Good idea?

Right about now, Mark is wondering if it was a good idea for me to get a job or not. I bought this cute piece of furniture at work with my employee discount. I did get his approval first. :D This is at the foot of our bed and the color goes nicely with everything. I am enjoying the job so far - I am having to work more hours and my feet hurt a bit, but I am managing. :)

Vacuum Haircuts & Back to Work!

Not much excitement since we have been back from South America, but thought I'd share these two tidbits. Today, I had the experience of giving my poor vacuum a haircut. Any of you with long hair may feel my pain!

Also, tomorrow I am going back to work! Just part time, but thought I'd try to make a little money. I am going back to work for the same company I worked for in Longview... they just happen to have a new Outlet store in the Outlet mall that is a mile and a half from my house. Whoo hoo!

Sugar Loaf, a Church & a Marathon

After we saw the Christ the Redeemer statue, we went ahead to Sugar Loaf Mountain, where we took a cable car up to the top and then walked around a bit to enjoy the view. This is an odd little steep walkway to get down to a lower level.

We saw the closest marmoset we have seen, yet. And I think this little guy was sticking his tongue out at Mark!! :O
The cable car system, has two stops. One on a shorter mountain in between and then one on Sugar Loaf Mountain. This is from the shorter mountain looking back up at Sugar Loaf.

This was also taken from the shorter mountain in between. This is a nice view of a lot of city and Christ the Redeemer is on that pointy mountain in the middle. You may can see him if you click the picture.

Yesterday, we just went in to the downtown area and looked at some old buildings and the 'Old Rio' section of town. St. Benedict's Monastery is there and was very pretty on the inside. Here you can see the oldest organ in Brazil, which dates from like 1730, I think.

This baptistry actually dates older than the church, so I believe it must have come over from Portugal. The church was started in about 1671 (or at least that's when the oldest door was dated) so the baptistry is a bit older than that.
Then we stopped at Copacobana Beach and wandered around a bit. This sand art was fun - you can see the Christ the Redeemer statue on the right and in the back, he also had made the cable car system between Sugar Loaf and the smaller mountain.

This morning we had to slightly delay our plans, because a marathon was going on in front of our hotel. :) Now we are headed to the Sunday market and this may be our last blog before we get home.

Shrouded in Mistery

Yesterday, as it was scheduled to change from 'Mostly Cloudy' to 'Partly Cloudy' by 9am, we decided to attempt to see the Christ the Redeemer statue. We had a really nice driver that took us first to a nice lookout area to see Sugar Loaf Mountain - here it is in the background behind Mark. We wasted a little time here waiting for the fog to clear.When we got to the base of the statue, it was still quite foggy. So we waited there and every so often it would clear enough to get a picture, and then he would disappear in the fog again. We decided he was 'shrouded in mistery' ... and yes, I mean mist! After about an hour, when our driver was scheduled to pick us up, the sky really started to clear! So, we finally got a few better pictures.And here's one looking up from the base of the statue. It is 130 feet tall and weighs 700 tons.Then we went back to the overlook after it had cleared up and we could actually see the statue there on top of Corcovado Mountain behind me. We couldn't see it at all when we stopped there before. You may have to click on the picture to see it...
Here is a zoomed in picture so you can see him atop the mountain. There beside the lookout, one of the drivers had a banana he was feeding to the little marmosets. They seemed to be enjoying it. We thought this one looked a little drunk on banana.