I didn’t listen to the address I was given, and screwed up the street name when I got in the cab. I reaffirmed the incorrect destination when the driver repeated it. “Near the center, right?” “Yeah sure.” After an hour of São Paulo traffic I finally got a text message with the street name number of the hotel I was going to for a Notre Dame Club of São Paulo dinner. The actual street was in the neighborhood that we had just passed. I let the cab driver know that the street we agreed to before was wrong and we did a U-turn. I watched the meter click for 15 minutes as we moved 50 feet. I saw that we were two kilometers away and decided to pay, get out and walk.

I attentively dodged the motorcycles that were riding down between the four jammed lanes and cursed the rain that caused my ride to bail earlier in the day. There was a downpour that blocked the tunnels of the city and made it impossible to swing by my neighborhood on the way. I was on my own.

It is amazing how predictable the São Paulo weather is and yet it is still one of the leading topics of conversation along with traffic. The mornings are sunny and cool, then as the sun gets more fierce the humidity shoots up and makes going out to get lunch a very sweaty ordeal. I hope lunch didn’t run too late because at about 3:30 the weather gets tired of how sleepy everyone is, and turns the city into a freaking hurricane. Then everyone prays that the afternoon downpour doesn’t roll into rush hour.

I am on my way back to Rio at the moment, and had a great week in São Paulo. I did some work, had a barbecue, went to two famous soccer stadiums for a samba concert and a movie premier, went to a home for at-risk children, ate some great food, and got caught in the rain.

I have determined that I prefer Rio to São Paulo, due to the size difference and the beach, I prefer smaller cities and I am looking forward to getting back into the water.