While waiting for the bus to Pão do azucar, someone asked to have some water. Sam offered our water to them and they drank directly from the bottle. Being slightly germaphobic and thinking about all of the communicable diseases I didn't want the water after. I thought it was maybe a cultural thing.
Then a small boy maybe 8 or 9 asked to a drink as well. Sam told him he could keep it. He then shared the large bottles water with almost 5 or 7 other small street children ( mostly boys and of darker skin tone). This blew our minds. Usually street children or kids ask for money for something to eat.... But these children just wanted water. Then we started talking about how water is essential to life and where would these small kids get water.
It has been difficult walking through rio and seeing the harsh disparity between very rich and very poor. Even from an aerial view of rio, you see incredibly rich houses on the coast and behind are the flavelas or Brazilian slums.
That's another weird thing, the "flavela" tours. Tourists can take jeeps to see how the poor live. The money to take the tour doesn't even go to the families living in the flavelas. Which blows my mind.
I remember learning a lot of these things in my Brazilian culture and civilization course at Hopkins, but it is a completely different thing to to see it firsthand.
I am going off on a tangent, but in the last 3 days I feel like I've learned so much more about Brazil than I can imagine.
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