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.