Intro
Rio de Janeiro has very nice beaches, nice mountains and scenery, and warm weather. But the city was dirty. Actually, I felt part of the city was like Hong Kong, not very clean, smelly, sketch alleys, but with less people density. There were a lot of tourists during the World Cup, so most touristic attractions have long lineups but the ambient is great and it is neat to see people from different parts of the world.
Language
Portuguese (Brazil was a colony of Portugal). Felt that English was not too helpful. Brazilians might understand a good portion of Spanish if you speak slowly.
Transportation
Public bus and subway are pretty good. Google map has its schedule integrated so it was easy to figure out the way around.
Food
In general very good. The food on the plane was very good, we ate Portuguese chicken. There are many restaurants that are buffet style, and charge by weight. Food includes grilled meat, stews, bean, rice, salad.
Safety
There was one police patrol car with 4 policemen on every major street intersection and subway station (because of the World Cup), so it felt safe. But I guess it is usually not that safe, hence they need such force to be put in place.
Things to do
There are kilometers and kilometers of beaches in Rio, Copacabana is a very famous beach but it is usually very packed with people. It is on that place where FIFA set up the Fan-fest where they put a couple of large screens for people to watch the game. But I enjoyed more the Ipanema beach which is less crowded. It's a great place to get together with people to play beach volleyball or beach soccer.
There is beautiful scenery on the Sugar Loaf Mountain:
As well the famous Christ Redeemer statue:
Insights
There are many influence from the World Cup into the city. Brazil is one of the countries that expresses a real passion for futbol, and so this event seems to bring a great joy to the country. McDonald's even have burgers with "country theme" from the World Cup:
There is also a macaroon store that also have country theme. Merchandises like the Havaiana flip flops also have country theme designs from the World Cup.
Though the city has many nice places, it is known that there are many slums (called favelas). Actually, the hostel I was staying is in a slum. People with financial limitation live there, and drug lords tend to control these places. But recently many of the favelas were cleaned up so it is a lot safer now.
But speaking to the hostel's owner, I learned that the government did a lot of cleaning and make things look nice for the World Cup, but there are many deeper issues that they are not addressing; so the changes they made were mainly for appearance's sake. Actually, there is a great discontent from sectors of the population because large amount of money were spent for the event, but more important needs were neglected. (Hence when Brazil lost the semifinal game, many feared riots).
As part of my Christian small group, we have regular sharing and prayer time in same-gendered groups. The goal is to share about how God has been working in each of our lives, and about the struggles we face. It is usually not too easy to go into sharing the deeper struggles that we face.
It is much easier to just show that everything is going alright from the outside, and kind of not care of the deeper things that is affecting our lives. So it is important to emphasize the aspect of authenticity (or genuineness) within these sharing and prayer groups, and realize that this is a safe environment to share and entrust these deeper things into fellow brothers or sisters. This is not just for accountability but as well to gain conviction to "deal" with a sinful pattern of our lives and to walk towards holiness as God commanded us to do so.
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