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!
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