I had an absolutely phenomenal day! A group of 25 SAS students, three faculty, and a dozen students from UFAM (University of Brazil students) took a riverboat trip down the Amazon to an Amazonian Village.  Believe it or not, today was the very first time Americans have visited these people in their community.  Upon arrival, we hiked about 2 miles along the river.  The community of 120 people was spread out along like four or five miles on the shore.  The Amazonians sang, danced, read poetry, and gave up a presentation of their culture as a welcome ceremony.  Then we feasted and learned to dance. The children brought us to their school, which consisted of about 5 rooms and showed us some other areas of the village. Too many interesting stuff to even begin to write it all on here, but I will have tons of stories and information for all of you! We had lunch and did another two mile hike in the other direction, where we were shown how rubber is made from rubber trees.  You make slashes in the tree and the latex pours out, then you roll it into balls over a fire. It was a very long day but more than worth it.  We were all exhausted on the ride back but I did see some river dolphins! It was definitely an experience I would have never had without the Semester at Sea program.
My friends Dan and Ian found a sweet deal and we got fifty people together and rented a houseboat for 4 hours for 20 reais a piece. So I did that from like 9-1am It was a very fun time.:)