Tuesday, 31, 23:22 hours
Happy Birthday Father! I hope Wisconsin was all you hoped for.
It wasn’t until about 9:00 pm tonight when I was on the phone w/ Márcia Pickler that I had truly felt like I was fulfilling my responsibilities as a volunteer for the Employment Services Center. Márcia is the São Jose stake employment specialist, and as I spoke with her about our ideas and plans to teach the program here every week all over the state for the next couple months she got so excited. She began telling me about all the work she had done in the past and how she could help us, and things like that. It was really neat to see how much she wanted to serve in her calling (her volunteer position at the church) but that she explained how in the last couple months things have slowed down and she hadn’t gotten to do as much. I guess I had already met Márcia Sunday at church, so she already knew who Dave and I were… but with all the new people I met, I didn’t recall which she was. We arranged to meet w/ her on Thursday evening, since we’ll already be at the church playing soccer w/ the men. Márcia really has a strong love for this program and the course we teach, and so it was really fun to hear her excitement and see how we can help. I’m sure that she’ll be a great asset in the next couple weeks.
Dave and I probably made about 20-25 phone calls, off and on, between 6 and 9 pm. To our disappointment, a majority of the phone numbers we dialed didn’t work. The list of contacts with which we were provided was a few years old. So we spent most of the day trying to contact those who could give us accurate numbers for the people we really wanted to contact. We tried finding the stake executive secretary, councilors, anyone. After trying a few numbers Bishop Alberto gave us (he arrived at the church about 7:30 pm for some meetings he had), I finally got the number for the stake president of the Florianópolis stake. To tell you the truth, he was one of the last people I wanted to call, because I know he’s very busy and that he would direct me to his executive secretary. Well, after speaking for a few minutes he was quick to catch on to my accent, and asked if I spoke English… luckily I do. J Well he then proceeded to continue our conversation in English, though he struggled with many words, but he just wanted the practice. He was very nice and did of course tell me to call his secretary. When I then told him his number wasn’t working, he apologized and passed the new one to me. He then invited us to their stake conference on the 11th and 12th when Elder Arnold of the Seventy will be presiding. I told him we would love to be there and that’d we’d try our best. On the 10th and 11th we are traveling to a city about 2-3 hours away, called Joinville, to teach the CASP course, but we’ll see if we can make it to the Sunday meeting.
Another successful phone call was to Bishop Robson of the Palhoça ward. I called his cell phone and spoke with him about our desire to teach the course to his ward in three weeks. He was so excited, and he made sure that the course would be given at a time he could participate. We have been told the people of Palhoça really need help finding jobs, so I’m excited to get such a positive response.
From 1-5 pm I worked either in the Hotel or at our ERS office in the chapel typing the list of the 2005 participants, or making phone calls, or organizing something. Then from 5-7:30 we waited for the Bishop to arrive. At first Dave went to play the piano and I went out back to the soccer/ basketball court with a flimsy rubber soccer ball. Soon Dave came out and we got to kick around a bit. Twenty minutes later two neighborhood kids showed up with a basketball, so I let them in. As we were playing basketball, a few more showed up – I let them in. This time I left the mechanical gate open, and after I came back outside from getting some water, the number of people had doubled. There were 10 kids on the court playing basketball (yes, basketball! They were pretty good, too. Better than any of the kids I saw in Rio or Espirito Santo.) This made Dave and I a little uncomfortable, since we weren’t really sure what the bishop would say when he arrived. I told the kids they could play until 7:30 but they couldn’t dunk or hang on the rim (the rim was about 8 feet high, and just from their practice dunks, it was a good 2 inches off the backboard, ready to fall off.) I kinda felt like I was babysitting. As 7:30 approached Dave and I thought the bishop wasn’t going to show up, so we sent everyone home and began closing the gate… just as the Bishop arrived from the front area. He immediately questioned what was going on… he thought the kids had jumped the fence (like they have in the past) and he wasn’t too happy. Of course I explained what was going on. The bishop then proceeded to let the kids return to the court and play, since he was going to be in the church for the next couple of hours.
Earlier in the day we studied, nothing too different than yesterday, except maybe I studied for a little longer today.
For lunch we finally found a decent, cheap place, where they charge you buy the kilo. It’s a buffet. Good stuff. But our dinner it was amazing!! When we left the church at about 9:30 it was pouring rain. As we ran into the hotel, dripping, I asked the front desk if they had an umbrella I could borrow – they did. So Dave went up to the room while I offered to go to the corner supermarket and buy him some water, and buy us a hotdog at the corner stand. Wow, what a hot dog! Imagine: two hotdogs, grilled chicken breast, Parmesan cheese, peas, corn, potato sticks, sauces… em. And it was cheap… like R$3.25, which is about $1.50. While eating dinner… and until midnight, we watched the movie “Disappearings.” I guess it’s an older movie, but portrays what was happening in Argentina during the communist scares around the world, how thousands of people were kidnapped and just disappeared. It was a really good movie.
Tomorrow Dave and I get to/ have to go to the police station in Floripa to … I dunno, check in or something – to report we’re going to be here for 89 days. So I better get some rest.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Monday, January 30, 2006
Monday, 30, 23:49 hours
Blog readers, meet my new best friend:
I know what it’s like to be in this hot, brazilian weather with out air conditioning, two years in Rio de Janeiro left me with plenty of memories. I can’t begin to describe how thankful I am for such nice living conditions we have here – air conditioning being the nicest commodity.
Today didn’t get too hot, but for the short time I was outside walking from the hotel to lunch, or the grocery store, or the church, I couldn’t help but long for the cool, fresh air of my new best friend.
Unfortunately, most people in Brazil don’t have air conditioning. Well, let me rephrase that. Most people where I lived in Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo didn’t have air conditioning; I haven’t been inside enough houses here to give an accurate description.
Our place is so nice that I almost feel embarrassed when people at church ask us where we’re living. I try to quickly say, “oh, an apartment near by.” But somehow it always comes out that we’re living in a hotel. “For your whole stay?” They usually ask, and then I try to explain how we were told that since it was tourist season here, apartments for our short stay were hard to find. Plus, since we are volunteers, we are paying for our stay – which is partly true. The program says they’re paying for our residency, but somehow the tuition went up significantly… so I think that’s where the money went. But I just worry about passing the wrong message that the church is spoiling us, or anything like that.
Here is our front room - notice the fridge, microwave, internet connection, couch/pull out bed.
Here's our view from our mini-patio. I believe the mountain on the right is the island of Florianópolis.
And from the other side, some Brazilian construction and another nice view.
After all the week of training in Salt Lake and the week of co-teaching in Porto Alegre, we finally started our first week in Florianópolis (well, São Jose… but it’s close enough). Dave and I have figured out that in order to get our studies taken care of, we need to study at least 4 hours a day, 6 days a week. The alarm rang at 8:30 am, but I was already alert – my sunburned back made for an uncomfortable nights rest. (By the way, I realized my face isn’t as red as the rest of my body because while I napped on the beach I put my t-shirt over my head to keep it from burning.) The cool water from the shower helped sooth my irritated epidermis (for all the Simpson’s fans out there, this word had to be used). By 10 pm I was fed, groomed and on our micro-patio, reading about Brazil’s history. In the few hours of studying I managed to knock a good junk out of my Sociology and Portuguese reading, and well as write a short paper.
The 2:30 pm sun was our companion as we meandered around town, looking for a place to eat. We had forgotten the Brazilian ways of having lunch over by 2:30 and by the time we found a place to eat, it was 3:00 pm and lunch was shut down. We opted for a ‘Sub’ shop, but were disappointed with the results. Just a quick visual image… a whole was burrowed out from the center of my sandwich to make space for the few toppings they put on it. They then threw the burrowed out bread away – different I guess. But we did get a great class of Caldo de Cana at a little joint near the hotel. (Caldo de Cana is a drink made purely by a machine squeezing the juices out of a few stalks of sugar – the plant. Makes for a great juice.)
We were inside the church, ready to put in some hours towards our volunteer work with the Employment Service center by 4:00 pm and were surprised to see the local missionaries were having their weekly zone meeting. For a few hours we began organizing and planning – I made a calendar for the all year and we began planning which areas we would contact first to begin marking dates to teach the CASP course. I felt really stupid when a woman called and wanted information about when the next course would be taught locally and if there were any job openings I could pass on to her. If I were in Porto Alegre I would know exactly where to look in their office for that information, but here… we’re in charge, and we don’t know much about the area or what’s going on yet. I’m sure I sounded very professional on the phone. I also started typing out a packet of names that Elder Natchingall had written out, alphabetically, of all the people who took his course in 2005 – Humberto requested we digitalize it.
By nearly 8:00 pm we locked up and went across the street for a bite to eat – a “X 1 Hamburger.” It came with a burger, egg, chicken breast, bacon, lettuce, tomato, peas and corn. What a burger! Let me tell ya, it’s good, but hard to eat straight through. French fries need to be invested next time to kinda get a new taste in your mouth (French fries were not offered at the little lunch stand by the way. They are usually only offered at real restaurants, not lunch trailers on the side of the road, like where we were eating.)
Finished the night off with an episode of “Jail Break”, a Fox show. Pretty good actually.
Blog readers, meet my new best friend:
I know what it’s like to be in this hot, brazilian weather with out air conditioning, two years in Rio de Janeiro left me with plenty of memories. I can’t begin to describe how thankful I am for such nice living conditions we have here – air conditioning being the nicest commodity.
Today didn’t get too hot, but for the short time I was outside walking from the hotel to lunch, or the grocery store, or the church, I couldn’t help but long for the cool, fresh air of my new best friend.
Unfortunately, most people in Brazil don’t have air conditioning. Well, let me rephrase that. Most people where I lived in Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo didn’t have air conditioning; I haven’t been inside enough houses here to give an accurate description.
Our place is so nice that I almost feel embarrassed when people at church ask us where we’re living. I try to quickly say, “oh, an apartment near by.” But somehow it always comes out that we’re living in a hotel. “For your whole stay?” They usually ask, and then I try to explain how we were told that since it was tourist season here, apartments for our short stay were hard to find. Plus, since we are volunteers, we are paying for our stay – which is partly true. The program says they’re paying for our residency, but somehow the tuition went up significantly… so I think that’s where the money went. But I just worry about passing the wrong message that the church is spoiling us, or anything like that.
Here is our front room - notice the fridge, microwave, internet connection, couch/pull out bed.
Here's our view from our mini-patio. I believe the mountain on the right is the island of Florianópolis.
And from the other side, some Brazilian construction and another nice view.
After all the week of training in Salt Lake and the week of co-teaching in Porto Alegre, we finally started our first week in Florianópolis (well, São Jose… but it’s close enough). Dave and I have figured out that in order to get our studies taken care of, we need to study at least 4 hours a day, 6 days a week. The alarm rang at 8:30 am, but I was already alert – my sunburned back made for an uncomfortable nights rest. (By the way, I realized my face isn’t as red as the rest of my body because while I napped on the beach I put my t-shirt over my head to keep it from burning.) The cool water from the shower helped sooth my irritated epidermis (for all the Simpson’s fans out there, this word had to be used). By 10 pm I was fed, groomed and on our micro-patio, reading about Brazil’s history. In the few hours of studying I managed to knock a good junk out of my Sociology and Portuguese reading, and well as write a short paper.
The 2:30 pm sun was our companion as we meandered around town, looking for a place to eat. We had forgotten the Brazilian ways of having lunch over by 2:30 and by the time we found a place to eat, it was 3:00 pm and lunch was shut down. We opted for a ‘Sub’ shop, but were disappointed with the results. Just a quick visual image… a whole was burrowed out from the center of my sandwich to make space for the few toppings they put on it. They then threw the burrowed out bread away – different I guess. But we did get a great class of Caldo de Cana at a little joint near the hotel. (Caldo de Cana is a drink made purely by a machine squeezing the juices out of a few stalks of sugar – the plant. Makes for a great juice.)
We were inside the church, ready to put in some hours towards our volunteer work with the Employment Service center by 4:00 pm and were surprised to see the local missionaries were having their weekly zone meeting. For a few hours we began organizing and planning – I made a calendar for the all year and we began planning which areas we would contact first to begin marking dates to teach the CASP course. I felt really stupid when a woman called and wanted information about when the next course would be taught locally and if there were any job openings I could pass on to her. If I were in Porto Alegre I would know exactly where to look in their office for that information, but here… we’re in charge, and we don’t know much about the area or what’s going on yet. I’m sure I sounded very professional on the phone. I also started typing out a packet of names that Elder Natchingall had written out, alphabetically, of all the people who took his course in 2005 – Humberto requested we digitalize it.
By nearly 8:00 pm we locked up and went across the street for a bite to eat – a “X 1 Hamburger.” It came with a burger, egg, chicken breast, bacon, lettuce, tomato, peas and corn. What a burger! Let me tell ya, it’s good, but hard to eat straight through. French fries need to be invested next time to kinda get a new taste in your mouth (French fries were not offered at the little lunch stand by the way. They are usually only offered at real restaurants, not lunch trailers on the side of the road, like where we were eating.)
Finished the night off with an episode of “Jail Break”, a Fox show. Pretty good actually.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Sunday, 29, 21:16 hours
Good news: Since January 10th the Google Earth program can run on Macs! The picture on the left is of the island of Florianópolis which is about 5-10 minutes by bus from our hotel. The arrow is pointing to the general area of where we are currently living.
I figured out Google Earth could work with Macs while skyping with Bryan this afternoon. He was trying to find where I was on the globe, and he was then showing it to Max, my little nephew who stayed home from church today with a cold it seems. Theo was also sick, so I guess Bryan stayed home with 3 of the kids while Joanna went to church with the youngest, I believe.
Church here in the Kobrasol ward was fun – we arrived about 10 minutes early to be greeted by the Bishop (Angelo I believe is his name) and the two Sister missionaries. We didn’t have to do any introducing of ourselves, as the bishop was well aware of our coming. But when we introduced ourselves to the missionaries one of them, Sister Kinyon, mentioned that it was her first Sunday in the mission field – she seemed a little nervous as she walked around with her English/Portuguese dictionary.
Again, this is the Kobrasol ward, and they’re in the São Jose Stake. The attendance was small today, but many people are on vacation and at the beach. I guess that’s what happens when you live so close to the ocean. Those who were in attendance were more than welcoming as many came and introduced themselves. Church started off with a combined Relief Society and Priesthood class on “preparation” given by the Bishop, and then Tiago Lúcia (I think that’s his name) was our Sunday school teacher, and we learned more about the creation and the fall of Adam and Eve.
Jenna, I asked someone after church about Maria Lúcia (I think that’s the name you told me to look for) and I mentioned how she was Asian, and the kid with whom I was speaking said there was a sister Lúcia that is Asian but she is in Japan. It was her son that taught our Sunday school class. I don’t know if this sister is the same as you remembered, but give me some more details and I’ll find out. Tiago is 24, so when you were here he would have been 14. Kinda fun.
Also during Sunday school, Sister Kinyon asked me how long ago I’d come back from serving in the Rio North mission. She then asked if I knew an Elder Moore. It ended up being the same Colin Moore who I lived with my freshman year in D.T., and the same who went to Rio in the same MTC group, and the same who I tried to get to come on this program with me. So Sister Kinyon is his neighbor from Bountiful and told me so pass a quick hello to him and his family. What a small world.
Literally 10 minutes before Sacrament meeting started, the 1st Counselor from the bishopric approached Dave and I and advised us that 2 of the speakers they had planned for today were at the beach and they needed our help. He asked us to take 5 minutes each and introduce ourselves and share a brief message. Of course we agreed. Then as we were sitting in the front on the stand he whispered, “well, 10 minutes would be great.” He also told me to focus my thought on Prayer. So, I was called to be the first speaker and it went well. As I was speaking, one of the speakers who were supposed to talk showed up. Then Dave spoke, and then the High Councilor who showed up during my talk.
The church building was more similar to those on my mission – older, not air conditioned, but it served us well.
After church Dave and I got to talking w/ some of the young adults and trying to make some friends. Everyone was really open and friendly. There are about 4 or 5 our age and they told us about some plans they had for this week – getting pizza together, playing soccer. So hopefully we’ll get to participate.
The rest of the afternoon deemed pretty quiet. While watching/ listening to General Conference in Portuguese I took a nap on our hotel’s couch that I pulled halfway out to the sleeper couch position. (I couldn’t unfold the bed entirely because the room the couch is in isn’t that bad, and in order to watch the DVD and lay down I had to put the couch the short way.)
I then wrote some letters on my computer while Dave used the internet. When we switched, I got on skype and talked to Bryan, and on AOL and talked w/ others. After using that for an hour or so I watched some more conference and then made some lunch – Dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets. emmmm!
This evening I took a quick walk to the church to grab a book to read (História da Igreja na Plenitude dos Tempos) and walked the blocks surrounding our hotel, looking for a park or somewhere to relax. None was found, so back to the hotel I went.
Dave and I watched some BYUTV from the net and now it seems we’re winding down.
I talked w/ Humberto on the phone this evening and confirmed some questions I had about the program. We made sure someone had contacted the Stake President and that it was okay for us to call the bishops in the surrounding areas to mark days for us to come visit and teach CASP. He said he had and that we could, so tomorrow we plan on calling the bishops and the director of Institute in Florianopolis.
Remember Marcio, the photographer that was nice to me and kinda took me under his wing at the Internacional and Gaúcho game? So I wrote him a thank you email and told him I was interested in shooting more sports events around the Florianopolis area and he wrote me back saying he’d get in contact with his boss. Nice guy. Not sure if anything will come of it, but having a contact is cool.
Good news: Since January 10th the Google Earth program can run on Macs! The picture on the left is of the island of Florianópolis which is about 5-10 minutes by bus from our hotel. The arrow is pointing to the general area of where we are currently living. I figured out Google Earth could work with Macs while skyping with Bryan this afternoon. He was trying to find where I was on the globe, and he was then showing it to Max, my little nephew who stayed home from church today with a cold it seems. Theo was also sick, so I guess Bryan stayed home with 3 of the kids while Joanna went to church with the youngest, I believe.
Church here in the Kobrasol ward was fun – we arrived about 10 minutes early to be greeted by the Bishop (Angelo I believe is his name) and the two Sister missionaries. We didn’t have to do any introducing of ourselves, as the bishop was well aware of our coming. But when we introduced ourselves to the missionaries one of them, Sister Kinyon, mentioned that it was her first Sunday in the mission field – she seemed a little nervous as she walked around with her English/Portuguese dictionary.
Again, this is the Kobrasol ward, and they’re in the São Jose Stake. The attendance was small today, but many people are on vacation and at the beach. I guess that’s what happens when you live so close to the ocean. Those who were in attendance were more than welcoming as many came and introduced themselves. Church started off with a combined Relief Society and Priesthood class on “preparation” given by the Bishop, and then Tiago Lúcia (I think that’s his name) was our Sunday school teacher, and we learned more about the creation and the fall of Adam and Eve.
Jenna, I asked someone after church about Maria Lúcia (I think that’s the name you told me to look for) and I mentioned how she was Asian, and the kid with whom I was speaking said there was a sister Lúcia that is Asian but she is in Japan. It was her son that taught our Sunday school class. I don’t know if this sister is the same as you remembered, but give me some more details and I’ll find out. Tiago is 24, so when you were here he would have been 14. Kinda fun.
Also during Sunday school, Sister Kinyon asked me how long ago I’d come back from serving in the Rio North mission. She then asked if I knew an Elder Moore. It ended up being the same Colin Moore who I lived with my freshman year in D.T., and the same who went to Rio in the same MTC group, and the same who I tried to get to come on this program with me. So Sister Kinyon is his neighbor from Bountiful and told me so pass a quick hello to him and his family. What a small world.
Literally 10 minutes before Sacrament meeting started, the 1st Counselor from the bishopric approached Dave and I and advised us that 2 of the speakers they had planned for today were at the beach and they needed our help. He asked us to take 5 minutes each and introduce ourselves and share a brief message. Of course we agreed. Then as we were sitting in the front on the stand he whispered, “well, 10 minutes would be great.” He also told me to focus my thought on Prayer. So, I was called to be the first speaker and it went well. As I was speaking, one of the speakers who were supposed to talk showed up. Then Dave spoke, and then the High Councilor who showed up during my talk.
The church building was more similar to those on my mission – older, not air conditioned, but it served us well.
After church Dave and I got to talking w/ some of the young adults and trying to make some friends. Everyone was really open and friendly. There are about 4 or 5 our age and they told us about some plans they had for this week – getting pizza together, playing soccer. So hopefully we’ll get to participate.
The rest of the afternoon deemed pretty quiet. While watching/ listening to General Conference in Portuguese I took a nap on our hotel’s couch that I pulled halfway out to the sleeper couch position. (I couldn’t unfold the bed entirely because the room the couch is in isn’t that bad, and in order to watch the DVD and lay down I had to put the couch the short way.)
I then wrote some letters on my computer while Dave used the internet. When we switched, I got on skype and talked to Bryan, and on AOL and talked w/ others. After using that for an hour or so I watched some more conference and then made some lunch – Dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets. emmmm!
This evening I took a quick walk to the church to grab a book to read (História da Igreja na Plenitude dos Tempos) and walked the blocks surrounding our hotel, looking for a park or somewhere to relax. None was found, so back to the hotel I went.
Dave and I watched some BYUTV from the net and now it seems we’re winding down.
I talked w/ Humberto on the phone this evening and confirmed some questions I had about the program. We made sure someone had contacted the Stake President and that it was okay for us to call the bishops in the surrounding areas to mark days for us to come visit and teach CASP. He said he had and that we could, so tomorrow we plan on calling the bishops and the director of Institute in Florianopolis.
Remember Marcio, the photographer that was nice to me and kinda took me under his wing at the Internacional and Gaúcho game? So I wrote him a thank you email and told him I was interested in shooting more sports events around the Florianopolis area and he wrote me back saying he’d get in contact with his boss. Nice guy. Not sure if anything will come of it, but having a contact is cool.
It's been brought to my attention that I am a wimp because I said I was sunburned, and the picture I posted doesn't look too bad. In my defense my pasty white skin hasn't seen the sun in about 3 years, so any discomfort is new. So it's not a baad sunburn, but it's a burn. I got more sun than I expected.
:o)
:o)
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Saturday, 28, 23:21 hours
Warning: The following descriptions may cause envious thoughts, especially for those living in freezing temperatures.
It received its name because of the soft, thick sand that floods the shoreline. Tucked between mountain peaks and forests, Praia Mole (Soft Beach) was quite the popular spot today. When most of you were still asleep (due to the time difference), Dave and I were up, showered, ate a nice continental breakfast, and were riding a city bus towards downtown. My first impressions of Florianopolis and São Jose (where we’re staying) are very good – it seems like the cities do a good job putting their tourism money back into making the cities look clean, nice, and be safe. The views just from the city buses are just amazing. What an amazing island.
Once we made it to the downtown bus port we walked around a bit getting help from a few nice people. We found the bus we needed, going to “Lagoa da Conceição” (Conceição Lake). It was a full house, and I think the most breathtaking view was coming over the mountain and seeing the huge Conceição Lake, and right behind it was the ocean, with the lush forests, jagged mountains and sand just adding to the color contrast - quite a view. From this stop we got another bus, “Barra da Conceição” that took us right past the lake and we got off on one of the first stops, “Praia Mole.”
Lots of people, but not too uncomfortable. Dave suggested we find some other pasty white people like ourselves so we didn’t feel so out of place, and once we did (sorta) we settled down. Within 5 minutes I couldn’t resist the erge any longer and I went to play in the waves.
As a kid I loved jumping in the waves of Santa Cruz. But now I’ve found a new favorite. Maxing out at about 12 feet max (its hard to judge, but more than twice my size), the waves were perfect. The water as a chilled glass of water – refreshingly cold, but nothing close to unbearable (like Pinky’s… for those who know where I’m talking about). Besides the sun, the only visible dangers were the surfers. Praia Mole is known as a popular beach among the younger crowd, and the waves are perfect for intermediate surfers. Needless to say, when I swam, I tried to stay close to others so the surfers knew exactly where we were… but that didn’t mean they cared. Only once did I dive through a wave and cover my head just incase the surfer continued his line. Luckily he was better than I had thought and ended up nowhere near me.
After a few hours, and pleanty of sun, Dave and I took a quick walk to the rocks that boarder the beach, only to find they didn’t boarder the beach, but were in between 2 beaches. It’s amazing the power water has, and the cool marks and designs it leaves on rocks.
As we walked off the beach I quickly stopped at the surfing school (the same school that has the website on yesterday’s blogg) and got the gist of how the school is run and how much it costs. I plan on returning if we don’t make any other friends who can teach us.
The bus ride home was backed again, but was quicker than the trip to. We got home about 4:30 and rinsed off. I got more sun than I thought.
A few soccer games were on TV in our room, even a live showing of the Milan game. After a few minutes I was asleep and ended up taking a nice nap.
Sometime in the afternoon (I forget if it was before or after the nap) we went to the supermarket and got some water and microwaveable foods. If anyone can send us some good microwave recipes, that would be splendid! Here in the hotel we only have a microwave and a mini fridge.
About 7 Dave and I went out and got a hamburger at a local joint. The hamburgers here are good, but there’s just something about it that takes some getting used to. They’re just not the same. But we brought the food back to the hotel and ate it in the lobby while watching a soccer re-cap show, showing the highlights of today’s games.
Since then we’ve just been relaxing. Dave’s been studying, and I’ve been skyping with Brent and chatting w/ Scott and other friends.
Church starts tomorrow at 9 and I’m tired. So I guess this is goodnight.
p.s. the picture of the beach was one i got online. i didn't take my camera to the beach for fear of it being stolen.
Warning: The following descriptions may cause envious thoughts, especially for those living in freezing temperatures.
It received its name because of the soft, thick sand that floods the shoreline. Tucked between mountain peaks and forests, Praia Mole (Soft Beach) was quite the popular spot today. When most of you were still asleep (due to the time difference), Dave and I were up, showered, ate a nice continental breakfast, and were riding a city bus towards downtown. My first impressions of Florianopolis and São Jose (where we’re staying) are very good – it seems like the cities do a good job putting their tourism money back into making the cities look clean, nice, and be safe. The views just from the city buses are just amazing. What an amazing island.
Once we made it to the downtown bus port we walked around a bit getting help from a few nice people. We found the bus we needed, going to “Lagoa da Conceição” (Conceição Lake). It was a full house, and I think the most breathtaking view was coming over the mountain and seeing the huge Conceição Lake, and right behind it was the ocean, with the lush forests, jagged mountains and sand just adding to the color contrast - quite a view. From this stop we got another bus, “Barra da Conceição” that took us right past the lake and we got off on one of the first stops, “Praia Mole.”
Lots of people, but not too uncomfortable. Dave suggested we find some other pasty white people like ourselves so we didn’t feel so out of place, and once we did (sorta) we settled down. Within 5 minutes I couldn’t resist the erge any longer and I went to play in the waves.
As a kid I loved jumping in the waves of Santa Cruz. But now I’ve found a new favorite. Maxing out at about 12 feet max (its hard to judge, but more than twice my size), the waves were perfect. The water as a chilled glass of water – refreshingly cold, but nothing close to unbearable (like Pinky’s… for those who know where I’m talking about). Besides the sun, the only visible dangers were the surfers. Praia Mole is known as a popular beach among the younger crowd, and the waves are perfect for intermediate surfers. Needless to say, when I swam, I tried to stay close to others so the surfers knew exactly where we were… but that didn’t mean they cared. Only once did I dive through a wave and cover my head just incase the surfer continued his line. Luckily he was better than I had thought and ended up nowhere near me.
After a few hours, and pleanty of sun, Dave and I took a quick walk to the rocks that boarder the beach, only to find they didn’t boarder the beach, but were in between 2 beaches. It’s amazing the power water has, and the cool marks and designs it leaves on rocks.
As we walked off the beach I quickly stopped at the surfing school (the same school that has the website on yesterday’s blogg) and got the gist of how the school is run and how much it costs. I plan on returning if we don’t make any other friends who can teach us.
The bus ride home was backed again, but was quicker than the trip to. We got home about 4:30 and rinsed off. I got more sun than I thought.A few soccer games were on TV in our room, even a live showing of the Milan game. After a few minutes I was asleep and ended up taking a nice nap.
Sometime in the afternoon (I forget if it was before or after the nap) we went to the supermarket and got some water and microwaveable foods. If anyone can send us some good microwave recipes, that would be splendid! Here in the hotel we only have a microwave and a mini fridge.
About 7 Dave and I went out and got a hamburger at a local joint. The hamburgers here are good, but there’s just something about it that takes some getting used to. They’re just not the same. But we brought the food back to the hotel and ate it in the lobby while watching a soccer re-cap show, showing the highlights of today’s games.
Since then we’ve just been relaxing. Dave’s been studying, and I’ve been skyping with Brent and chatting w/ Scott and other friends.
Church starts tomorrow at 9 and I’m tired. So I guess this is goodnight.
p.s. the picture of the beach was one i got online. i didn't take my camera to the beach for fear of it being stolen.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Friday, 27, 23:01 hours
Mixed emotions today – it was our last day in Porto Alegre. I finally took some pictures of the SRE office and the awesome people that work there.
This is where the teaching-magic happens.
Here's a view from the classroom window. We're on the 6th floor.
This morning we had a brief meeting to discuss how we can improve the course. The last two weeks we’ve had the participants fill out an evaluation form and so today we went through them all and tried to make adjustments accordingly. Everyone added a little something to the meeting:
Here's Humberto
And then here is Dave on the left, Jo in the background and Alexandre in the green shirt,
And Pierre on the right, Elder Burrup on the left, and Sávio in the middle
Eleandro and Savio
Here's Sister Burrup and everyone else I've previously identified
Pierre on the right, Alexandre in the green on the left.
In the meeting we mostly decided that we need to be more active and follow the recommendation of having the instructors talk only 20% of the time while having the participants talk and practice 80% of the time. Over the past two weeks I’ve learned a lot from Alexandre and Elder Burrup as instructors and I think this little meeting will make their class even more powerful. Hopefully Dave and I will apply these ideas as well in our courses. After the meeting we said our goodbyes to everyone at the office.
By 10:30 we checked out of the hotel and crammed our 2 suitcases and 3 backpack/shoulder bags into Pierre’s car and drove to the airport. We actually didn’t get on the road until 11 due to some miscommunications, so we thought we were late, but it turned out the airport had some sort of backup. We waited in line to check in our bags for at least 30 minutes w/o the line moving. The kinks were finally straightened and we boarded the full flight to São Paulo (with 1 stop in Florianopolis). It was a quick 40-minute flight. By car it would have taken about 6 hours they say, but to tell you the truth, I fully expected to drive. But I’m not complaining.
Pierre rented another VW Gol (I think it has to be the most common car in Brazil. That and the Fiat) and we were even tighter in that car. Our first adventure in Florianopolis was trying to find the local church in São Jose (where we were going to stay) and meet up with Elder Natchingall. Pierre, I know you didn’t want me to add this part, but the drive was … an adventure to say the least. J Let’s just say Pierre showed us a little extra of the area than we needed to see, and it took a little longer than expected. But upon arriving at the church we met Elder and he showed us around the little SRE office inside the chapel. It’s what I expected: 2 rooms, 4 computers, a few phones, lots of materials for the course, and things like that. It will be perfect.
For lunch Elder Natchingall directed us to a local churrascaria (brazilian barbeque joint). We got there well past lunch time (about 2 pm) and we were one of two parties in the whole restaurant, but they still brought out plenty of good food. I think the bbq pineapple was my favorite.
After another short visit to the SRE office at the chapel we returned to our hotel and said goodbye to Elder Natchingall and Pierre. Pierre returned to Porto Alegre and Elder Natchingall went to his beach apartment to be w/ his family.
Dave is taking Sociology 445 and has to turn in at least 1 paper every week. So while he was busy working on that, I walked around the block for a bit, went to the supermarket to buy some bottled water and some laundry soap (though after I let some clothes soak in the bathroom sink I read on the door that we aren’t supposed to wash and dry clothes in our on the balcony of the apartment… oh well.
Speaking of our apartment, I think we are definitely getting spoiled. We are staying at the Diaudi Hotel (http://www.diaudihotel.com.br) on the 6th floor. Here the hotel seems even nicer than our last one – a.c. in the elevator, our room has a sleeper couch, microwave, mini-fridge, and almost 2 separate rooms which is nice so while one is one the computer or studying, the other can be in the bedroom studying or watching TV.
I plan to work hard so we can be worth these great things.
I finished my reading for my Sociology 335 class and began thinking about the paper I have to write.
The part of São Jose where we’re staying seems to be in a prime location - easy access to pizzerias, markets, Laundromats, bus stops that go to downtown and things like that. It’s a cleaner Brazilian city and the buildings seem to actually be in order and look nice. They say Florianopolis has been voted the nicest city in Brazil, #2 is Rio de Janeiro.
A few hours ago I took a quick visit to the front desk where two young guys work as receptionists. They helped me find some places we could visit tomorrow, being that it’s Friday and we are planning on contacting bishops for the CASP course on Sunday. Right now is the tourist season, so many people are at the beach or vacationing elsewhere. I guess teaching ehre will be a little different than in Porto Alegre – we will be renting a car and traveling around to the different chapels teaching there, so we have to call all the leaders and mark days to come and give the course. From first day impressions it seems things will start off a little slow, but I hope we can get the ball rolling soon. My main purpose for being here is to teach CASP.
I got to talk w/ mom and dad on skype tonight. They sound good. I showed them a website of a surf school on the Floripa island. Maybe one day I’ll take some lessons. That would be awesome: http://www.surftripdailha.com.br/
Tomorrow I believe we plan on waking up early to get a good head start.
Mixed emotions today – it was our last day in Porto Alegre. I finally took some pictures of the SRE office and the awesome people that work there.
This is where the teaching-magic happens.
Here's a view from the classroom window. We're on the 6th floor.
This morning we had a brief meeting to discuss how we can improve the course. The last two weeks we’ve had the participants fill out an evaluation form and so today we went through them all and tried to make adjustments accordingly. Everyone added a little something to the meeting:
Here's Humberto
And then here is Dave on the left, Jo in the background and Alexandre in the green shirt,
And Pierre on the right, Elder Burrup on the left, and Sávio in the middle
Eleandro and Savio
Here's Sister Burrup and everyone else I've previously identified
Pierre on the right, Alexandre in the green on the left.
In the meeting we mostly decided that we need to be more active and follow the recommendation of having the instructors talk only 20% of the time while having the participants talk and practice 80% of the time. Over the past two weeks I’ve learned a lot from Alexandre and Elder Burrup as instructors and I think this little meeting will make their class even more powerful. Hopefully Dave and I will apply these ideas as well in our courses. After the meeting we said our goodbyes to everyone at the office.
By 10:30 we checked out of the hotel and crammed our 2 suitcases and 3 backpack/shoulder bags into Pierre’s car and drove to the airport. We actually didn’t get on the road until 11 due to some miscommunications, so we thought we were late, but it turned out the airport had some sort of backup. We waited in line to check in our bags for at least 30 minutes w/o the line moving. The kinks were finally straightened and we boarded the full flight to São Paulo (with 1 stop in Florianopolis). It was a quick 40-minute flight. By car it would have taken about 6 hours they say, but to tell you the truth, I fully expected to drive. But I’m not complaining.
Pierre rented another VW Gol (I think it has to be the most common car in Brazil. That and the Fiat) and we were even tighter in that car. Our first adventure in Florianopolis was trying to find the local church in São Jose (where we were going to stay) and meet up with Elder Natchingall. Pierre, I know you didn’t want me to add this part, but the drive was … an adventure to say the least. J Let’s just say Pierre showed us a little extra of the area than we needed to see, and it took a little longer than expected. But upon arriving at the church we met Elder and he showed us around the little SRE office inside the chapel. It’s what I expected: 2 rooms, 4 computers, a few phones, lots of materials for the course, and things like that. It will be perfect.
For lunch Elder Natchingall directed us to a local churrascaria (brazilian barbeque joint). We got there well past lunch time (about 2 pm) and we were one of two parties in the whole restaurant, but they still brought out plenty of good food. I think the bbq pineapple was my favorite.
After another short visit to the SRE office at the chapel we returned to our hotel and said goodbye to Elder Natchingall and Pierre. Pierre returned to Porto Alegre and Elder Natchingall went to his beach apartment to be w/ his family.
Dave is taking Sociology 445 and has to turn in at least 1 paper every week. So while he was busy working on that, I walked around the block for a bit, went to the supermarket to buy some bottled water and some laundry soap (though after I let some clothes soak in the bathroom sink I read on the door that we aren’t supposed to wash and dry clothes in our on the balcony of the apartment… oh well.
Speaking of our apartment, I think we are definitely getting spoiled. We are staying at the Diaudi Hotel (http://www.diaudihotel.com.br) on the 6th floor. Here the hotel seems even nicer than our last one – a.c. in the elevator, our room has a sleeper couch, microwave, mini-fridge, and almost 2 separate rooms which is nice so while one is one the computer or studying, the other can be in the bedroom studying or watching TV.
I plan to work hard so we can be worth these great things.
I finished my reading for my Sociology 335 class and began thinking about the paper I have to write.
The part of São Jose where we’re staying seems to be in a prime location - easy access to pizzerias, markets, Laundromats, bus stops that go to downtown and things like that. It’s a cleaner Brazilian city and the buildings seem to actually be in order and look nice. They say Florianopolis has been voted the nicest city in Brazil, #2 is Rio de Janeiro.
A few hours ago I took a quick visit to the front desk where two young guys work as receptionists. They helped me find some places we could visit tomorrow, being that it’s Friday and we are planning on contacting bishops for the CASP course on Sunday. Right now is the tourist season, so many people are at the beach or vacationing elsewhere. I guess teaching ehre will be a little different than in Porto Alegre – we will be renting a car and traveling around to the different chapels teaching there, so we have to call all the leaders and mark days to come and give the course. From first day impressions it seems things will start off a little slow, but I hope we can get the ball rolling soon. My main purpose for being here is to teach CASP.
I got to talk w/ mom and dad on skype tonight. They sound good. I showed them a website of a surf school on the Floripa island. Maybe one day I’ll take some lessons. That would be awesome: http://www.surftripdailha.com.br/
Tomorrow I believe we plan on waking up early to get a good head start.
Friday, 27, 7:48 hours
Scottie, to answer your comment about the size of Florianopolis, according to wikipedia (the portuguese version), in 2005 it had a population of 396,778 people. But, it is an island, so it can only grow so much.
Here's a picture wikipedia offered:
From what I understand, we are going to be staying on the near side of the bridge, which is called São Jose.
Scottie, to answer your comment about the size of Florianopolis, according to wikipedia (the portuguese version), in 2005 it had a population of 396,778 people. But, it is an island, so it can only grow so much.
Here's a picture wikipedia offered:
From what I understand, we are going to be staying on the near side of the bridge, which is called São Jose.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Thursday, 26, 23:58 hours
I’m tired and need to get some rest before our trip to Florianopolis tomorrow, so I’m gonna make today’s entry even more simple and direct than the past.
We taught our 3rd and final lesson today for this weeks class. The week started off with 17 participants and ended with 13, 2 of the 13 having to leave early (but with good reason: job interviews). I think it’s pretty common to loose a few students after the first day of class. It’s really too bad because there was one couple, an 18 year old girl and a 26 year old man, who didn’t come back the 2nd day, but Pierre, one of the assistants, had a job interview ready for her. Those who made it through the 3 days did very well. It was fun to see how close they had become as a class. 15 minutes after class was dismissed there were still a number of students talking and getting information from each other. They became good friends. It was also neat today that during our class 2 people rung the bell in the front room. The bell is rung when someone from the course has been offered a job. We had one of the guys come and talk to our class and share how the course helped him in his interview and things like that, it was very inspiring.
For lunch Dave, the Burrup’s and I went to a burger joint that Diego (the volunteer) works at. He has a competition at his work how can sell the most of each category on the menu, so we came in to give our support. After today, he was in the lead.
I never realized how nice naps are. I took another one this afternoon and then went back to the office to talk about travel plans with Humberto. He told us we’d be flying out of Porto Alegre to Florianopolis at 12:00 noon tomorrow. He gave us some other information about how things will be teaching there, and it sounds like fun. A challenge, since I think Dave and I will be in charger since it’s just a volunteer center based out of the church, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.
At 5:30 pm we left the office and went to Humberto’s house. His son is celebrating his 14th birthday today, and so we (the Burrup’s, Dave and I) were invited to meet his wife and kids and have salgados, cake and soda w/ them. To his house I drove his work car while he drove his personal car. Driving in brazil is like a go-kart race – there don’t seem to be any rules, lanes, things like that, just as long as nobody gets hurt. On the highways there are police cameras that take pictures of speeding cars and send you a ticket, but luckily I was warned before we passed any. The last students here in Porto Alegre were unaware of the cameras and ended up paying over $300 in tickets.
After dropping Humberto’s car off at his house and saying a quick hello to his family, we all squeezed into his VW Gol and drove to a look out point where we could see the entire city. 1.4 million people live in Porto Alegre. So I brought my camera to take a picture, got out of the car all excited to get some shots, and then saw the big “E” on my camera. E = empty (no memory card). I had left it in my card reader! Ha… oops. Oh well, it was too sunny anyway and the haze wouldn’t made for a tough picture. But I’ll look for one online just to show what the view was like.
Okay, so i found a picture. I did not take this picture, but got it from the net.
Humerto’s family is awesome. He has a cute wife, a 14 year old son, a 7 year old daughter and his mother lives there. After joking around and eating we moved into his tv room to listen to his singing of American songs… ha. He’s such a fun guy.
About 8 pm again we plus Humberto’s wife also all jammed into his little Gol and he gave us a ride back to our houses. The Burrups live in a nice apartment and we went back to our hotel.
There I chatted a bit online, wrote some emails, and then started packing while watching Zorro II. Dave went out w/ his friends (Fabrice) to go bowling. I didn’t really feel like going out tonight.
Oh, I forgot to tell about a funny story that happened the other night. So you’ve seen the pictures of our hotel room and how our beds are set up. Well, the other night while we were sleeping I was awoken by a loud crash and rolled over to see Dave scrambling back into his bed. I remember thinking, “Did he really just fall out of his bed?!” The next day Dave told me what happened. While coming back from the bathroom half asleep he kinda stumbled on my bed. He then thought he knew where his bed was and so he kinda just fell to where he thought his bed was… but actually just fell flat on the floor in between the two beds. Ha. Funny kid.
Alright. Tomorrow night I should be writing from São Jose, the city just over the bridge on the mainland side of Florianopolis.
I’m tired and need to get some rest before our trip to Florianopolis tomorrow, so I’m gonna make today’s entry even more simple and direct than the past.
We taught our 3rd and final lesson today for this weeks class. The week started off with 17 participants and ended with 13, 2 of the 13 having to leave early (but with good reason: job interviews). I think it’s pretty common to loose a few students after the first day of class. It’s really too bad because there was one couple, an 18 year old girl and a 26 year old man, who didn’t come back the 2nd day, but Pierre, one of the assistants, had a job interview ready for her. Those who made it through the 3 days did very well. It was fun to see how close they had become as a class. 15 minutes after class was dismissed there were still a number of students talking and getting information from each other. They became good friends. It was also neat today that during our class 2 people rung the bell in the front room. The bell is rung when someone from the course has been offered a job. We had one of the guys come and talk to our class and share how the course helped him in his interview and things like that, it was very inspiring.
For lunch Dave, the Burrup’s and I went to a burger joint that Diego (the volunteer) works at. He has a competition at his work how can sell the most of each category on the menu, so we came in to give our support. After today, he was in the lead.
I never realized how nice naps are. I took another one this afternoon and then went back to the office to talk about travel plans with Humberto. He told us we’d be flying out of Porto Alegre to Florianopolis at 12:00 noon tomorrow. He gave us some other information about how things will be teaching there, and it sounds like fun. A challenge, since I think Dave and I will be in charger since it’s just a volunteer center based out of the church, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.
At 5:30 pm we left the office and went to Humberto’s house. His son is celebrating his 14th birthday today, and so we (the Burrup’s, Dave and I) were invited to meet his wife and kids and have salgados, cake and soda w/ them. To his house I drove his work car while he drove his personal car. Driving in brazil is like a go-kart race – there don’t seem to be any rules, lanes, things like that, just as long as nobody gets hurt. On the highways there are police cameras that take pictures of speeding cars and send you a ticket, but luckily I was warned before we passed any. The last students here in Porto Alegre were unaware of the cameras and ended up paying over $300 in tickets.
After dropping Humberto’s car off at his house and saying a quick hello to his family, we all squeezed into his VW Gol and drove to a look out point where we could see the entire city. 1.4 million people live in Porto Alegre. So I brought my camera to take a picture, got out of the car all excited to get some shots, and then saw the big “E” on my camera. E = empty (no memory card). I had left it in my card reader! Ha… oops. Oh well, it was too sunny anyway and the haze wouldn’t made for a tough picture. But I’ll look for one online just to show what the view was like.
Okay, so i found a picture. I did not take this picture, but got it from the net.
Humerto’s family is awesome. He has a cute wife, a 14 year old son, a 7 year old daughter and his mother lives there. After joking around and eating we moved into his tv room to listen to his singing of American songs… ha. He’s such a fun guy.
About 8 pm again we plus Humberto’s wife also all jammed into his little Gol and he gave us a ride back to our houses. The Burrups live in a nice apartment and we went back to our hotel.
There I chatted a bit online, wrote some emails, and then started packing while watching Zorro II. Dave went out w/ his friends (Fabrice) to go bowling. I didn’t really feel like going out tonight.
Oh, I forgot to tell about a funny story that happened the other night. So you’ve seen the pictures of our hotel room and how our beds are set up. Well, the other night while we were sleeping I was awoken by a loud crash and rolled over to see Dave scrambling back into his bed. I remember thinking, “Did he really just fall out of his bed?!” The next day Dave told me what happened. While coming back from the bathroom half asleep he kinda stumbled on my bed. He then thought he knew where his bed was and so he kinda just fell to where he thought his bed was… but actually just fell flat on the floor in between the two beds. Ha. Funny kid.
Alright. Tomorrow night I should be writing from São Jose, the city just over the bridge on the mainland side of Florianopolis.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Wednesday, 25, 23:59 hours
“Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 55).
This evening I started my first reading assignment for my Sociology 335 course. It’s interesting reading. I admit, my vocabulary is struggling and I felt like I needed a dictionary at my side as I read, but it’s all about the learning. Tonight at about 6:30 Dave and I went to the office to study. I have never had good luck studying in the same room I sleep, so I knew we needed to find an alternative place to study. The office was nice. Pierre, one of the supervisors was still there doing work in his office, so we each took a different room and studied for a few hours. At 8:30 we broke out our dinner – frozen chicken-burgers and Guaraná. Since we’ve been living in a hotel for the past week, we’ve been spending a lot of money eating out for each meal. Jo, the cleaning lady at the office, told us we could use their microwave and fridge if we ever wanted to. So tonight we did. They were interesting burgers. The store-made rolls were probably the best part. We then studied for a few more hours and were out of the office by 10. I was pleased, it was a productive evening. The history book about Brazil is so boring, but the other readings aren’t that bad.
The rest of the day was pretty normal. Today during the course I got to teach about setting Goals and how to make a Network list of people to contact. To be honest, it was like pulling teeth. Some of the people here just don’t understand why we need to set goals or work through contacts. On the positive side, I learned a lot from teaching today and hopefully will be able to avoid the same problems in the future. That’s what it’s all about, right?
For lunch we went to the Post Office (that’s what Elder Burrup calls it) again. Man! That food is so good!
In the afternoon I took about an hour and a half nap. Whew, that was nice! J Then I went to the market to buy our dinner and some other snacks.
The sun was out for a few hours. Here are some pictures I took from the 14th floor of our hotel.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Tuesday, 24, 23:24 hours
When you use the restroom in most countries outside of the US, do you have to thrown the toilet paper in the trash instead of the toilet? I’ve never been to another country outside the US besides Brazil, but here, that’s definitely what we do. Here, look… The wastebasket is instead of putting the tp in the toilet. Kinda gross, eh?
We started teaching our second class of CASP this week. I got to teach the “Brasão” (or in English, … um… I guess I’d be called the shield. ) It’s an activity that takes about 40 minutes that helps each student organize talents they have and accomplishments they’ve had in their lives, both scholar and personal. This shield is a fountain of information for later activities in the course so it’s important to help them be specific with what they write and help them see the importance of why this shield will be important for them later. It went well, I was pleased.
Outside of teaching the class, not much else happened during the day. It was still raining… for lunch we stayed in the office and ate leftover Chinese food and sandwhiches… good combination. I ran to the market on the 2nd floor w/ Jo, one of the workers I already talked about. She is so funny and loves giving me a hard time with anything I do. I don’t think I mentioned this earlier… probably cause I didn’t know, but Jo is married and has 2 kids. Cute kids, I saw pictures.
I also sent an email to a vice president of Inter (when I called asking for who to talk to, they sent me to him) thanking them for letting me take pictures, and offering 2 pictures for free. We’ll see if they respond and are interested.
Dave and I went to a few bookstores downtown looking for books we have to read for our BYU classes. We were able to find 2 of the 3. I’m sure we’ll find the 3rd later. It seems pretty popular, hense there were no more for us.
After coming back to the hotel and resting for a bit, Dave’s friend, Fabrice, showed up about 5:15 and we went to the mall on the other side of town. Wow! Very nice mall. Nicer than any I’ve been to in Illinois or Utah. There we ate a quick dinner from the food court in a Sam’s-like grocery store and then went to see the movie Dick & Jane (with Jim Carrey). Watching it from a brazilian’s perspective was pretty interesting. I probably laughed more. I liked the movie.
Fabrice then took us back to our hotel and we’ve been here since. Dave went to bed about 10:30, and I’m still up doing my blogg thing. I should probably hit the sack though. Tomorrow’s another day of teaching.
Oh, have I mentioned we’re staying here in Porto until Friday?
P.S. Good news. Danielle’s car was found the other day! Only her radio was stolen! What a miracle.
Here are more pictures of our hotel room.
My bed is the one on the right.
No mom, these are not my pants J (sorry dave).
When you use the restroom in most countries outside of the US, do you have to thrown the toilet paper in the trash instead of the toilet? I’ve never been to another country outside the US besides Brazil, but here, that’s definitely what we do. Here, look… The wastebasket is instead of putting the tp in the toilet. Kinda gross, eh?
We started teaching our second class of CASP this week. I got to teach the “Brasão” (or in English, … um… I guess I’d be called the shield. ) It’s an activity that takes about 40 minutes that helps each student organize talents they have and accomplishments they’ve had in their lives, both scholar and personal. This shield is a fountain of information for later activities in the course so it’s important to help them be specific with what they write and help them see the importance of why this shield will be important for them later. It went well, I was pleased.
Outside of teaching the class, not much else happened during the day. It was still raining… for lunch we stayed in the office and ate leftover Chinese food and sandwhiches… good combination. I ran to the market on the 2nd floor w/ Jo, one of the workers I already talked about. She is so funny and loves giving me a hard time with anything I do. I don’t think I mentioned this earlier… probably cause I didn’t know, but Jo is married and has 2 kids. Cute kids, I saw pictures.
I also sent an email to a vice president of Inter (when I called asking for who to talk to, they sent me to him) thanking them for letting me take pictures, and offering 2 pictures for free. We’ll see if they respond and are interested.
Dave and I went to a few bookstores downtown looking for books we have to read for our BYU classes. We were able to find 2 of the 3. I’m sure we’ll find the 3rd later. It seems pretty popular, hense there were no more for us.
After coming back to the hotel and resting for a bit, Dave’s friend, Fabrice, showed up about 5:15 and we went to the mall on the other side of town. Wow! Very nice mall. Nicer than any I’ve been to in Illinois or Utah. There we ate a quick dinner from the food court in a Sam’s-like grocery store and then went to see the movie Dick & Jane (with Jim Carrey). Watching it from a brazilian’s perspective was pretty interesting. I probably laughed more. I liked the movie.
Fabrice then took us back to our hotel and we’ve been here since. Dave went to bed about 10:30, and I’m still up doing my blogg thing. I should probably hit the sack though. Tomorrow’s another day of teaching.
Oh, have I mentioned we’re staying here in Porto until Friday?
P.S. Good news. Danielle’s car was found the other day! Only her radio was stolen! What a miracle.
Here are more pictures of our hotel room.
My bed is the one on the right.
No mom, these are not my pants J (sorry dave).
Monday, January 23, 2006
Monday, 23, 23:11 hours
They say it’s not the rainy season. Well today was another rainy day. Luckily, it started off pouring. After waking up at 7:30, getting ready, eating a breakfast of pineapples, mango, watermelon, a croissant and orange juice, I made it to the SRE office. Today I learned more from the volunteers how to answer people’s questions more directly and I did a few other things to help around the office. It was a full office today, I think at least 80 people came in to use the computers and look for jobs. I guess the beginning of the week usually brings more people.
12:30 was lunchtime; so we went out w/ the missionary couple, the Burrups, to a nice all you can eat place. That’s all they have here in brazil… you can either pay by the kilo, or pay a little more and get to go back as many times as you wish. This was one of the best meals I’ve had since arriving here. At the restaurant we met the elders and ate w/ them.
After lunch Elder Burrup took me to the Bank of Brazil and showed me how to take money out w/ my credit card. It was still pouring rain. I then went and visited Jefferson’s mother’s jewelry store that she has downtown. I burned a cd of all the pictures Jefferson and I have together from the mission and I was bringing it to him, but he wasn’t. I left it w/ his mother instead. While I was there, one of his mother’s friends/customers started talking to me about how life will be after we die. Brazilians are pretty open with religious matters. He knew I had been a missionary with Jefferson, so I guess that’s why he felt comfortable. His wife had recently died, so we had a brief discussion about our points of view and then I gave him the ‘Finding Faith in Christ’ pass along card and invited him to talk w/ the missionaries if he wanted to learn more. Nice guy. I was glad I could talk w/ him a bit.
I went back to the office for a few minutes… ended up being a few hours. Then I went back to the hotel. The dilemma of the day was that our safe in our room was busted! The night before I heard a weird noise when I shut the safe (it’s an electric safe). So we called the front desk and they sent up a few people to work on it. They would only work on it while I was in the room. They couldn’t fix it, so they told me they had to drill it open! I was like… uh, I have my camera and a big lens in there. I made sure before they started anything that they would replace any damaged items.
It was scary hearing them drill and bang on the safe. I recorded it on my audacity program… I’ll see if scott can help me put a link to my blog. I try to make my blog as much of an interactive experience as I can. J . But luckily, they succeeded (after about 20 minutes) and nothing was damaged.
I then returned to the SRE for a quick meeting w/ Humberto, Pierre, Dave, and the Burrups. After which Humberto invited us to his house for supper. His family has been out of town all week and he’s been lonely, so we ordered Chinese (not bad actually) and watched some music DVDs he had. He’s a funny guy.
Oh, I forgot to add that about 6:30 pm I called to Luciano Ribeiro’s house in Colatina, Espirito Santo. Elder Beck has finished his mission and was to be at Luciano’s house tonight. So I called to try to talk to him and other friends I made while I was there on my mission. I quickly talked w/ Eliana (Luciano’s wife) and Luciano, and then said I’d call back later. At 9:15 I called back. It was great getting to talk to everyone. I talked w/ Rutielly, Marcos, Karol, Marina, and Elder Beck. Man I miss those guys. Luckily I’ll be going back there in April to say hello J.
Alright, well I’m beat. Batman just got over on TV and now we’re getting ready for bed.
First I’ll read, then I’m out.
They say it’s not the rainy season. Well today was another rainy day. Luckily, it started off pouring. After waking up at 7:30, getting ready, eating a breakfast of pineapples, mango, watermelon, a croissant and orange juice, I made it to the SRE office. Today I learned more from the volunteers how to answer people’s questions more directly and I did a few other things to help around the office. It was a full office today, I think at least 80 people came in to use the computers and look for jobs. I guess the beginning of the week usually brings more people.
12:30 was lunchtime; so we went out w/ the missionary couple, the Burrups, to a nice all you can eat place. That’s all they have here in brazil… you can either pay by the kilo, or pay a little more and get to go back as many times as you wish. This was one of the best meals I’ve had since arriving here. At the restaurant we met the elders and ate w/ them.
After lunch Elder Burrup took me to the Bank of Brazil and showed me how to take money out w/ my credit card. It was still pouring rain. I then went and visited Jefferson’s mother’s jewelry store that she has downtown. I burned a cd of all the pictures Jefferson and I have together from the mission and I was bringing it to him, but he wasn’t. I left it w/ his mother instead. While I was there, one of his mother’s friends/customers started talking to me about how life will be after we die. Brazilians are pretty open with religious matters. He knew I had been a missionary with Jefferson, so I guess that’s why he felt comfortable. His wife had recently died, so we had a brief discussion about our points of view and then I gave him the ‘Finding Faith in Christ’ pass along card and invited him to talk w/ the missionaries if he wanted to learn more. Nice guy. I was glad I could talk w/ him a bit.
I went back to the office for a few minutes… ended up being a few hours. Then I went back to the hotel. The dilemma of the day was that our safe in our room was busted! The night before I heard a weird noise when I shut the safe (it’s an electric safe). So we called the front desk and they sent up a few people to work on it. They would only work on it while I was in the room. They couldn’t fix it, so they told me they had to drill it open! I was like… uh, I have my camera and a big lens in there. I made sure before they started anything that they would replace any damaged items.
It was scary hearing them drill and bang on the safe. I recorded it on my audacity program… I’ll see if scott can help me put a link to my blog. I try to make my blog as much of an interactive experience as I can. J . But luckily, they succeeded (after about 20 minutes) and nothing was damaged.
I then returned to the SRE for a quick meeting w/ Humberto, Pierre, Dave, and the Burrups. After which Humberto invited us to his house for supper. His family has been out of town all week and he’s been lonely, so we ordered Chinese (not bad actually) and watched some music DVDs he had. He’s a funny guy.
Oh, I forgot to add that about 6:30 pm I called to Luciano Ribeiro’s house in Colatina, Espirito Santo. Elder Beck has finished his mission and was to be at Luciano’s house tonight. So I called to try to talk to him and other friends I made while I was there on my mission. I quickly talked w/ Eliana (Luciano’s wife) and Luciano, and then said I’d call back later. At 9:15 I called back. It was great getting to talk to everyone. I talked w/ Rutielly, Marcos, Karol, Marina, and Elder Beck. Man I miss those guys. Luckily I’ll be going back there in April to say hello J.
Alright, well I’m beat. Batman just got over on TV and now we’re getting ready for bed.
First I’ll read, then I’m out.
Monday, 23, 22:23 hours
It started off being one of the few days in the past week that wasn’t raining. That soon changed.
With the beep of my 6:30 alarm I was up and in the shower. Dave and I were dressed and ready for church by about 7:10 and we walked a few blocks to the bus stop in the middle of downtown.
Even though the Sunday sunrise is the beginning of a new week, the streets of Brazil give more of a sensation that the past is still present. As we walked the few blocks to the bus stop the smell of alcohol reached the air. Half empty beer bottles and shot glasses still lay on plastic tables outside of mini-bars and gas stations. There are often only 2 people on the streets on a Sunday morning, the drunk and stumbling or the well-dressed churchgoers.
We took the 7:20 bus for about 25 minutes to where I had arranged w/ my friend, Jefferson Genro, to meet for church – in front of the Itaú Bank. We got there a little earlier than expected and waited on a bench.
The church Jefferson goes to is, like I said in a previous entry, one of the largest and nicest church buildings I’ve seen in brazil. What I didn’t mention last time, and what I didn’t see, was it’s mint green exterior. It’s… interesting.
Church was fun. It was neat being in a brazilian ward and not being a missionary. Jefferson is the Elder’s Quorum president, so he knew everyone and was eager to introduce us. Another amazing part: their sacrament meeting had air conditioning! That was unheard of in Rio. Maybe in the past year things have changed.
After church we went back to Jefferson’s humble home. He was eager to make us some authentic Gaúchan barbeque. Unfortunately it was raining, so the barbeque was a little tricky to do, but we did it. In his front patio area he had a square of bricks on the concrete about 3 bricks high. He made an interesting stack of newspapers and charcoal and then started the fire. As the rain picked up, we grabbed two tarps and tied them to parts of his front fence and his house in order to protect the fire. It worked. About 45 minutes later we had some fine meet and sausages. After and during lunch w/ chatted with his mother and little brother. Cool family. To thank them for lunch we gave them a 5 X 7 picture of Christ when he’s calling his disciples from their fishing. She liked it a lot.
Soon after we left, even though it was pouring rain, and got home about 4:30. Just in time to get in my PJs and take a nice nap.
I got to talk to some friends on skype – Lyndsey, and then Mom and Scott. Got to chat w/ some friends. Took another nap. I watched my General Conference CD in Spanish to practice those skills. It was a pretty early night.
It started off being one of the few days in the past week that wasn’t raining. That soon changed.
With the beep of my 6:30 alarm I was up and in the shower. Dave and I were dressed and ready for church by about 7:10 and we walked a few blocks to the bus stop in the middle of downtown.
Even though the Sunday sunrise is the beginning of a new week, the streets of Brazil give more of a sensation that the past is still present. As we walked the few blocks to the bus stop the smell of alcohol reached the air. Half empty beer bottles and shot glasses still lay on plastic tables outside of mini-bars and gas stations. There are often only 2 people on the streets on a Sunday morning, the drunk and stumbling or the well-dressed churchgoers.
We took the 7:20 bus for about 25 minutes to where I had arranged w/ my friend, Jefferson Genro, to meet for church – in front of the Itaú Bank. We got there a little earlier than expected and waited on a bench. The church Jefferson goes to is, like I said in a previous entry, one of the largest and nicest church buildings I’ve seen in brazil. What I didn’t mention last time, and what I didn’t see, was it’s mint green exterior. It’s… interesting.
Church was fun. It was neat being in a brazilian ward and not being a missionary. Jefferson is the Elder’s Quorum president, so he knew everyone and was eager to introduce us. Another amazing part: their sacrament meeting had air conditioning! That was unheard of in Rio. Maybe in the past year things have changed.
After church we went back to Jefferson’s humble home. He was eager to make us some authentic Gaúchan barbeque. Unfortunately it was raining, so the barbeque was a little tricky to do, but we did it. In his front patio area he had a square of bricks on the concrete about 3 bricks high. He made an interesting stack of newspapers and charcoal and then started the fire. As the rain picked up, we grabbed two tarps and tied them to parts of his front fence and his house in order to protect the fire. It worked. About 45 minutes later we had some fine meet and sausages. After and during lunch w/ chatted with his mother and little brother. Cool family. To thank them for lunch we gave them a 5 X 7 picture of Christ when he’s calling his disciples from their fishing. She liked it a lot.
Soon after we left, even though it was pouring rain, and got home about 4:30. Just in time to get in my PJs and take a nice nap.
I got to talk to some friends on skype – Lyndsey, and then Mom and Scott. Got to chat w/ some friends. Took another nap. I watched my General Conference CD in Spanish to practice those skills. It was a pretty early night.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Saturday, 21, 17:24 hours
Got to sleep in today – sorta. Woke up on my own about 10:20 am. The hotel requested that we move rooms because they were going to start construction on the 10th floor we were staying on. We quickly got our things together and then moved up a few floors to 1201. This room is pretty similar, but nicer. It has a better view from the front of the hotel, and other little things that make it just more comfortable.
I then went to the SRE office to make a few phone calls. The SRE is closed on the weekend, but I have keys to get in. I called my friend Jefferson and arranged to go to his church tomorrow and eat lunch w/ his family afterwards. He wanted us to go to a dance tonight, but me… not a big dance. David is, but he agreed he was tired and that we should stay in and study and rest. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of dancing or whatnot in Floripa. Maybe I’ll even pick something up… ha. But I wouldn’t count on it.
About 1 in the afternoon we walked to Fast Clean Laundromat and sat their reading for the hour our clothes were being cleaned. Has anyone heard about the $1.4 million dollars that were smuggled from Cuba to President Lula for his campaign? I read it in a November ’05 issue of Veja, a newsweek type magazine here in Brazil. Anyway… interesting stuff.
It’s weird how in brazil everything is closed on Saturdays. For real, I don’t really understand. We wanted to buy some books for our class, but none of the book stores were open. There were some cool vendors on the streets today, but nothing that we needed or wanted. We ate lunch at some weird snack shop in the mall by our hotel. When I ordered a hamburger and Dave ordered a hotdog, we were surprised to see them reach in their freezer and pull out premade food, but it on their george foreman-type grill and just heat it up. Needless to say, I won’t be ordering a hot dog or hamburger from there again.
Now we’re back at the hotel. I took a nap. Not much else going on. It’s raining again today.
I talked on skype for a bit with my friend Lauren who is in England for a study abroad. Pretty crazy how clear the conversation is on skype. I got to talk to mom and dad and scott at the same time on skype the other night. Fun stuff.
David and I went to the supermarket in the mall attached to our hotel for dinner about 8 pm this evening. The food was expectingly awful. I got a mini pizza and a beef and then a chicken salgado (like a lil hot pocket of sorts). We watched Behind Enemy Lines on tv in the hotel. I’m not sure how that movie is in English, but in Portuguese I thought it was kinda lame.
Alright, have to leave for church at 7:00 am tomorrow. Off to read, then to bed. … probably more internet too, there’s not much else to do. Well, homework… yeah… I’ll probably do that instead.
Got to sleep in today – sorta. Woke up on my own about 10:20 am. The hotel requested that we move rooms because they were going to start construction on the 10th floor we were staying on. We quickly got our things together and then moved up a few floors to 1201. This room is pretty similar, but nicer. It has a better view from the front of the hotel, and other little things that make it just more comfortable.I then went to the SRE office to make a few phone calls. The SRE is closed on the weekend, but I have keys to get in. I called my friend Jefferson and arranged to go to his church tomorrow and eat lunch w/ his family afterwards. He wanted us to go to a dance tonight, but me… not a big dance. David is, but he agreed he was tired and that we should stay in and study and rest. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of dancing or whatnot in Floripa. Maybe I’ll even pick something up… ha. But I wouldn’t count on it.
About 1 in the afternoon we walked to Fast Clean Laundromat and sat their reading for the hour our clothes were being cleaned. Has anyone heard about the $1.4 million dollars that were smuggled from Cuba to President Lula for his campaign? I read it in a November ’05 issue of Veja, a newsweek type magazine here in Brazil. Anyway… interesting stuff.
It’s weird how in brazil everything is closed on Saturdays. For real, I don’t really understand. We wanted to buy some books for our class, but none of the book stores were open. There were some cool vendors on the streets today, but nothing that we needed or wanted. We ate lunch at some weird snack shop in the mall by our hotel. When I ordered a hamburger and Dave ordered a hotdog, we were surprised to see them reach in their freezer and pull out premade food, but it on their george foreman-type grill and just heat it up. Needless to say, I won’t be ordering a hot dog or hamburger from there again.
Now we’re back at the hotel. I took a nap. Not much else going on. It’s raining again today.I talked on skype for a bit with my friend Lauren who is in England for a study abroad. Pretty crazy how clear the conversation is on skype. I got to talk to mom and dad and scott at the same time on skype the other night. Fun stuff.
David and I went to the supermarket in the mall attached to our hotel for dinner about 8 pm this evening. The food was expectingly awful. I got a mini pizza and a beef and then a chicken salgado (like a lil hot pocket of sorts). We watched Behind Enemy Lines on tv in the hotel. I’m not sure how that movie is in English, but in Portuguese I thought it was kinda lame.
Alright, have to leave for church at 7:00 am tomorrow. Off to read, then to bed. … probably more internet too, there’s not much else to do. Well, homework… yeah… I’ll probably do that instead.
This is the first class Dave and I taught. They finished this week. 
Saturday, 21, 16:50 hours
About 8:15 am, Friday morning, David was dressed and was off to the SRE office. He woke me up just before he left. I took a quick shower and got ready and then got an email from David saying I didn’t have to be at the office until later. It ended up I went to the office about noon. So until then I went back to bed. About noon I went to the office where Jo and Savio were the only volunteers. A few minutes after I arrived, Karla also showed up, and then Diego.
It was a rather slow afternoon. I mostly asked questions to Jo and Karla trying to learn how I can better help people w/ their questions and utilize everything the center has to offer.
Also while I was there I took advantage of the better internet connection and tried loading my soccer pictures to shutterfly – since it wasn’t working at the hotel. To my relief it worked.
About 25 minutes later we started getting lots of complaints from those at the computers, saying the internet was being very slow. Savio suggested they do a few things to try to speed things up, but then I realized what it probably was. I went and paused the loading of the pictures, and within that minute the net was working again. From that moment, I decided to wait until after working hours (5 pm) to finish loading the rest of my pictures. I did. It all worked out fine.
About 6:15 pm I called Rodrigo, Rubia’s brother that lives in Porto Alegre. I had talked to him the day before and he told me to call him at 6 to figure out what we were going to do and when. He was on his way home from work and said he’d pick us up from our hotel between 8 and 8:30 to go out to eat. About 8:15 the receptionist from the front office of the hotel called and advised us he has here. He and his girlfriend of three months were in the lobby waiting for us. Rodrigo is a darker man, early 30s, strong, happy. I forget his girlfriend’s name, but she’s very nice, white skin, blonde, light eyes, not sure who old. We ended up driving to a traditional and fun restaurant in Porto Alegre called, 35. It’s a typical brazilian barbeque with a few shows on a stage in the middle of the dining area. The food was great. Likely the best tasting meat I’ve ever had, and we ate plenty of it. The shows were awesome, too. The first show was a group of men and women in traditional Gaúcho clothing (clothing traditional of the region here). It was fun, loud, colorful. After a short break the second show began. This was quite entertaining! These men dressed as traditional Gaúcho cowboys swung a huge cord w/ a big rock at the end of each cord (possibly a common weapon, I dunno) and on the stage they would swing the ropes, dance to a drummer, and hit the rock on the ground making different beats and fun stuff like that. Then they started getting tricky and dangerous and showed their accuracy w/ the rocks when they called members from the audience up and they would swing the ropes so close to their head that their hair would be whisped up and around. They even hit a cigarette from a man’s mouth with the swinging rock. It was fun. When we weren’t eating or watching the show Rodrigo and his girlfriend were great hosts: fun to be with and we had a good time. After eating at 35 they took us back to our hotel and we finished the night as usual – watched an episode of the simpsons, read, and then got on the internet.
Saturday, 21, 16:50 hours
About 8:15 am, Friday morning, David was dressed and was off to the SRE office. He woke me up just before he left. I took a quick shower and got ready and then got an email from David saying I didn’t have to be at the office until later. It ended up I went to the office about noon. So until then I went back to bed. About noon I went to the office where Jo and Savio were the only volunteers. A few minutes after I arrived, Karla also showed up, and then Diego.
It was a rather slow afternoon. I mostly asked questions to Jo and Karla trying to learn how I can better help people w/ their questions and utilize everything the center has to offer.
Also while I was there I took advantage of the better internet connection and tried loading my soccer pictures to shutterfly – since it wasn’t working at the hotel. To my relief it worked.
About 25 minutes later we started getting lots of complaints from those at the computers, saying the internet was being very slow. Savio suggested they do a few things to try to speed things up, but then I realized what it probably was. I went and paused the loading of the pictures, and within that minute the net was working again. From that moment, I decided to wait until after working hours (5 pm) to finish loading the rest of my pictures. I did. It all worked out fine.
About 6:15 pm I called Rodrigo, Rubia’s brother that lives in Porto Alegre. I had talked to him the day before and he told me to call him at 6 to figure out what we were going to do and when. He was on his way home from work and said he’d pick us up from our hotel between 8 and 8:30 to go out to eat. About 8:15 the receptionist from the front office of the hotel called and advised us he has here. He and his girlfriend of three months were in the lobby waiting for us. Rodrigo is a darker man, early 30s, strong, happy. I forget his girlfriend’s name, but she’s very nice, white skin, blonde, light eyes, not sure who old. We ended up driving to a traditional and fun restaurant in Porto Alegre called, 35. It’s a typical brazilian barbeque with a few shows on a stage in the middle of the dining area. The food was great. Likely the best tasting meat I’ve ever had, and we ate plenty of it. The shows were awesome, too. The first show was a group of men and women in traditional Gaúcho clothing (clothing traditional of the region here). It was fun, loud, colorful. After a short break the second show began. This was quite entertaining! These men dressed as traditional Gaúcho cowboys swung a huge cord w/ a big rock at the end of each cord (possibly a common weapon, I dunno) and on the stage they would swing the ropes, dance to a drummer, and hit the rock on the ground making different beats and fun stuff like that. Then they started getting tricky and dangerous and showed their accuracy w/ the rocks when they called members from the audience up and they would swing the ropes so close to their head that their hair would be whisped up and around. They even hit a cigarette from a man’s mouth with the swinging rock. It was fun. When we weren’t eating or watching the show Rodrigo and his girlfriend were great hosts: fun to be with and we had a good time. After eating at 35 they took us back to our hotel and we finished the night as usual – watched an episode of the simpsons, read, and then got on the internet.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Friday, 20, 1:43 am
Wednesday was, well to sum it up in two words: new experience.
Since we’ve arrived to Brazil I haven’t been able to put myself to sleep before 2 am. Part of it is because I stay up late writing my blog and chatting w/ family and friends online. The other part is the 5 hour time difference from Utah. But whatever it is, I need to get to bed earlier because I’m killing myself. We’ve been getting up between 7:00 and 7:30 every day, and my eyes are starting to sting real bad cause they are so tired.
Friday, 20, 18:11 hours
Okay, so I was so tired that I just went to bed after typing that last paragraph. I just said to myself, you know it’s not worth it.
But let me go back to telling about Wednesday: It was our second day teaching the workshop. Here they call it CASP (curso de auto-sufficiencia profissional – Employment Workshop). I was assigned by Elder Burrup and Alexandre (a local volunteer who teaches with us) to teach the “power statement” section of the workshop. This is where we teach how to answer questions during interviews talking about specific strengths or qualities one might have by giving specific examples and specific results of your ability so you can accurately show your potential and impress your employer. It’s a fun section to teach and was probably one of the parts I liked best when I took the course. The best part is they finally feel comfortable answering interview questions when they know somewhat the things they are to say.
After the class was over we hung around the office for a few more hours learning how things work and meeting more of the volunteers. It seems there are 3 regular volunteers that help. But to understand what they do, I guess I first need to explain how the SRE center works. Anyone and everyone can come to the center and they register themselves on the center’s website. On the website has a listing of job openings and many specifics for each job and such. The computer access is free (which in most other places its not) and so are the phone calls when they’re related to job searching. Job openings are updated regularly, so the people have to come in and keep checking what’s available. At the center they get help with their resumes and things like that. All this takes place in the front area where area. Wood tiles decorate the floors and wooden booths house the 8 computers available for use. About 8 round glass tables are scattered around with newspapers and magazines geared to give more job ideas or training. To get in, like most brazil offices, you have to put the receptionist who then looks at the person through the security camera and then opens the door for each person.
Pierre is one of the main directors of the center, and his office has a window looking out at those on the computers. He’s a cool guy. Light skinned, ex-missionary, ex-bishop, married and has 3 young kids (7,5, and 5 months). I met his wife and youngest daughter today after the office was closed. He is a paid employee.
Humberto is the head of the SRE in Porto Alegre and the volunteer centers that branch from Porto Alegre – like Florianopolis. I gave a brief description of him the other day, and over the past few days he has shown just how awesome he is. We are yet to meet his family, but we’ve seen pictures of his lovely family and his kids. He is also paid.
Alexandre is a volunteer teacher of CASP. He’s a large man, dark, a few inches shorter than me, and is married with a few children as well – but I’m not sure how many. He relates very well with the participants and has a nice humor.
Karla is another volunteer. She doesn’t teach CASP, but helps people in the front room w/ questions about the website and jobs and all the good stuff. She’s a very nice lady, light skinned and married w/ kids my age.
Diego is a 18 year old volunteer. He’s a large boy, and very nice and helpful w/ just about anything. These days I have him typing up some reviews from our first week of class.
And then there’s Jocilaine. I believe she gets paid to be the cleaning woman, but she seems to mostly clean when the day is over. During the rest of the day she helps with questions and concerns in the front. She’s kinda dark skinned, curly dark hair, married, and funny – fun to work w/.
Wednesday afternoon we hung out w/ one of David’s mission buddies, Fabrice (or Chu-Chu as people call him). He picked us up in his father’s VW Gol (just like the American Golf) and we went to his apartment, which was right above his father’s apartment and next to his father’s. On the way, Fabrice got a phone call from a friend who had just been car-jacked. His car, phone, everything was stolen from him at gunpoint. He was calling to see if Fabrice had any connections w/ the police… I guess if you do they work faster. Scary. At Fabrice’s house we met his father who speaks perfect English. He has an accent, but that’s normal. I guess he teaches English to companies and stuff. Nice guy. After eating some fast food from Habeeb’s (brazilian fast food) we got a ride from one of his friends, Danielle, to church for their choir practice. Dave’s a big singer, so he enjoyed the practice. I hung around for the first few minutes meeting people, but once they started singing I snuck into the overflow and took a nap. We were there for a good 2 hours at least. They had a good choir. After the choir Fabrice’s father picked us up and after he let us drop him off at his home and take his car out. We went to Danielle’s house. Another very nice house. Almost impossible to tell it’s not American. Right when we pulled up we ran through the pooring rain into their garage just as their mother and friend were on their way to the police station. Believe it or not, Danielle and her two girl friends that were with her were carjacked. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, but her car and cell phone were gone. Actually, so was David’s Sociology homework that he left in her backseat. What a crazy night. So we stayed at their house with Danielle’s sister – I forget her name, but she went to BYU for a few years and then she recently decided to move back to Porto Alegre. Amazingly when Danielle arrived home she was completely fine… not even startled.
We made it home safely. Fabrice drove us all the way to our hotel with no problems… just heavy rain. It had been raining every day since we arrived… so the weather had cooled down too.
Now I’ll talk about Thursday:
Woke up with my eyes almost sewn together. So TIRED!
Thursday was our last day of CASP for the current group. We took time to do a mock interview for each participant and video taped and then watched it with everyone. It was pretty funny. Everyone had a good time laughing at themselves and everyone else, but it was a good for them to really see the little things they need to change.
While they were waiting to be interviewed I went over how to answer tough questions, especially when you have things about your past that are not very positive for the interview. That went very well, everyone worked well together and helped each other with their problems and solutions.
A group picture was taken, so when I get a copy I’ll try to post it here.
INTERNAÇIONAL - Porto Alegre Professional Soccer Team
After the course was over I used the rest of my afternoon trying to get myself a press pass to one of the local professional soccer teams to take pictures. The two local teams were Grémio and Internaçional. They’re huge rivals. When I called I told them I was a photographer from a university in the United States, BYU, and that I was only in town for a week and wanted to get permission to take pictures during a game. Grémio was very cool about it, but after I hung up my friend down here, Jefferson, told me the game was on Sunday. So I decided I wouldn’t be going. So then I called Internaçional and at first they made me call someone else. That didn’t end up working. So I called back and talked to a different person this time and they connected me with Leonel, who was incharge of this kinda stuff. He had me fax them my passport and visa info. and tell them what university I was from. After I did that I called back and they told me to show up a 1/2 hour before game time to check in. I was like, woah! Sweet! I was nervous and really excited all of a sudden.
So when I got back to the hotel I took out the manual for my camera and actually read it for the first time. Ha… it was good I did. I learned a few good tricks that helped during the game. I made sure my batteries were all charged (I brought 3 but only ended up using 1 at the game… but I was prepared :o)), and that my memory card was working.
At 7:15 pm I went down to the front desk to verify the directions they had given me earlier. This time the guy reassured me it was fine to take the bus to the game, and then a taxi back (I was gonna take a taxi each way. I was just nervous about my camera and stuff). So that’s what I did. I got the stadium just find, and after walking in circles a bit I found the press place between gate 1 and 2. When I got there I asked to speak with Leonel, who was just in the next room. The first thing he did was ask to see my equipment, and then once he saw it he apologized and explained that in the past they had had problems so he just wanted to make sure I was for real. As he was giving me my press-penny (shirt) to wear 2 other photographers showed up that he knew. He joked around w/ one of them about practicing their English w/ me, and that immediately started a conversation… since I was American. I told him I was a student and was interested in being a sports photographer and I asked him how he got started in the business. He then gave me his business card (MCFOTOPRESS . ironic name, eh?) and he was nice enough to show me around the stadium and kinda tell me the ropes of shooting during the game. The game was awesome! What an amazing experience. It was a huge stadium, lots of fans, loud, rowdy, the score was 3-1. Inter beat Gaucho. Below is a link to my pictures.
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8EaNnLNs5Zsbk
Here are a few teasers. The link shows a lot more.
After the game I waited a bit for the crowds to die down. I watched the press conference w/ the team coach, and then got directions to find the closest cab. I was nervous walking there, but there were no problems. I got home just fine.
After the game I talked w/ mom and dad and scott on skype while I prepared my pics to put them online. Unfortunatly the connection is way to slow here in the hotel and I couldn’t put any pictures online. So that wasn’t accomplished until this evening at the SRE office. But I’ll give more details about that later when I talk about today.
Gotta go. Going to hang out w/ Rubia’s brother who lives here in Porto Alegre (rubia is a friend from the FLSR at byu).
Wednesday was, well to sum it up in two words: new experience.
Since we’ve arrived to Brazil I haven’t been able to put myself to sleep before 2 am. Part of it is because I stay up late writing my blog and chatting w/ family and friends online. The other part is the 5 hour time difference from Utah. But whatever it is, I need to get to bed earlier because I’m killing myself. We’ve been getting up between 7:00 and 7:30 every day, and my eyes are starting to sting real bad cause they are so tired.
Friday, 20, 18:11 hours
Okay, so I was so tired that I just went to bed after typing that last paragraph. I just said to myself, you know it’s not worth it.
But let me go back to telling about Wednesday: It was our second day teaching the workshop. Here they call it CASP (curso de auto-sufficiencia profissional – Employment Workshop). I was assigned by Elder Burrup and Alexandre (a local volunteer who teaches with us) to teach the “power statement” section of the workshop. This is where we teach how to answer questions during interviews talking about specific strengths or qualities one might have by giving specific examples and specific results of your ability so you can accurately show your potential and impress your employer. It’s a fun section to teach and was probably one of the parts I liked best when I took the course. The best part is they finally feel comfortable answering interview questions when they know somewhat the things they are to say.
After the class was over we hung around the office for a few more hours learning how things work and meeting more of the volunteers. It seems there are 3 regular volunteers that help. But to understand what they do, I guess I first need to explain how the SRE center works. Anyone and everyone can come to the center and they register themselves on the center’s website. On the website has a listing of job openings and many specifics for each job and such. The computer access is free (which in most other places its not) and so are the phone calls when they’re related to job searching. Job openings are updated regularly, so the people have to come in and keep checking what’s available. At the center they get help with their resumes and things like that. All this takes place in the front area where area. Wood tiles decorate the floors and wooden booths house the 8 computers available for use. About 8 round glass tables are scattered around with newspapers and magazines geared to give more job ideas or training. To get in, like most brazil offices, you have to put the receptionist who then looks at the person through the security camera and then opens the door for each person.
Pierre is one of the main directors of the center, and his office has a window looking out at those on the computers. He’s a cool guy. Light skinned, ex-missionary, ex-bishop, married and has 3 young kids (7,5, and 5 months). I met his wife and youngest daughter today after the office was closed. He is a paid employee.
Humberto is the head of the SRE in Porto Alegre and the volunteer centers that branch from Porto Alegre – like Florianopolis. I gave a brief description of him the other day, and over the past few days he has shown just how awesome he is. We are yet to meet his family, but we’ve seen pictures of his lovely family and his kids. He is also paid.
Alexandre is a volunteer teacher of CASP. He’s a large man, dark, a few inches shorter than me, and is married with a few children as well – but I’m not sure how many. He relates very well with the participants and has a nice humor.
Karla is another volunteer. She doesn’t teach CASP, but helps people in the front room w/ questions about the website and jobs and all the good stuff. She’s a very nice lady, light skinned and married w/ kids my age.
Diego is a 18 year old volunteer. He’s a large boy, and very nice and helpful w/ just about anything. These days I have him typing up some reviews from our first week of class.
And then there’s Jocilaine. I believe she gets paid to be the cleaning woman, but she seems to mostly clean when the day is over. During the rest of the day she helps with questions and concerns in the front. She’s kinda dark skinned, curly dark hair, married, and funny – fun to work w/.
Wednesday afternoon we hung out w/ one of David’s mission buddies, Fabrice (or Chu-Chu as people call him). He picked us up in his father’s VW Gol (just like the American Golf) and we went to his apartment, which was right above his father’s apartment and next to his father’s. On the way, Fabrice got a phone call from a friend who had just been car-jacked. His car, phone, everything was stolen from him at gunpoint. He was calling to see if Fabrice had any connections w/ the police… I guess if you do they work faster. Scary. At Fabrice’s house we met his father who speaks perfect English. He has an accent, but that’s normal. I guess he teaches English to companies and stuff. Nice guy. After eating some fast food from Habeeb’s (brazilian fast food) we got a ride from one of his friends, Danielle, to church for their choir practice. Dave’s a big singer, so he enjoyed the practice. I hung around for the first few minutes meeting people, but once they started singing I snuck into the overflow and took a nap. We were there for a good 2 hours at least. They had a good choir. After the choir Fabrice’s father picked us up and after he let us drop him off at his home and take his car out. We went to Danielle’s house. Another very nice house. Almost impossible to tell it’s not American. Right when we pulled up we ran through the pooring rain into their garage just as their mother and friend were on their way to the police station. Believe it or not, Danielle and her two girl friends that were with her were carjacked. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, but her car and cell phone were gone. Actually, so was David’s Sociology homework that he left in her backseat. What a crazy night. So we stayed at their house with Danielle’s sister – I forget her name, but she went to BYU for a few years and then she recently decided to move back to Porto Alegre. Amazingly when Danielle arrived home she was completely fine… not even startled.
We made it home safely. Fabrice drove us all the way to our hotel with no problems… just heavy rain. It had been raining every day since we arrived… so the weather had cooled down too.
Now I’ll talk about Thursday:
Woke up with my eyes almost sewn together. So TIRED!
Thursday was our last day of CASP for the current group. We took time to do a mock interview for each participant and video taped and then watched it with everyone. It was pretty funny. Everyone had a good time laughing at themselves and everyone else, but it was a good for them to really see the little things they need to change.
While they were waiting to be interviewed I went over how to answer tough questions, especially when you have things about your past that are not very positive for the interview. That went very well, everyone worked well together and helped each other with their problems and solutions.
A group picture was taken, so when I get a copy I’ll try to post it here.
INTERNAÇIONAL - Porto Alegre Professional Soccer Team
After the course was over I used the rest of my afternoon trying to get myself a press pass to one of the local professional soccer teams to take pictures. The two local teams were Grémio and Internaçional. They’re huge rivals. When I called I told them I was a photographer from a university in the United States, BYU, and that I was only in town for a week and wanted to get permission to take pictures during a game. Grémio was very cool about it, but after I hung up my friend down here, Jefferson, told me the game was on Sunday. So I decided I wouldn’t be going. So then I called Internaçional and at first they made me call someone else. That didn’t end up working. So I called back and talked to a different person this time and they connected me with Leonel, who was incharge of this kinda stuff. He had me fax them my passport and visa info. and tell them what university I was from. After I did that I called back and they told me to show up a 1/2 hour before game time to check in. I was like, woah! Sweet! I was nervous and really excited all of a sudden.
So when I got back to the hotel I took out the manual for my camera and actually read it for the first time. Ha… it was good I did. I learned a few good tricks that helped during the game. I made sure my batteries were all charged (I brought 3 but only ended up using 1 at the game… but I was prepared :o)), and that my memory card was working.
At 7:15 pm I went down to the front desk to verify the directions they had given me earlier. This time the guy reassured me it was fine to take the bus to the game, and then a taxi back (I was gonna take a taxi each way. I was just nervous about my camera and stuff). So that’s what I did. I got the stadium just find, and after walking in circles a bit I found the press place between gate 1 and 2. When I got there I asked to speak with Leonel, who was just in the next room. The first thing he did was ask to see my equipment, and then once he saw it he apologized and explained that in the past they had had problems so he just wanted to make sure I was for real. As he was giving me my press-penny (shirt) to wear 2 other photographers showed up that he knew. He joked around w/ one of them about practicing their English w/ me, and that immediately started a conversation… since I was American. I told him I was a student and was interested in being a sports photographer and I asked him how he got started in the business. He then gave me his business card (MCFOTOPRESS . ironic name, eh?) and he was nice enough to show me around the stadium and kinda tell me the ropes of shooting during the game. The game was awesome! What an amazing experience. It was a huge stadium, lots of fans, loud, rowdy, the score was 3-1. Inter beat Gaucho. Below is a link to my pictures.
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8EaNnLNs5Zsbk
Here are a few teasers. The link shows a lot more.
After the game I waited a bit for the crowds to die down. I watched the press conference w/ the team coach, and then got directions to find the closest cab. I was nervous walking there, but there were no problems. I got home just fine.
After the game I talked w/ mom and dad and scott on skype while I prepared my pics to put them online. Unfortunatly the connection is way to slow here in the hotel and I couldn’t put any pictures online. So that wasn’t accomplished until this evening at the SRE office. But I’ll give more details about that later when I talk about today.
Gotta go. Going to hang out w/ Rubia’s brother who lives here in Porto Alegre (rubia is a friend from the FLSR at byu).
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Wednesday, 18, 12:27 am
A little giant. That’s what they call him.
Today during the workshop Humberto arrived from his trip to Natal and the northeast of Brazil. Humberto is the director or the Employment Services in the Porto Alegre area – or in other words, our boss. He can’t be more than 5 feet tall, with a healthy gut, but he’s the word is, he’s got power behind his small stature.
Today Dave and I woke up at 7:30 am and quickly got ready for the workshop that would start at 8:30 am.
Does this picture look like I've had 4 hours of sleep the past few days or what?
After another cold shower (my choice due to the heat) and getting dressed we ate a breakfast of mango, pineapple, croissants and such at the hotels restaurant that is actually in the mall area that is connected to the hotel. It was good.
We got to the SRE by 8:20 and helped set up for class. Starting a little late is a natural part of life in Brazil and they warned us that would happen often during the workshops. Today actually started reasonably on time.
A volunteer named Alexandre, and Elder Burrup taught the workshop today. After the first hour and a half, while we were on a 10 minute break I asked if David and I could play a ‘get to know ya’ game, just to wake them up a bit and get the juices flowing. They agreed, and so we played the game where everyone puts out 10 fingers and then we went around the room and each person had to say something they had or had never done. And when other people could not agree w/ what was said, they had to lower a finger. When all your fingers are lowered you have to sit down, the last one standing wins. Both Dave and I were the first ones down. Ha. But it was a success, and I think it showed the instructors our ability to communicate w/ the people and Elder soon offered us to teach one of the sections called, “me in 30 seconds”. It went really well. I taught the first part and started the practicing while Dave finished it up.
During class I received a phone call. Crazy, huh? I’m in brazil and I’ve called one person (Jefferson) the night before, and I’m already getting phone calls that the office. It was another mission friend, Marcio Padilha, who also lives in Porto Alegre. So that was fun talking to him. We arranged to meet at the temple tonight for the 7:30 pm session.
After the workshop was over at 12:30 Humberto took us out to a good lunch and then Dave and I bought some groceries and headed back to the hotel. He took a nap while I caught up on some emails.
4:40 pm we headed out in the drizzle to Jefferson’s mother’s jewelry store a few blocks away. From there we all took a bus to his house to meet his mom and little brother and to let him get changed for the temple. His mom is so funny.
Jefferson then drove us to the temple of Porto Alegre where we met up w/ Marcio and there were actually a lot of people there… Marcio’s stake I guess. There they don’t rent out clothes, but did have some to borrow. So that worked out nice.
Jefferson then wanted to show us their stake center. It seriously is the biggest, nicest church building I’ve seen in brazil. They even have an air-conditioned, indoor soccer area. It’s pretty sweet. Wood floors, netting… sweet.
Since it was already 10 pm, and our free dinner at the hotel is only until 10, we then went to “Hot Dog Americano” and got the biggest hotdog I’ve ever seen. A huge bun, 2 dogs, eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, peas, and other stuff just filling the bun to the brim. It was almost impossible to eat.
From there I expected Jefferson to drive us to our hotel, but that didn’t really happen. He got about half way and then said he didn’t have enough gas to get there and back. He didn’t really let us offer to help or anything, he just pulled over and walked w/ us to the bus stop and told us how to get home. That was okay, except it was 11:40 pm and I didn’t really know the city too well. And anyone who knows any big city in Brazil knows its not particularly safe late at night. When we got to the downtown stop I asked the money changer on the bus where the “Rua da Praia” was. He told me. So we decided to follow 2 directions our professor from BYU told us, 1. don’t ever walk like you’re lost, even if you are. 2. stay in well lit areas. So even though we were kinda lost, we just kept walking, following the more lit streets. I asked a Police man where to go, and then a woman and her husband who were coming home from church. Amazingly we took the best, most well lit and direct bath to the hotel. What a blessing.
Now its 12:55 am and Dave’s been asleep for the past hour. I got the Ethernet connection to work, so I’ve been talking with Scott and Brent and friends and keeping in touch w/ home and emails. The internet’s amazing.
So, tomorrow Dave and I are going to talk w/ Humberto about the specifics of what he’s expecting of us. Some ideas I had coming in have already been changed a little. It seems we won’t be doing any training of other teachers, but just teaching in Florianopolis. And it seems they don’t want us doing much research about the careers in the surrounding city (like we were taught to do in our Salt Lake training), but we’ll see how it goes. Our talk w/ Humberto tomorrow should help clarify a few things.
A little giant. That’s what they call him.
Today during the workshop Humberto arrived from his trip to Natal and the northeast of Brazil. Humberto is the director or the Employment Services in the Porto Alegre area – or in other words, our boss. He can’t be more than 5 feet tall, with a healthy gut, but he’s the word is, he’s got power behind his small stature.
Today Dave and I woke up at 7:30 am and quickly got ready for the workshop that would start at 8:30 am.
Does this picture look like I've had 4 hours of sleep the past few days or what? After another cold shower (my choice due to the heat) and getting dressed we ate a breakfast of mango, pineapple, croissants and such at the hotels restaurant that is actually in the mall area that is connected to the hotel. It was good.
We got to the SRE by 8:20 and helped set up for class. Starting a little late is a natural part of life in Brazil and they warned us that would happen often during the workshops. Today actually started reasonably on time.
A volunteer named Alexandre, and Elder Burrup taught the workshop today. After the first hour and a half, while we were on a 10 minute break I asked if David and I could play a ‘get to know ya’ game, just to wake them up a bit and get the juices flowing. They agreed, and so we played the game where everyone puts out 10 fingers and then we went around the room and each person had to say something they had or had never done. And when other people could not agree w/ what was said, they had to lower a finger. When all your fingers are lowered you have to sit down, the last one standing wins. Both Dave and I were the first ones down. Ha. But it was a success, and I think it showed the instructors our ability to communicate w/ the people and Elder soon offered us to teach one of the sections called, “me in 30 seconds”. It went really well. I taught the first part and started the practicing while Dave finished it up.
During class I received a phone call. Crazy, huh? I’m in brazil and I’ve called one person (Jefferson) the night before, and I’m already getting phone calls that the office. It was another mission friend, Marcio Padilha, who also lives in Porto Alegre. So that was fun talking to him. We arranged to meet at the temple tonight for the 7:30 pm session.
After the workshop was over at 12:30 Humberto took us out to a good lunch and then Dave and I bought some groceries and headed back to the hotel. He took a nap while I caught up on some emails.
4:40 pm we headed out in the drizzle to Jefferson’s mother’s jewelry store a few blocks away. From there we all took a bus to his house to meet his mom and little brother and to let him get changed for the temple. His mom is so funny.
Jefferson then drove us to the temple of Porto Alegre where we met up w/ Marcio and there were actually a lot of people there… Marcio’s stake I guess. There they don’t rent out clothes, but did have some to borrow. So that worked out nice.
Jefferson then wanted to show us their stake center. It seriously is the biggest, nicest church building I’ve seen in brazil. They even have an air-conditioned, indoor soccer area. It’s pretty sweet. Wood floors, netting… sweet.
Since it was already 10 pm, and our free dinner at the hotel is only until 10, we then went to “Hot Dog Americano” and got the biggest hotdog I’ve ever seen. A huge bun, 2 dogs, eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, peas, and other stuff just filling the bun to the brim. It was almost impossible to eat.
From there I expected Jefferson to drive us to our hotel, but that didn’t really happen. He got about half way and then said he didn’t have enough gas to get there and back. He didn’t really let us offer to help or anything, he just pulled over and walked w/ us to the bus stop and told us how to get home. That was okay, except it was 11:40 pm and I didn’t really know the city too well. And anyone who knows any big city in Brazil knows its not particularly safe late at night. When we got to the downtown stop I asked the money changer on the bus where the “Rua da Praia” was. He told me. So we decided to follow 2 directions our professor from BYU told us, 1. don’t ever walk like you’re lost, even if you are. 2. stay in well lit areas. So even though we were kinda lost, we just kept walking, following the more lit streets. I asked a Police man where to go, and then a woman and her husband who were coming home from church. Amazingly we took the best, most well lit and direct bath to the hotel. What a blessing.
Now its 12:55 am and Dave’s been asleep for the past hour. I got the Ethernet connection to work, so I’ve been talking with Scott and Brent and friends and keeping in touch w/ home and emails. The internet’s amazing.
So, tomorrow Dave and I are going to talk w/ Humberto about the specifics of what he’s expecting of us. Some ideas I had coming in have already been changed a little. It seems we won’t be doing any training of other teachers, but just teaching in Florianopolis. And it seems they don’t want us doing much research about the careers in the surrounding city (like we were taught to do in our Salt Lake training), but we’ll see how it goes. Our talk w/ Humberto tomorrow should help clarify a few things.
Monday, 16, 22:58 hours
It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a cold shower because I wanted to.
Yesterday morning Dave and I woke up early to be at a 9:00 am sacrament meeting at the same church where we had been going for our training. After the sacrament was passed we rushed back to the hotel and finished packing, and then spent a little time talking w/ Stephanie, Mike, Danielle, Ryan, Dan and Rachel while we uploaded the video on the blogg. Dave, Danielle, Stephanie, Mike and I then ran through the blizzard like snow to get lunch at the Heritage Center. By the time we got back (12;45 pm) our shuttle had arrived and was waiting for us. We understood it was a 1:00 pm shuttle, but he claimed it wasn’t. Oh well, so he took us to the airport and we checked in and then waited for a good hour and a half before our flight to Chicago took off.
We arrived in the C terminal in Chicago 2 and 1/2 hours early for our flight to São Paulo. Amazingly, the gate we were needing was right across the hall. Unfortunately, I forgot my teacher’s manual (Portuguese version, which I learned today they don’t even have it in here in Brazil it’s so new) on the plane and so we went back looking for it, and then they sent us to the lost and found, but there we learned the lost stuff wouldn’t show up until the next day… which didn’t matter to me. So we just went back, got a quick dinner at a burger grill place, and then got on board for our 10 hour flight to São Paulo.
On the flight I sat next to a nice man, Ugo, who was from Rio de Janeiro. His name and where he’s from was enough to give us a lot to talk about. He was a fun, older man. I also got to know the older lady behind me who’s also from Rio because I took her heavy carry on and found space for it. Ha… she was thankful, needless to say.
The flight was LONG. But the little screen on the back of the seat in front of each person was nice. We could either watch a virtual simulator tracking the plane across the earth and giving speed and altitude details, or watch one of nine movies in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. I watched Cinderella Man… great movie!
Ten hours later we arrived in São Paulo. The thick hot air reminded me of trying to drink a super thick milkshake through a straw. It’s kind of suffocating. It was fun to enter the airport and be able to watch TV and be a normal tourist for once, since I wasn’t a missionary. Just a totally different experience. Everything spoken on the intercom there is bilingual. After a few more hours of layover there we got onboard our flight to Porto Alegre, a 1 hour and 15 minute flight.
Once there we got our bags and waited in the front lobby area, not too sure if our ride had forgotten us or not. Ten minutes later our worries were relieved and a worker at the SRE (serviço de recursos de emprego – Employment Resource Center), Pierre, picked us up. He took us to our hotel, called the Grande Hotel ( http://www.masterhoteis.com.br/). It’s nice. Has air conditioning and is comfortable for us. Free internet and breakfast.
Pierre then took us to the SRE center, which is right next to the hotel, and we got to meet the older missionary couple, Elder and Sister Burror (? I’ll double check on the spelling tomorrow) from South Jordan, Utah. There we got to meet everyone and then they surprised Pierre with a birthday cake and ice cream because his birthday was on last Friday. That was fun and gave a good opportunity for us all to talk and get to know each other.
I quickly decided I’d use the computers to send Mom and quick, “I’m okay” email to comfort the nerves.
One of the funniest parts of the evening was calling and meeting up w/ my mission friend, companion in Colatina, Jefferson Genro. He was very excited to hear from me and we set a time to meet up.
The missionary couple invited us to their apartment, which is also near by, and we went up to the 14th floor, where they stay, and went out on the balcony to see their awesome view of the city.
To get cleaned up before we went out, we quickly ran home and I took a shower and got changed. At 8:15 pm we met Jefferson in front of the near by McDonalds and it was so fun to see him. He walked w/ us around downtown until we finally found a nice little restaurant where we got all the buffet food we wanted and one big piece of meat that they were barbequing (like Toocano’s in Provo. The meat was like Toocano’s, not the restaurant.) for R$5,80 (that’s like $2.25). After dinner Jefferson hung out w/ us back at the hotel for a bit, and then we went home. We are dead tired. Even though it’s only 6:25 pm Utah time, it’s 11:25 here, and we’ve been traveling all day.
Tomorrow we’re going to participate in the first workshop of the week. Here they teach the 12 hour workshop from 8:30 am – 12:30 pm, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. So I still need to read and then need to get to bed.
Oh, and Scott. The problem I was afraid of happened. They say I can connect to broadband Internet in my room, but I can’t get it to work. Do I have a broadband connection cable? Any ideas?
It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a cold shower because I wanted to.
Yesterday morning Dave and I woke up early to be at a 9:00 am sacrament meeting at the same church where we had been going for our training. After the sacrament was passed we rushed back to the hotel and finished packing, and then spent a little time talking w/ Stephanie, Mike, Danielle, Ryan, Dan and Rachel while we uploaded the video on the blogg. Dave, Danielle, Stephanie, Mike and I then ran through the blizzard like snow to get lunch at the Heritage Center. By the time we got back (12;45 pm) our shuttle had arrived and was waiting for us. We understood it was a 1:00 pm shuttle, but he claimed it wasn’t. Oh well, so he took us to the airport and we checked in and then waited for a good hour and a half before our flight to Chicago took off.
We arrived in the C terminal in Chicago 2 and 1/2 hours early for our flight to São Paulo. Amazingly, the gate we were needing was right across the hall. Unfortunately, I forgot my teacher’s manual (Portuguese version, which I learned today they don’t even have it in here in Brazil it’s so new) on the plane and so we went back looking for it, and then they sent us to the lost and found, but there we learned the lost stuff wouldn’t show up until the next day… which didn’t matter to me. So we just went back, got a quick dinner at a burger grill place, and then got on board for our 10 hour flight to São Paulo.
On the flight I sat next to a nice man, Ugo, who was from Rio de Janeiro. His name and where he’s from was enough to give us a lot to talk about. He was a fun, older man. I also got to know the older lady behind me who’s also from Rio because I took her heavy carry on and found space for it. Ha… she was thankful, needless to say.
The flight was LONG. But the little screen on the back of the seat in front of each person was nice. We could either watch a virtual simulator tracking the plane across the earth and giving speed and altitude details, or watch one of nine movies in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. I watched Cinderella Man… great movie!
Ten hours later we arrived in São Paulo. The thick hot air reminded me of trying to drink a super thick milkshake through a straw. It’s kind of suffocating. It was fun to enter the airport and be able to watch TV and be a normal tourist for once, since I wasn’t a missionary. Just a totally different experience. Everything spoken on the intercom there is bilingual. After a few more hours of layover there we got onboard our flight to Porto Alegre, a 1 hour and 15 minute flight.
Once there we got our bags and waited in the front lobby area, not too sure if our ride had forgotten us or not. Ten minutes later our worries were relieved and a worker at the SRE (serviço de recursos de emprego – Employment Resource Center), Pierre, picked us up. He took us to our hotel, called the Grande Hotel ( http://www.masterhoteis.com.br/). It’s nice. Has air conditioning and is comfortable for us. Free internet and breakfast.
Pierre then took us to the SRE center, which is right next to the hotel, and we got to meet the older missionary couple, Elder and Sister Burror (? I’ll double check on the spelling tomorrow) from South Jordan, Utah. There we got to meet everyone and then they surprised Pierre with a birthday cake and ice cream because his birthday was on last Friday. That was fun and gave a good opportunity for us all to talk and get to know each other.
I quickly decided I’d use the computers to send Mom and quick, “I’m okay” email to comfort the nerves.
One of the funniest parts of the evening was calling and meeting up w/ my mission friend, companion in Colatina, Jefferson Genro. He was very excited to hear from me and we set a time to meet up.
The missionary couple invited us to their apartment, which is also near by, and we went up to the 14th floor, where they stay, and went out on the balcony to see their awesome view of the city.
To get cleaned up before we went out, we quickly ran home and I took a shower and got changed. At 8:15 pm we met Jefferson in front of the near by McDonalds and it was so fun to see him. He walked w/ us around downtown until we finally found a nice little restaurant where we got all the buffet food we wanted and one big piece of meat that they were barbequing (like Toocano’s in Provo. The meat was like Toocano’s, not the restaurant.) for R$5,80 (that’s like $2.25). After dinner Jefferson hung out w/ us back at the hotel for a bit, and then we went home. We are dead tired. Even though it’s only 6:25 pm Utah time, it’s 11:25 here, and we’ve been traveling all day.
Tomorrow we’re going to participate in the first workshop of the week. Here they teach the 12 hour workshop from 8:30 am – 12:30 pm, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. So I still need to read and then need to get to bed.
Oh, and Scott. The problem I was afraid of happened. They say I can connect to broadband Internet in my room, but I can’t get it to work. Do I have a broadband connection cable? Any ideas?
Monday, January 16, 2006
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Saturday, 14, 11:22 pm
Class today started at 8:00 am, like always. I woke up at 8:05 am when Dave hit my leg, informing me we had slept in. Needless to say, we got ready as quick as we could and ran to the 8 minutes to the church where our training is.
Class today was a good overview of the self-employment workshop and I actually felt a lot better about the program after the review was complete. One of the hardest parts of the program will be translating the workbooks that we have since they are yet to be translated to Portuguese. Other than that, I’m anxious to see the impact these programs will have in Brazil.
At 11:00 or so we had our talent show… ha. Of the 20 people maybe half of us had some sort of a talent. I’ll include pictures of the talents. Here are some of them:
- Mike: tongue puppet
- Stephanie: marriage poem
- Jeff: quarter extravaganza
- Eric: mimicking Lori’s pants dance
- Lori: jacket and pants dance
- Rachel: clogging star
- Ryan A: progressive shake dance; Carlton dance
- Danielle: canción and piano
- David L: finger magic, Nintendo piano music
- Jon: two pancakes stuffed in his mouth at the same time
- Stephanie Allen: “Oh The Places You’ll Go”
Nothing else … oh wait… I can’t forget the apple walking. To spice up our walk home from lunch Jeff, Eric, Jon, Jason and I grabbed apples from the lunchroom and invented a more eventful way to walk to the hotel. I guess to get a better idea, just imagine a bunch of little kids running around. Single filed we walked down the road and threw our apples above our head to the person behind us and proceeded to run backwards to the end of the line. It got pretty crazy, let me tell ya.
And here's a movie clip to give an even better visual. www.veggiesandicecream.com/CIMG1900.AVI
Soon after, Jeff and Eric left and we said our goodbyes.
They went to Provo for the weekend and won’t be leaving for Brazil until Monday, but Dave and I are leaving tomorrow.About 3:30pm Scott called me and came over with Amber. They had been in Salt Lake for one of his friend’s weddings at the Salt Lake Temple. He took me out for lunch at Hire’s Big H and then we went to Jenna’s to say hi to the family and I also had to repack my stuff and get a few packages that arrived at her house (my new sports lens for my camera and a book for my Brazilian class). We hung out for a little bit, but Scott and Amber soon left. Kiralee came over and Joshua loved playing with his glow in the dark ball and baseball mit. Jenna drove me back to the hotel about 8:20 pm.
Took a shower to get off the day’s grime. The lack of shower due to waking up late.
Then I went to Danielle and Rachel’s room to get my computer. Danielle and I marked a few parts of the BOM to give to Tyler, the speed skater we had met the other night who asked us lots of questions. Then Jon and his wife, Leah, came by and hung out for a bit, before splitting for bed.
The rest of the visit here in their room, where I’m currently writing, has been hearing their stories (mostly Danielle) bashing guys “and their constant clashing of standards.”
Now I’m going to go read and then I’m off to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a new adventure.
…
Quick list of fun/funny memories from the past week. Most authors of the events will remain nameless, but those who were here should know what I’m talking about. If you remember more, please add them to the comments section below:
- “hormones”
- “Is that kinda like a sex education teacher?”
- Jon’s backward blinking
- “hunker down”
- “for crying out loud”
- wake up Koosh attack… eh hem, Jon
- Koosh attack in the eye
- Cheap shots – Knock out
- Leg Wrestling
- Lori’s men
- Jon’s off the wall that hit ‘someone’ in the nuts
- Weight room dance party
- Tape-measure jumping
- Truck bed apple-ing
- Song Game Battle
- Rachel’s face plant in the snow
- “they’re going to fall in love with you”
- koosh attack on Gustavo
- “who bit this apple?”
- Jeff and the pizzaria bathroom
- Pure-Religion napping
- ‘Who’s Line is it Anyway’
- Limbo
- Jeff’s interpretation of Eric’s womanizing defense
- David!
- Jeff’s belly abilities – “but where did all my organs go?”
- Cousin
Feel free to add more.
Oh, and I noticed that earlier I mentioned where all the students from BYU- Provo were going, but I didn’t mention where the BYU-Idaho folks were headed.
- Josh and Jeramy: New Zealand
- Lori and Amanda: Puerto Rico
- Leah and Jon: United Kingdom
- Dan and Ryan: Dominican Republic
The other 12 people I previously named, but I’ll do it again:
- Geoff and David: Florianopolis, Brazil
- Eric and Jeff: Fortaleza, Brazil
- Jason and Kim: Fiji
- Mike and Stephanie: Guatemala
- Danielle and Rachel: Ecuador
- David and Ryan: Costa Rica
And lastly: so it turns out I have some kin going on this trip. Jeff Stetznegger is my second-cousin in law. Eileen Low (spelling?), mom’s cousin, has a daughter who married Jeff’s brother… I think. Jeff, if that’s wrong, please help me out here.
Ended up being a late night.
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