So, I will be leaving my beloved Austin next week and I'm barfing a little in my mouf right now thinking about all the stuff I need to do before I leave.  In case I haven't rubbed this in your face yet, I get a sabbatical every 5 years at my job, and for it, I decided to take a tour of South and Central America.  I'm starting with a week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and I'm pretty nervous about it.  The crime reports that Rebecca the RN from the ARC gave me made me confident that she should've also given me a "shanked in the ribs for my wallet" immunization.  It basically looks like the place is crawling with people who want to stab me in the shoulder, take all of my stuff and/or spill mustard on my shoe.  I guess I'm supposed to try to blend in to a country whose citizens are 110% dark haired and dark featured when I'm a white-as-hell, 6' 1" blonde guy with green eyes...perfect, this should be easy.  I'm really glad I spent a ton of money on a visa to enter this City of God-forsakenness (see what I did there).

I should also mention that I'm this worried even though I'm staying in the fairly touristy neighborhood of Ipanema, I'm not even talking about the shanty towns (or favelas) throughout the city that will apparently eat your soul as soon as you venture anywhere near them.  I included this picture of what a favela looks like:

I also should mention that I am going to try to keep up with this blog while I'm there.  Unfortunately, because I can't bring a laptop in fear that someone will shoot me in the kneecaps for it, I will be doing it from a iPod Touch and therefore won't be able to add new pictures.  Don't fret though, I'm going to create some pre-canned photos based on the places I'm going and what I think I'll look like at the time so stay tuned for those.