Olá de São Paulo!!

Hello everyone! We have just spent the 4 most surreal days of our lives. After taking off in a plane and runway covered in snow, we landed the next morning in 90 degree sunshine. After a memorable taxi ride through the infamous São Paulo traffic (the cars/buses/motorcycles WILL HIT YOU if you don´t get out of the way...and they don´t exactly obey traffic laws) arrived at our little hostel in the middle of the city. The first day we spent getting our bearings and trying to figure out the map. We soon discovered that the map is not to scale, and it only includes the inner-most part of the city--so this place is huge. Over 20 million people live here! The next day we spent the entire afternoon walking through the old city center, complete with literally thousands of street vendors selling everything you could think of. Stacen, in his hippie traveling ways, found a hemp bracelet and coral necklace. Nicole enjoyed happily listening to street musicians in the sun. We stopped at a cafe for a drink, and met a local when he tapped Stacen on the shoulder and said in very accented english: "where are you from? I can tell you are´nt from São Paulo becuase you are drinking a very bad beer."
In São Paulo we have enjoyed experiencing the afternoon thunderstorms from 4-6pm. For the past 44 days it has rained like CRAZY every day. The whole city just knows to expect it--you start seeing people running for cover and you know you had better do the same.
Yesterday we visited the beautiful Parque do Ibarapuera, seeing hundreds of cool South American geese and ducks! We had our first South American Coconut water--straight from the coconut! We saw the biggest trees ever! After making Stacen put his shirt back on (he has been trying to tan so that he can blend in more with the locals) we made our way to the MASP, Museo de Arte de São Paulo, known as the "concrete monstrosity"--it was build in the 60´s. However, across the street was the green monstrosity...A RAINFOREST!!! Stacen´s eyes glistened with happiness as he saw his first rainforest, smelling the fresh air, gazing upon the spiders.
Walking back to the hostel, we passed a man who had adorned himself with palm leaves and was joyously passing out other pieces to strangers. Nicole had never been happier. We are not sure if he was crazy, but he was awesome. We ate a watermelon for dinner.
Today, we walked to a market that appeared to be semi-close, but of course, took 3 hours to get to. On the way, we walked through the richest street we have ever seen in the fanciest neighborhood of São Paulo, Jardins. The street, Oscar Frei, had, among other things, pairs of jeans that cost $400, and dogs that probably are eating better than us. We also picked out our future home. Stacen bought a sexy rainbow headband and does not look gay. Nicole got a beautiful turquoise bracelet that complements her beauty in every way.....
São Paulo has been amazing, even with us having no idea what people are saying to us. That´s right, a knowledge of spanish really doesn´t mean much here. We can read things, but that´s about it. And the rough part is apparently we look Brazilian?? Because people keep trying to talk to us and giving us quite confused glances when we just mouth "no falo portugues". Luckily, the hostel owner and his friends all used to live in Ireland, so they have saved us. Goodbye for now. We are about to go buy street noodles from a Japanese couple that ALSO don´t know a word of Portuguese. Tomorrow, we are off to the beaches of Paraty, Brazil!
Love and miss you all!