Wednesday, Aug 17, 2016. The end is near.

I have to be brief on this day because there’s not many “exciting” things to report. I apologize for how late all these posts have been because it’s just been hard to keep up with it with everything going on. It’s true that these writings do take a long time, and I am here to enjoy my time in Rio when I have the spare minute, rather than sitting at my computer (which is what I do for work a lot of the day). Work was starting to consume us as there was something called a small swimming incident come up— (coughing sound) Lotche. I don’t want to/nor can I, go into all the details about that, but let me just say that there was a lot going on behind the scenes.

Because I had stayed up late the night before, I didn’t go on my morning run. Which was more than fine because my friend/co-worker Rachel wanted to go during lunch time anyways. As I have said, our work is near a lake, so we wanted to run around the lake. I was tired and moving a little slow that day and probably wouldn’t have made myself go for the run if it wasn’t Rachel encouraging me, but I am so happy I went. It was one of the hottest days and we were dripping sweat before we even began (another reason I didn’t really want to go), but once we started going, a small breeze picked up. And it was a beautiful trail around the lake, glistening in the sun (okay, there may have been some trash in it around the edges, but I’ll leave that image to the side). A wonderful lunch-time getaway workout.

We did leave work early that day because we were all going to a group Flamengo dinner, out at a nice steakhouse (if you know me, you know I don’t eat red meat, but going to a nice steakhouse also means that plenty of wonderful fish options are available, so I am always more than happy to go). There were about 20 of us going there and we enjoyed appetizers and steak/salmon and wine and talked and laughed. We did however get interrupted near the end of dinner with a million phone calls to numerous people around the table about yes, the swimmers. This was the night that two swimmers were taken off their plane home to the U.S. and detained to give a statement about the Lochte incident. Our phones were buzzing. Some people had to leave early, which was disappointing, but it was what we had to do. I helped with what I could, but that night, other people were on the ground running to help them (literally), and so I just helped from afar. The dinner lasted late and the swimmers issue lasted even later, so another night where I didn’t enough sleep, but I knew that I would be home soon, in my own bed, without having to set an alarm, in only a couple of days.

Dinner