my mom's friend Maria took us on a tour of Rio de Janeiro with her favorite taxi driver and we went around doing all the touristy things like drinking coconut juice on the beach and driving through the Florista Tijuca which is a beautiful rainforest with waterfalls and windy roads. Also, however, we went to Cristo Redentor which is the statue of Jesus that can be seen from almost any point in the city. I'm not catholic but it's really impressive. It looks like this: http://www.velardez.com.ar/BRA/RIO-01-Cristo.jpg Anyways, after we took pictures of all the mountains and the city I walked down these stone steps and I'm just kind of meandering around this stone railing and all of a sudden this monkey jumps down next to me! Naturally, I try to maintain my calm composure but really I ended up being like Im "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!! A MONKEY!!! LOOK!!! A MONKEY!!! WOW!!! MONKEY!!!" and I'm all excited now and our hostess, Maria, is laughing hysterically at my excitement because apparently monkeys are like squirrels and they're all over the place, and sure enough I saw about 5 of them in the next 10 minutes..big ones, little ones, but oh my god they're adorable. It was hopping around and then some guy (damn tourists..:) ) handed him a piece of a banana and he had these tiny little hands and grabbed it and shoved it all in his mouth. He was black and white with these little white tufts of hair around his head. Anyways, I'd never seen a monkey before, and the ones in the zoo don't count. Then we went through this fruit market with people just everywhere offering us fruit to try and yelling out to come try their fruit and it's like a typical farmers market on crack. This one guy was dancing with his fruit and someone else was singing about their fruit and it makes one have fun no matter what seeing everyone else have fun. Anyways, the monkey was still the highlight.
