1. Bring your student ID card!
I totally forgot mine and I didn't realize that you get a discount on almost EVERYTHING if you have a student ID, on museums, concerts, and so many other things I forgot what but when you only $25 instead of $50 it really adds up and you can save a lot.
2. Bring lots of sunscreen! It is amazingly expensive in Brazil, no idea why, but really the cheapest I found a little tiny bottle of sunscreen spf 30 was 40 reais= US$20 but they go up along with the spf, so the spf 60 was almost US$40 and for such a small bottle. Extremely excessive so I suggest if you stay for about 3.5 months like I did, bring 3 bottles of sunscreen just to be on the safe side.
3. Don't bring more than one pair of pants:
At least jeans are very uncomfortable especially during the day because it is so humid and hot that I can't even imagine wearing pants. I brought 3 pair and now I really think that it was added weight that I could do without, especially when certain airlines charge $100 when you go over the weight limit.
4. Extra tips about the clothes you bring:
Okay so two things: I wouldn't suggest coming thinking of buying most of the necessary clothes here because it is also surprisingly super expensive. I think even compared to clothes in the U.S. it's super priced unless it is really low quality fabric found on Avenida Sete, but my friends have had trouble with the seams becoming undone etc.
Except for bikinis or the sunga (speedo) if you want to try that out, because those are the only things that are way cheaper here.
So many of my friends do wish they had brought more of their "cute clothes" because it is just way to expensive here. But from my experience, most of my nice clothes has gotten ruined or lost and that happened to a couple of my friends too. We sometimes get our clothes back with bleach stains, or some mystrious blue ink blots, and my white clothes either color stained, or if they had parts of color they have been bleached out and, it made me really sad. And again we didn't know how to bring that up to our family. I just kind of showed my mom and asked if they could just not use bleach on my clothes please, it's okay if it's just washed with lighter/not too dirty clothes.
So I don't know, it's a risk to bring nice clothes so I was fine with my casual not-too-favorite items, but just consider that: the clothes in Brazil is expensive but your nice clothes might not come back the same.
Tribute to some of my clothes, may they be remembered the way they were:
(I'm just kidding I just don't like posts without pictures and couldn't think of anything else to put down, but this is really clothes that got...changed--and or lost)
no longer mint green. :( tear
no really isn't it great that these are the things that I'm complaining about, because it could be way worse.
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