a little piece of heaven in recife.

today was our day off from classes so we had a little field trip.

we left around 8AM to see the Recife temple & since we were so OVER the bus rides (we take the local bus around 3x a day), Cristina paid for us to take a taxi! It was so nice being in a car and not having to stand on a bus & the taxi driver was hysterical. We talked about brazilian music & he just made us laugh and laugh. 

Because we took the bus, we had time before going inside the temple to take pictures and spend some time on the grounds. When we were in the temple, one of the boys we live with Joe, saw a family in there from Bahia (another state) that he had baptized. It was really cool for him & he was super happy to see them.

We ate at the temple cafeteria for lunch & it was delicious! We had rice, beans & fish with passionfruit mousse & juice. 

Besides the Salt Lake Temple, the Recife temple is the prettiest temple I've been inside! 

Me, Cristina and Michele.

After our temple trip, we went to a place called "casa da cultura" which is this old prison.  The prison is now a location where you can go shopping and each cell is a different little store. It was so interesting & fun to walk around. 

Each of those cells are now little stores. How interesting right? Do you see all the little flags? There is a huge holiday in Brazil going on right now called Festa Sao Joao that is crazy. It's huge up in the northeast. They say its the second biggest party besides Carnaval.

After we went to the Casa da Cultura we went to the center of Recife & they had a market going on. Most of the booths were outfits for festa sao joao. 

Those are the kinds of dresses you wear for festa sao joao.

Lastly we visited a really old church in the center of Recife & we walked inside for a few minutes. Most of these churches are filled with gold inside as you can tell from the picture. It's amazing.

Tomorrow we have no plans! Actually, we will be going to a party at night but other than that we plan to spend the day relaxing, sleeping in and going to the beach.

until next time!