Michael Duffee is Having a Great Time in Brazil

February is already over, school is back in full swing, and I'm already halfway through my exchange. At the beginning of this month, my whole family and I finally went on our trip to Toque-Toque, an amazing beach about 3/4ths of the way from Sao Paulo to Rio. In total, there were 12 of us (6 more later on in the vacation) fitting into a few cars, which then drove 4 hours through Sao Paulo during rush hour (which, if you have ever been there, means that we had just driven 40 or 50 kilometers!), and 3 more hours on the beautiful highway that overlooks the sea and beaches way down below! When we arrived during the nighttime, me dad, mum, uncle, granddad, grandma, 2 sisters, 4 cousins (all girls), and I unpacked our things into our beautiful rented beach house and went to the local town to get something to eat and to meet another uncle, and 2 cousins (one boy and one girl). We all ate and decided to get some sleep and wake up early for the sun and the heat (which I couldn't wait to finally get under at the beach!). The next day we all walked cown to just quickly check out the beach before breakfast and se the best place to set up campl After quickly walking along the beach (I decided to be very smart about the sun and slowly ease into a good tan by putting on sunscreen morning and afternoon for it), I made my way to near my house and for some stroke of luck, ran into a Canadian girl that I had known on my first week of Brazil! I went over and met her family and we got talking for a longg time. Unfortunately for me, when I came back to my house 3 hours later, I noticed that I was already burned and forgot to put sunscreen on my very first day. The next few days were very cool, although I was looking a little bit like a lobster, and I got to meet a lot of very nice people wanting to know where I was from (white hair at the beach full of extremely tanned people draws some attention).