Traveling Outside of Rio While Studying at PUC!

It's common for students to travel outside of their designated city or countries while studying abroad. While i'd usually recommend that students should spend time getting to know the area they're studying in, it could be a very rewarding experience to travel to a different city, state or even country.

I travelled to the state of Bahia towards the end of my study abroad experience. My thoughts were that Brazil is so huge that I at least have to see one other state aside from Rio de Janeiro. Bahia is a three hour plane ride from the Rio Galeão international airport. Bahia is a place rich with culture as Salvador, the capital, was the first slave port established in the Americas and makes Bahia the center of Afro-Brazilian culture.

Salvador is much more laid back than Rio de Janeiro-- it almost reminded me of the laid-backness of Hawai'i. There is much to do there: beautiful beaches, trying traditional foods like Acarajé-- a bean and shrimp fritter, and going to check out the historic towns of Pelourinho and Rio Vermelho. Pelourinho is known for its colorful buildings and old cobblestone streets. It is a UNESCO world heritage site, as it is was here that the first slave market was established in the "New World." Here you can also buy trinkets and souvenirs to take back home. I loved Pelourinho because the streets are so colorful and often filled with street dancers and musicians playing traditional instruments and dancing or performing capoeira, an Afro-Braziian martial art. 

One memorable experience in Salvador was going to a traditional Candomblé ceremony. Candomblé is a very old Afro-Brazilian religion that came over to Brazil with African slaves. By no means do you need to be religious to attend or enjoy the ceremony, though. At first, my friends and I sat down and waited in a very small church in a poorly lit neighborhood, not really knowing where we were or what to expect. As the church pews filled, a man who seemed to be a priest dressed in all white came out and made an announcement (all of the ceremony was in Portuguese, so it was hard to catch everything). Then what seemed to be the matriarch of the church or community came out, also dressed in white. Members of the church started to chant and dance around her. Then, one by one, they all came back out dressed in ornate and beautiful costumes representing the orishas or saints of the religion. The whole ceremony lasted about 4 hours-- to me, it was one of my greatest experiences in Brazil.

I guess the moral of my story is to plan to travel outside of your city especially if the country you're in is as big as Brazil. Do your research! If you're interested in a particular subject or time period, chances are there's somewhere in your country that offers something cool related to whatever that subject is.