7/19

It's been awhile since I've written a post! I want to remember the things that happen here so I'm going to try to make a list of the main events so far and separate them into paragraphs:

First of all, not even a week after getting here, I had the whole mishap with my computer. I literally dropped it from a few inches but it was enough to lose the hard drive. That was a pretty tough blow.. I basically lost the whole weeks worth of work I had been doing here as well as a great deal of the recordings that Regan and I have been doing... We might be able to get those back though but not until I return to the states.. That was a hard day because Brazil also was eliminated from the world cup and I'm not gonna lie, it was a very stressful game! I still blame it on the ref who must have thought were playing hacky sack or something because he made the worst calls. So all of that made that day pretty rough.. But later that night, several of the guys and I went to see Toy Story 3. That definitely helped a lot, the movie was fantastic and I can't wait to see it again! After that, we went to this little stand thing in the mall there called Choco Fruta. Self explanatorially it is basically chocolate and fruit. There is a desert that they have there called Tentacão which means "temptation". Diego told me that and I thought "huh, this should be pretty tasty". That was an understatement. On paper, it was just simple strawberries and chocolate with a small Everest of whip cream but there was something about those strawberries, that chocolate, and that whip cream that was just... I don't even know how to describe it. I took one bite of it and suddenly I literally forget the day's prior suckiness. I felt all of my muscles relax and they stayed that way until I finished. It probably sounds like I'm over dramatizing it and being silly and I am.. But I'm not because it was so good! We've gone back at least 4 or 5 times... I now understand the name. It sounds really good right now actually....

Let's see what else has happened... The next thing that sticks out in my mind is when we went to my friend Nick's situ which is basically a farm. It was about two hours away by a town called Campos Do Jordão. I was told that we would leave around 3:30 so that's when I was at the door ready to go but there ended up being several setbacks which I didn't know about so I ended up just sitting there until about 7 and then we didn't leave till 8. Don't worry, they called around 5 and said they were still coming so I knew they didn't forget about me.. Anyways, we finally got there at night time and we were disappointed to find that the stars (which they told me are usually amazing) were all covered by clouds. But we made a fire and had some good food and laughed for several hours. Eventually the clouds rolled away to uncover exactly what they had been talking about; an amazing display of stars which included a very defined milky way and lots of shooting stars. We laid down and watched them for quite sometime! The next morning I somehow woke up before everyone (which is rare) so I decided to go look around. I opened the door and was blown away by how beautiful the terrain was. I had no idea that it was there because we got there at night. There was farm and grazing land and beautiful landscape and wilderness that extended half way up the mountains where the exotic trees would meet and take rest of the way. The sun was different than Minnesota's. It was spectacular. I couldn't just stand there so I hiked to the top of a large hill that the house was on which involved getting over the obstacle of two electric fences. I probably stood at each fence for about five minutes trying to analyze the best way to get over without getting shocked and then once I decided the best way, spending another several minutes trying to decide if I could even jump that distance. I finally made it to the top and got to see even more on the other side which included a huge rock on this mountain and a water fall. É foi muito legal! We spent the rest of the day hanging out and having fun. Daniella taught me some Portuguese by going through a Brazilian comic book, I'll see if I can buy some somewhere to bring home. We also had a Brazilian steak barbecue which was awesome!

Daniel and Diego are in Mozambique now so I spent the first week of that alone in the Denham's house which I really enjoyed! I felt so grown up working 9-5 and then coming home to a very nice house. For food I would go to the Padaria (bakery) across the street from Fiel and get something. It was pretty fun stumbling my way through ordering two cheese burgers in Portuguese. But I'm getting better! I was even able to talk to the girl that worked there a bit. There's also this lady that works at the register of the restaurant we eat lunch at and every time I go there she picks something to new for me to learn. She's very cool. But the Brazilians find living alone very counter cultural so they kept asking if I was ok. I really did enjoy it though. My friend Davidi said I could stay at his house while they are all gone so I decided to take him up on the offer for the weekend and then I would go back. But his family is very inviting. Very! Davidi speaks a very small amount of English but he is trying to learn. And the rest of his family doesn't speak any. Never the less, his mother still somehow convinces me to eat more food. I woke up this morning just in time to make it to work but I wasn't even able to sneak out. She got me to sit down and suddenly there was a whole table of food and coffee so I had breakfast there. She is an adorable older lady who is very sweet and very expressive! I just don't know what she's saying. She also has a little tiny pocket translator so she'll stumble around trying to find the English word in her very small mental list and then resort to the device where she'll type next to me so I can see it. And then she gets so excited when I finally understand what she is saying! I'm definitely enjoying my time at their house. They also have a church underneath their second floor house which is currently blasting out of tune Portuguese hymns and a woman preacher screamin' the name of Jesus Cristo. It's pretty fun to hear. Well that's all for now, next time I'll talk about yesterday which was going to the actual town of Campos Do Jordão. That was great!

6/28

Seriously, it was an amazing day. Diego and I got up after much alarm snoozing and finally walked to work. I found out that today wasn’t an ordinary work day, Brazil had a game against Chile. So we started off the work day with a tour of the awesome building and offices. Diego and I spent a pretty decent amount of time catching up on all of our social networking which was very helpful. Later, he started to fill me in on the project we would be working on which is basically introductory images to some video sermons. Shortly after, Daniel Gardner, another really cool guy who works at Fiel came. He was a missionary kid when he was younger so he is great at both languages which is immensely helpful! After awhile, we had our lunch at a restaurant that is free to us for lunch which was pretty good! We came back to do some more work until three o’clock came around. Game time. Daniel let me borrow his Brazil jersey for this came. So we put on our shirts and wore big Brazil flags as capes and started getting pumped up. Watching the game brought a whole new level of appreciation for watching soccer. Maybe it was the excitement of a bunch of Brazilian guys cheering at every little triumph and jeering at every poor call. Or maybe it was just being in Brazil in general. Nevertheless, I got just as into it as them. Every one of the three goals would send us flying into the air cheering. Also, after every goal, people all over Brazil shoot off fireworks which added nicely to our noise. After Brazil beat Chile 3 to 0 (no big deal). We all ran out into the streets cheering and waving our flags. A ton of people were outside dancing to music, blowing horns, and cheering the cars that would drive by honking. At one point they even stood in front of a bus and got it to stop so that they could cheer to it. It was crazy but so awesome! Best part of the summer so far.. Later, we went to the mall and I got a sim card for a phone that I can use here which is pretty nice. Then the guys and I got some pizza and went home to the Denham’s house and played some wii sports and fit. Diego dominated everyone including me in tennis but I was eventually able to beat him. That was about it! Waking up to go to work still feels like ages ago. It’s a good thing I’m writing this down otherwise I would probably forget it!

6/27

This morning we woke up and went to church! A lot like the Bible study, it was really cool to hear a church service in another language. It really broadens your view of God when you meet awesome Christians from another country. At one point during the service, the pastor asked if anyone was there for the first time. He had me stand up and started asking questions but I had no clue what he was saying so Diego of course stood up and told the congregation about me. The best part was that for some reason, the people here can’t figure out how to pronounce my name.. I think they think it starts with a P or something but they all sound the same to me. So at the service I Diego and the new friends would say “Beau?”, “No, Beau” , “umm Beau?”, “No, not Beau. Beau.” I still haven’t quite figured out how they keep saying it wrong.. Anyways, during the service, a woman gave me a Bible with both translations side by side which was awesome. I spent the whole service trying to learn more words. After that I got to meet people from the church and a lot of them knew a decent amount of English. One of them even used to live in Minneapolis and even Duluth when he was my age! After church I went out to eat with Rick’s parents and sister. It was really funny sitting in the backseat while Faith (Rick's sister) drove around town trying to find this restaurant while receiving completely opposite directions from the two parents. It was quite the adventure! At the church we go to, they have two services on Sunday that they both go to so we went to the evening service which was a lot like the morning one. A lot more of sitting and listening to Portuguese which I can't understand.. They speak it so fast! It's still really fun though. After that though, we went out to eat for Diego's birthday. He just turned 24 and a lot of people came to celebrate! I got some delicious bruschetta and had fun talking to people who wanted to practice their English. It was a very eventful day! By the end of it, I felt like that morning had been a couple days ago. Having a great time so far:)