Return to Rio

Well, we've survived our many travels through Brazil, and have returned to our new "home base."  For this final week, we are staying in the Leblon neighborhood of Rio, rather than Copacabana, where we spent our first stay.  Here we are a closer walk to the botanic garden, and students have formed into teams to develop landscape design projects in public areas that each team selects between our hotel and the gardens.  Today we are measuring the sites and making observations, and then we will be developing the projects until we present on Thursday morning.

We hear that there has been a remarkably large amount of rain in Rio during the last week, but we are counting on at least a few hours of sun between now and our departure!  At least the weather was great this morning while we were all out measuring....later this afternoon we are hoping to get over to the "Hippie Fair" to shop for souvenirs to bring home.

Tonight some of us are going to see a soccer game, and our last big excursion will be on Tuesday, when we take an all-day field trip to Petropolis, an imperial retreat city in the mountains nearby.  That promises to be a gorgeous day, with a visit to an orchid nursery along the way.

Keep checking in on us, and help us stretch out this last part of our journey as long as possible; We will be glad to see Delaware, but our bodies might want to stay here in Rio!