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.