Sept 7 Salvador Welcome Reception

I signed up for this SAS sponsored trip to this welcome reception where we could interact with other university students and listen to local music. Honestly thought it wasn’t going to be that great. Went with two girl friends Jocie and Ali and we showed up at this circus tent looking thing all lit up with green and yellow lights. They had Candomble women at the entrance giving us more ribbon bracelets and the men were playing their native instruments (drums and a bow looking thing). It was an open bar and they continually filled our glasses all night. There were a series of performances throughout the night. The first was the men performing their Capoeira (dancing that looks like they are fighting eachother). Next were the jugglers doing all sorts of tricks, throwing the pins at each other, standing on shoulders, doing flips. Two girls then came and danced with fire sticks and then performed a routin with long fabric and only using their body, arms, and legs climbed up and down, wrapping themselves in all different ways. Sometiimes they would unravel from great heights and was very thrilling. The last performance was the drums. They played Bahia music and everyon learned some steps from the women and men in the crowd. After an hour they put on “international music” aka American techno. Lots of dancing and a lot of fun. Spent most of the night with Jocie and Ali but saw Meghan, Molly, Justin and Henry (boys from Boston). There were a bunch of Brazilian Unvisersity student there but they didn’t speak a lot of English. So glad I went but not looking forward to getting up at 3:15 to catch a flight to RIO!