Mac 'N Brazil

2006-04-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

I am finished with this blog. I am creating a new one specifically for my photojournalism. http://geoffreymcallister.blogspot.com . To read about my internship in Brazil go to January's archives.

2006-04-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Few things in life make me want to cry: the death of a relative or close friend, City of Angels, the United States loss to Germany in the 2002 World Cup, and missing my international flight home this weekend.

I arrived at terminal 1 of the Rio de Janeiro International Airport at 6:30 pm, Friday evening. Thinking my flight left at 8:20, I wasn’t too upset when I realized I had to trek across the entire airport to get to the last section of terminal 2. As I meandered along I remembered I had R$45 I needed to spend; so, I stopped at a souvenir booth and bought some presents for my two new nieces, and other family members. It was about 7 o’clock when I arrived at the deserted United Airlines check-in counter – it was closed. Maybe I should have panicked then, but I was pretty confident my flight was at 8:20; I thought maybe I would take a Varig flight to São Paulo, and then switched to United, after all, Varig and United are related. I waited through Varig’s international check-in to be told that they did not have me in their system – now I started to panic. I then went to an internet booth and printed out my itinerary (they wanted to charge me R$3,50 for 5 minutes but I didn’t realize they didn’t accept credit cards and ended up only giving all my change, R$1,40). I looked at my itinerary, and half way down the page, in bold red, letters it read: 8:20 pm São Paulo to Chicago. My stomach dropped; my eyes went to the top of the page; in plain, black text it read: 6:30 pm Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo. I had missed my flight! Not only did I miss my flight, but United was closed until 10 the next morning, I had spent all my Brazilian money, and I was homeless.

It was about this time that I wanted to cry. Ha… I think it was the stress and self-anger and longing to be home. I didn’t actually cry, but it was just a frustrating situation.

Luckily, I still had a Brazilian phone card with which I called my friend Andeson in Rio. He wasn’t there. I then called my only other friend, Jocileia, who was excited and confused to hear from me. When I explained the situation, she was more than helpful. I took a taxi to her apartment in Jardim Botánico (Botanical Gardens) in Rio de Janeiro, and I ended up sleeping at her neighbor’s house since he was at home for the weekend. Right after I arrived at her apartment, we walked a few blocks to PUC – RIO, the university she attends. There I was able to quickly access internet and send an email to Dad.

So I learned some important lessons from the situation: print out the flight itinerary when it is first received; and check-in is the first priority when arriving at the airport.

Since there wasn’t another flight home until the same time on Saturday, Jocileia helped me make the most of my last, last day in Rio. We spent the morning trying to find a place to check email, but that didn’t work out. So after lunch we went to Leblon (a rich neighborhood in Rio) and enjoyed the beach – soft sand, cloudless sky, warm spring air and cool breeze.

We soaked in the rays until 4 o’clock, when we went to the mall near Jocileia’s house; I bought some more gifts for family; took a shower and than caught a cab for the airport.

Though I asked to be dropped off at the 2nd terminal, I believe he still left me at the 1st, because I still had a long walk to the United gate. I was surprised to be called by my name as I approached the check-in; “Mr. McAllister?, in broken english.” They were waiting for me. After paying the $100 late fee, I got checked in and went straight to the gate. They told me I had almost missed the cutoff for the international check-in… that wouldn’t of been good.

2006-04-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

2006-03-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

Wednesday & Thursday, March 22 & 23, 2006

Once when I was 19 my girlfriend and I wanted to watch the sunrise, just as something special before I went on my mission. For some reason I slept in that day and never saw it; since then, I still have never seen a sunrise… until today.

It was a little before 6 am – after less than an hour of sleep – when a faint glow began making its way over the ocean waves. Last night’s bonfire still roared at our feet – protecting us from the morning’s chill. The faint glow soon spread through the heavens; the cumulonimbus clouds in the distance made for an impressive silhouette against the colors of the morning sky. Purple, red, orange, pink, blue – like the man on Saturday mornings who painted “happy trees” and “fluffy clouds”, it was as if we were watching God paint the morning sky. Unlike a sunset that loses its color with time, this sunrise got more stunning.

My camera was safe in our hotel room, so I was unable to capture a high quality image, but I was armed with the ERS video camera that I was borrowing to take some memories home. This video camera also takes low-resolution pictures – good enough just for a memory – hence, the above picture.

Matadeiro is a beach on the southeast side of the island; the same beach we made our campfire a few weeks earlier. This time, about 40 institute-aged guys and girls sprinkled the coastline. Under the illumination of yellow park lights we played sand soccer, beach dodge ball, the group pretzel game in the ocean, and a variety of other activities. It wasn’t until a little after midnight that the all-nighters began sifting themselves from the early birds.

Those who stayed, moved away from the artificial lights and started a bonfire – well, tried to. Not to bash their techniques, but leaning big logs in a triangle shape, dousing them with alcohol and lighting a match is not the best way to get an effective fire going. Since I was in charge of the last fire, I figured tonight I would let them handle it; after the picturesque fire and roaring alcohol flames died, I quickly stepped in to give my support and some advice. After a few minutes of old fashioned huffing and puffing, and thanks to the help of those collecting kindling, the fire was a success. It was such a success, that 5 hours later, as the sun rose, we were still toasty.

As the blues in the sky began overtaking the reds and oranges, we too packed up camp. Daisy took a carload of us to the downtown bus terminal, while a few others got stuck taking a bus. By 8:30, Dave and I were crashed – sound asleep in our beds.

You’d think after a night like that we’d need a day to recover, but no. My alarm was set for 11 am – but I slept in. Ten minutes to noon Dave and I woke up panicked; we were supposed to meet Leandro at the downtown terminal at 12. When I called to explain, he was understanding and said he’d wait a few more minutes. We quickly got ready and got our bus downtown.

Thursday, March 23, was the 280th anniversary of Florianópolis, and thus, a holiday for the city. To celebrate, after our beach party, we had a churrasco (barbeque) at Débora’s. Her uncle was nice enough to be our personal chef, while the rest of us helped w/ the side dishes and what-nots. Since most everyone was dragging from the night before, card games seemed to be the popular activity, letting our bodies rest. But that doesn’t mean some of us didn’t play a game of sand soccer with the locals, or toss the Football around.

We had the barbeque area reserved until 5 pm, when we had to clean up and make room for the next people. Shortly after, Dave and I said our goodbyes and left with Dudu, Luana, and Natália, back to São José. Natália is our friend from Itajaí, and she came down to Floripa to hang out for the weekend and say goodbye to us. So tonight, after getting cleaned up, we made our way over to Luana’s house for ordered in pizza and movies. Our other friends, Deborah and John were also there. It was a fun night; though I had a hard time staying awake during the movie.

On a side note: we learned today that we would not be traveling to Joaçaba to teach, like we had planned. Honestly, I was disappointed, I really wanted to go; it would have been our last CASP course. But it turned out they were unable to confirm there would be at least 10 participants, so Humberto thought it was better to mark for another week.

2006-03-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

It takes eight quick minutes to get to the Florianópolis Institute building from the bus terminal downtown. This evening we met Rodrigo (same Rodrigo as last night) in front of Comper Supermercados in São José and went together. Classes are held every Tuesday night and Saturday morning; they have a pretty good turn out, filling up most of the classroom downstairs.

Presidente Perrotti is the instructor; I really liked his style of teaching – relating every teaching he could find to our daily lives and helping us see why it’s important to read our scriptures every day.
Today we are studying the Book of Mormon, just after Lehi’s Dream in First Nephi. They made this life size Tree of Life and each student was encouraged to put their name on a ‘fruit’ and hang it on the tree as a reminder throughout the year.

Domini’s Pizza was where we went after class to ‘kill our hunger’, as they say in Portuguese. When Débora sends me the pictures, I’ll post them here, but until then, let me try to remember who was there (going around the table): Muriel, Débora, Flávia, Élida, Rubens, Daisy, Rodrigo, David, Leandro, and me. Again, it was a rodizio pizza place, but paying R$20,00 a plate insured it was quality, and tasty pizza – which it was.

Earlier in the day, Dave and I worked at the SRE office, training the Cossios and making follow-up phone calls.

2006-03-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

Monday, March 20, 2006

With a box of individually wrapped chocolates, two socks, a fork, a knife, and a die, 6 of us stood around their dining room table; each took turns rolling the die, hoping for a 1; when a 1 was rolled, that person put the socks on their hands, and then, only using the utensils, unwrapped and ate the chocolates. Meanwhile, the other 5 continue rolling the die; as soon as another 1 is rolled, that person receives the socks, and they continue. The game goes on until all the chocolates are eaten. It was pretty fun.

This wrapped up my day, but here is how it began…

After a lunch at the local ‘by the kilo’ café with the Cossios, I went to the SRE office for the rest of the afternoon. Dave and I agreed that I would work today at the office while he did homework, and then tomorrow we would switch.

From 1 to 6 this afternoon SRE files were updated, more instructions were written for the Cossios, I gave some teaching tips and helped them prepare for when they will be teaching by themselves here in a few weeks.

Twenty minutes on the phone with BYU Travel left me a little surer of my plans for the next two weeks, but then I called Porto Alegre.

I called Humberto, in Porto Alegre to confirm our trip to Joaçaba this weekend, and was given the green light for renting a car for our trip – thus, saving at least four hours round trip of our travel. Regarding more details, including our last day in Porto Alegre, Humberto requested we call him tomorrow morning. He wants us to stay in Porto Alegre until the 8th to help with a Stake Career Fair, but we are technically released on the 5th, and the 8th is the only weekend we have to sight see and visit people and places.

Sister Burrup, from Porto Alegre, also shared w/ me their trials from today – everything in their office was going haywire: the Internet wasn’t working, copy machine on the frits, etc.

At 8 pm David and I arrived at the house of Rubens & Family for another FHE. Valdmiria is always so nice to fill us with food before the message, and then Rodrigo, there recent RM son gave the spiritual message, and Tiago was in charge of the game. This is when we played the chocolate game described about above. Good times!

2006-03-20T22:31:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Last week I taught Sunday school, this week it was David’s turn; he was asked Thursday night, but he gave a good class, especially for the short preparation time.

Contact with home via Skype, AIM, and MSN was what my Sunday was all about. The webcam conference w/ Scott and Ashley, my newest niece, wasn't very successful, but here is an updated picture:
What a doll!

After church I visited Irmão Pedro Pimentel’s house to see how he was doing; he had eye surgery this past week – a weird film was building up over his eye, almost like a snake, so he had it cut off. They were thankful for my visit and invited me to eat lunch w/ them – what a nice family!

I got a hold of Joaçaba this afternoon; Joaçaba is a city about 6 hours west of Florianópolis, and they have been trying to schedule a CASP class for 15 church members who are trying to take advantage of the Perpetual Education Fund. We scheduled for this coming Saturday, but they are still going to get back to us to confirm.

2006-03-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Though the sun was sizzling and the ocean looked gorgeous, we couldn’t convince anyone else to go to the beach with us today. Instead, after Institute, David, Leandro, Daniel, Helamã, Flávia, Élida, and I went to the Beira Mar Shopping mall for lunch and hung out for a bit. The mall was beautifully designed with at least 5 floors and has been nicely maintained. The stores were similar to those in the U.S. (everything way too expensive), the only obvious difference I spotted being the jewelry – which have more of a Latin flare expressed by its colors, size, and design.

From downtown Floripa, Leandro, David and I took a taxi back to Leandro’s place on the mainland where we watched the Crusades – an awfully bloody movie that also had a surprisingly profound and deep script. I really enjoyed the message it passed about the importance of being a better person and making a difference in the world, not just for yourself, but helping everyone around you.

Since Leandro wasn’t too big on cooking, I used his food and made us some ham & cheese hamburgers, along with his cheese bread and Fanta – grape soda. He’ll be the first to admit he doesn’t know how to make anything.

Getting home was rather interesting. To get back we had to catch a bus over the bridge to downtown (going further from our hotel), where we’d get another bus back to the continent and up to São José, where we live. The bus stop by Leandro’s house is located at the bottom of a curving hill and consequently, it took us over thirty minutes to recognize and flag down the right bus before it zoomed by. We got to the downtown terminal at 11:30 pm, just as the last bus to our neighborhood was rolling out! Unsure what to do, we decided to take another bus that would drop us off 15 minutes from our hotel; luckily as we waited for that bus, we learned of another that was not on the departure screen, but that would go past our hotel at midnight.

We made it home fine.

2006-03-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 17, 2006

As the waitress set them on our table, the golden, breaded, platter of shrimp smiled at me. Okay, maybe it didn't smile, but I was happy to see it. It came accompanied with an overflowing platter of French fries, and it was all chased down with a 2-liter of Kuat guaraná. Leandro, Carol, David, and I enjoyed ourselves at Boka’s Restaurant, just on the continent side of Florianópolis. Boka’s is famous for serving big platters for a table’s worth of hungry visitors. Probably the most interesting part of the evening was adjusting to eating finger food with a toothpick - each shrimpy shrimp, and crispy fry.

We had a nice time, leisurely eating and conversing, even for an hour after we were done. It's a pretty common practice in Brazil to comfortably sit around the table chatting; unlike in the U.S. where the waiters rush you out to make room for the next visitor, here they leave you at ease.

Knowing we would be riding in Carol’s car, I remembered my iPod and car-radio adapter; I was surprised to learn these car-radio adapters were a new concept to Leandro and Carol and probably most Brazilians; they enjoyed jamming to my iPod selection of both Brazilian and American music.

Dave and I spent the night at Leandro’s; we watched War of the World’s, my first time – good movie. Leandro’s roommate is in the Rio Grande do Sul, so it wasn’t any inconvenience to crash at his place. We plan on going to Institute and the beach tomorrow.

2006-03-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Small yet powerful – the answer I would give someone if they asked me, “How was your CASP group this week?” Honestly, Dave and I haven’t seen better mock interviews – their Power Statements and overall performances were impressing!

Here’re a few snaps of the crew. The first was normal:

The second was supposed to be a funny picture; I think I was the only one that got the message.

Tonight we arrived a little after 6 at the Institute, and Irmã Bete was already there with an Italian dinner waiting for us; she’s such a sweet lady.

Due to the smaller number of participants, we were able to have longer debates and share more personal experiences, I think they enjoyed that. Over all, it was a successful CASP this week!

This morning, I was awaken by a phone call from the Sisters asking if we could sit in on a lesson they would be giving Anchieta at the chapel. It was 10:00 am when she called, and Dave was already at the SRE because Paulo and Caroline from the CASP course wanted to use the computers and telephones in their job searches. I was already planning on switching places with Dave at 10:30, so instead he was nice and stayed in the SRE while I sat in on the missionary lesson.

Shortly before heading off to teach our course this evening, we got an email from Curitiba saying their CASP had been canceled and that we didn’t have to make the 5 hour trip up there this weekend – to be honest, I was relieved.

The night ended with some interesting conversations on MSN – ha.

2006-03-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Bete made us Brazilian pancacas for dinner tonight!

We arrived at the Institute building a little after 6:00 pm in preparation for our 6:30-6:45 start to class. Bete, a motherly like participant of our CASP course, made us Brazilian pancacas (fluffy, thick tortilla type shells rolled with meat and cheese and out of the shells) with a small dessert and a 2-liter of Guaraná. That was so nice of her! So we scared down the pan full of pancacas as fast as we could, did the dishes, and then went upstairs to begin the course.

We had a few new participants tonight, and one that didn’t show up from yesterday. Everything went great – once again, I think this group learned the Power Statements faster than any other group.

We finished tonight’s course by 10:30 and proceeded by walking the Cossio’s to the nearest taxi so they could get to the bus terminal faster and now miss their last bus home. Dave and I, along w/ two other participants, Paulo and Caroline, walked to the terminal together.

The streets were congested with high school age kids just getting out of class. In Brazil they go to class for half the day, either in the morning or in the evening. The rest of the day is free for them to work, do homework, or get into trouble.

Home by 11:20, I finished the night with a good read of the Book of Mormon, and then got online to talk w/ some family and friends. Well, when I say some, I mean… enough to keep me busy until 4 am! Okay, so maybe tonight was a little extreme and I should have gone to bed, but that’s okay, I just won’t do it again. They were productive conversations – arranging my flight plan home, and my living arrangements for when I get back to school.

Though I finished the day staying up late online, it began being a lot more productive. Dave and I went by Anchieta’s house and followed up from the lesson he heard yesterday from the Sisters. Together we read the Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith pamphlet and tried to clear up any doubts he had. Anchieta is an amazing guy and has really noticed a change in his life since he has begun going to church and hearing the lessons. He liked us so much that he even recorded our discussion on his 10 X 12 inch boom box and said that the tape was a present for us so we could remember him for when we went back home. It’s hard to put into words just how neat this man is, and how gratifying it is to be his friend and help him understand the importance of Jesus Christ in his life.

2006-03-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

CASP at the Institute Center in Florianópolis tonight went well granted we only had five or six participants. To be honest, that was a disappointment. I know there are lots more people needing to take the course to be eligible for the Perpetual Education Fund, but I guess it wasn’t advertised very well – which is our own fault. But, thankfully, the participants we did have were ones would brought a lot to the class – experiences, excitement and energy, and it was a fun night.

After the course, we helped the Cossio’s get to a taxi and find their way home, and then Leandro, Daisy, Dave and I went to Habbib’s – a fast food, Arabic restaurant. It’s an interesting place, pretty good actually. Good friends, good times.

At 10:30 this morning, Dave and I went to Anchieta’s house so sit in on a discussion he had with the Sister missionaries. What a strong, peaceful spirit. It was fun to be in on a discussion in Portuguese again, and share a little with Anchieta.

Not much else was accomplished today, except the fact that each of the Cossio’s taught a part in the course this evening. I challenged them to teach for a few reasons: first, they will learn faster if they get involved and teach, but second, because I wanted them to realize they need to work on their Portuguese; Elder Cossio thinks he speaks only Portuguese, when really he’s speaking about 60% Spanish! But they did a great job, and both of the objectives were achieved.

2006-03-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

Monday, March 13, 2006

Ten years ago, in an old house two blocks in front of the Kobrasol chapel, my sister Jenna lived as a Sister missionary; tonight we held a joint Family Home Evening in that same house – now owned by fairly new members of the church, Pedro and Suelange Pimentel. Together with the Pimentel’s (Pedro, Suelange, their older son and two younger daughters) came two other families: Aldo, his son Tiago, and his son’s friend, along with Anchieta, Aldo’s neighbor and yesterday’s visitor at church. The sister missionaries were also present.

We arranged ourselves all cozy like in the big room that multi-served as their kitchen, living room and playroom. Tonight’s message: David’s Game of Life, of course. As routy as we all were, by the end of the game a great spirit was present – the game’s subtle messages and “judgment day” at the end left everyone in think-mode.

Today was also one of the Sister’s birthdays, so after the message/game we sang happy birthday and enjoyed the refreshments – a Brazilian classic of mini-French bread filled with a hot dog sauce, accompanied with a cold plastic cup of Guaraná.

Here’s a picture of us all. Please ignore the gang signs, ha..., and poor Irmão Pedro had surgery on his eye today, so that's why he's winking :

One of the best parts of the night was the friendship we were able to make with each of the families. Anchieta especially was fun to talk with – his many life experiences, Spanish backround, etc. I was quick to invite myself in on his missionary lesson with the Sisters on Tuesday.

Other than the FHE, most of the day was spent resting or at the SRE office. We left Leandro’s apartment about 10 am as he went off to work. I was dead tired once I got back to our hotel.

And how could I almost forget, I received an email from the Visual Arts department of BYU; I have been accepted into the Photography program!! I wasn’t expecting to receive the announcement for a few more weeks, nor was I expecting it by e-mail, but it definitely made my day!

2006-03-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 12, 2006

The sunset was gorgeous tonight, but I missed it by 10 minutes. I rarely leave the hotel with my camera equipment, but tonight we were already going downtown and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to get some sunset shots of Florianópolis from a walkway that stretches over the highway and looks directly at Floripa’s skyline of skyscrapers and her classic suspension bridge. The bus from São José took longer than expected; thus, I missed the sunset by 10 minutes.

Teachings of the Prophets: Wilford Woodruff, Chapter 5: The Holy Ghost and Personal Revelation –the lesson I taught to ten or so members of the Kobrasol Elder’s Quorum this morning. It actually turned out being a pretty good lesson – most everyone participated and many personal experiences were shared which for a pretty interesting class. We even had two visitors, Israel – a man in his early twenties, and Anchieta – a man in his mid sixties.

After church I did my usual routine of curling up on my bed with my powerbook and my General Conference DVDs; I set the language to Spanish (another language I’m trying to pick up), and then not more than five minutes into the first session I usually fall asleep – not waking up until the battery has died. Today was no different.

At 3 pm we had our first visitors to our hotel room – Rodrigo (the oldest of the Ruben’s family that just got off his mission) and Eduardo (an 18 year old who became our friend from the CASEI), our hometeachers. That’s right, we have home teachers. Actually, we were hometeachers last month, but they already traded us this month.

It was about 6 pm that Dave and I got a bus to downtown – we were meeting Leandro at the bus terminal at 7, but I wanted to get some shots of the sunset before, which proved to be a bust.

From there, Leandro and us two caught a bus to Deborah’s house, where other friends were, or were soon to arrive. From what I remember, the following people were there (thinking around the circle from our game of STOP): Thiago, Aline, Élida, Flávia, Patia, Deborah, Luiza, Daisy, Leandro, David and me. We played a variety of games – STOP (a brazilian version of scategories), the winking-murder-game, question-random-answer game and uno. Some of the girls left about 10, the rest of us stayed a bit longer. Long enough to realize we had missed the last bus to São José, so Daisy was nice enough to give us a ride with Leandro to his house, and that’s where we spent the night. Leandro’s a super cool guy – I might get to hang out w/ him and his family in April when I go down to Rio de Janeiro, since that’s where he’s from. That’d be fun if it works out.

2006-03-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Words cannot describe the emotions that were felt at the end of today’s course. As the closing prayer was said, a sound was heard that I didn’t expect – noses sniffing, and tears crawling down cheeks. They were truly grateful for what they had learned, and it made my heart content; just another of many reasons why I’m so grateful I am apart of this program.

Here is our group photo:

8:00 am class is tough, especially when you get in about 2 in the morning, but I was impressed that most of the class arrived on time – only three people from yesterday’s class didn’t bother showing up. The rest of us had a great time: sharing experiences, learning, and completing the course.

By 4:30 pm we were getting a ride from one of the CASP participants to Maiko’s house where we were invited to hang out until we caught our bus for São José. They had a pirated version of Narnia that we watched – good message, but not sure how much I liked the movie; I actually slept through the first 30 minutes.

We called a taxi and rushed to the bus terminal by 8 pm and said our goodbyes to Natália who was going back to her house. Twenty minutes later our bus came, and back to home (São José) we went, arriving a little after 11:30.

The rest of my night and early Sunday morning was spent preparing for Sunday’s Sunday-school lesson I had been asked to teach.

2006-03-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 10, 2006

The rain poured as we climbed out of the taxi in front of the Itajaí chapel; it was locked, so we scurried to a nearby shelter. Also patiently waiting were three other soon-to-be CASP participants.

From São José, Dave and I took the 4:30 pm bus to Itajaí, arriving a little before 7. Walking through the bus terminal, by chance, we ran into two of our friends from the CASEI (the single adults conference), Natália and Angelita. Dave served his mission with Angelita’s husband, Maiko, and so the five of us were planning on hanging out after the CASP course tonight; since they were going somewhere near the church, too, they hitched a ride and we dropped them off a few blocks before the chapel.

At 7:30 pm, in a side classroom with 15 or so desks filled to capacity, we started the evening’s course. I was pleased with the turnout – everyone participated well and seemed to really enjoy the course. Before we knew it, 10:30 arrived and we were saying our goodnights, reminding them about their few pages of homework and that class would start the next morning at 8.

Waiting in the cultural hall was Maiko, Angelita and Natália, who accompanied us to our hotel (Ibis) and waited as Dave and I got out of our teaching-clothes.

By 11 or so we had walked a few blocks to a nearby Pizzaria – but don’t worry, it was nothing like yesterday’s. This pizza was good!

We had a fun night just hanging out, joking around. I don’t even remember what time we finally got in, but it was early – in the morning.

2006-03-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

Thursday, March 9, 2006

“Hey, do you want to eat some really bad rodizio pizza with us for only R$5,00?” Who could pass up an offer like that? After a long day at the SRE office, Dave and I went to a buffet (rodizio) pizza restaurant with a few kids from the ward. Well… actually we got there and there was a long line outside and I told them that it wasn’t worth waiting to eat bad pizza (they were pretty confident the pizza there was bad, but it was cheap, so they couldn’t pass it up). So everyone who knows I’m cheap will be happy to know I passed up the R$5,00 pizza buffet. When Dave came home later that night he confirmed it was pretty bad. Ha…

Most of the day was spent with the Cossios; they’re such a cute couple and it’s fun to see them try so hard at their new callings. They may not speak much Portuguese, have computer skills, or teaching experience, but they sure try. We spent most of today making follow-up calls with last year’s CASP participants. Sister Cossio, with her sweet, happy, half Spanish / half Portuguese phrases was very brave, as today was her first day calling..

When I wasn’t making phone calls I was typing more detailed instructions how to use the computer. This is where Elder Cossio keeps himself busy. Tadinhos (poor guys), computers are not their strong points.

Since the information from the phone calls had to be sent to Porto Alegre by Friday, I was making calls until about 7:30 and as I was typing up the information, some of the kids from seminary stopped by. They invited Dave and I to go out to pizza w/ them, so I called Dave at the hotel and he met us at the front of the church. After waiting for 20 minutes for someone to come w/ a key to lock up (we only have a key to the back door), we were off.

Oh, the Photo-editor of the Daily Universe (BYU newspaper) offered me a position as a photographer for Spring/summer/fall terms!

2006-03-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Twenty meters off the coast, the warm water foamed and spat as the waves crashed against us. The half-watermelon-shaped moon shown through the thin layers of dispersed clouds; the cove where we swam was encircled with rocks and forest; a 15 meter beach bunkered the shore. Northward, across the water, lights shown, marking the line of houses along the coast.

Welcome to Armação Beach, where 16 of us from the greater Florianópolis spent late Wednesday evening and early Thursday morning. Two, full cars met in front of the bus terminal downtown – Dave, Daniel, Leandro, Deborah and I packed into Daisy’s car, while Flávia, Aline, Naíra and Lucas comfortably road with Luiza. The twenty-minute ride went fast and we met another carload at a supermarket near the beach.

Another twenty minutes was clocked as we meandered the paved, lightly lit trail - under, over and around - arriving at our spot. The next task was finding wood to accompany our bottle of Gel Alcohol and box of matches. We felt lucky to find a sufficient amount of broken boards and kindling as it seemed the shore had been regularly combed for firewood.

Somehow I got put in charge of the fire – me and my ZERO experience with beach fires; but that’s all right, with Flávia’s help we got a solid fire started that lasted the entire night. (Sorry if that bench-like board we burnt was yours.)

The soft sand and crashing waves were accompanied by Daniel’s guitar skills, Brazilian freeze-tag, the Weave game in the water, campfire jokes and stories, and stargazing.

It was after one in the morning when we packed up camp and headed out.

Seriously, it was a gorgeous place and just a fun time. Good memories.

As Daisy's full car was about to cross the bridge into São José, an uncommon traffic stop forced us to pull over. After a quick chat with the officer, Daisy, Daniel, Lucas and I were off to drop Lucas off at his house, as we then returned to the bridge, picked up David and Leandro, and Daisy took the rest of us home. Poor Daisy, she was pretty shaken up.

Before the beach, Dave and I got plenty of work done at the SRE office – helping Elder and Sister Cossio with more training, making follow-up phone calls, and planning our trip to Itajaí this weekend.

2006-03-07T22:34:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 7, 2006

The 18th of March will be a memorable day for two CASP participants from two different cities; during our routine phone calls I talked to Sônia from São José and Márcia from Joinville, and they were each very eager to share that they’re getting baptized on the 18th! Through CASP, we have become good friends - always calling to see how their job search is coming and trying to do anything we can. Oddly, they don’t even know each other, but I’m happy for them both.

Okay, so last night I stayed up a little late chatting and I didn’t wake up until about 1 pm; but that doesn’t mean my day wasn’t productive. By 2 I was at the SRE office helping the Cossios and trying to get in touch with Humberto, the Porto Alegre director. Unfortunately, for the 2nd day in a row, we couldn’t get a hold of him.

After typing a few things I ran to get a bite to eat and bought some Cds – I told Avaí F.C. that I’d send them the pictures ASAP. Before running to the post office I stopped by the office to make sure everything was going good. By 5 pm I was at the post office; luckily the Brazilian postal service works until 6pm.

Talked to some friends from home on Skype (evan and darah) and then went to the office about 8:30 to make some follow up phone calls.

Tomorrow we’re going to have a bonfire at the beach; our friends here are awesome! Even though they’re all busy with work and school, they make plans that Dave and I can participate in, since we are out of town on Fridays and Saturdays.

2006-03-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

Monday, March 6, 2006

I went to the Telestial Kingdom this time! What luck.

Dave and I were invited to a joint FHE with Valdmiria & Ruben’s family (the same family where we’ve been having our other FHEs) and Valdmiria’s sister’s family’s house – Eliane & Eber and their four kids. Their little girl gave a great 10 minute lesson (I was very impressed) and then we played Dave’s game of Life, just like we did two weeks ago. This time I didn’t get the results I would have liked and ended up going to the Telestial. Ha…

After FHE, Eber started asking me questions about what kind of camera he should buy and other photography questions – well, of course that got me going and I was eager to help.

It was a fun night. When I get the group picture we took, I’ll post it below:

This morning I was up, showered and at the SRE by 10 to 10; Dave and I helped the Cossio’s with more training and organizing of the SRE office. After lunch, Aldo came by and I helped him with adjusting his work fliers, and Ingridy came by and showed us some great websites where we could find more information on job openings in the state. She herself found quite a few; it was a productive day. It ended with Dave and I being called by a brother from the church to help him move his fridge… that we did with Aldo.

2006-03-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 5, 2006

Why is it we always forget to buy food for Sunday? I was taking a shower after the dance and realized, “shoot, the stores are closed and tomorrow’s Sunday.” We ate light today; we’ll just leave it at that.

Before church began I went by Pedro Pimentel’s to see how his family was doing. (Reminder: Pedro is my Home Teaching partner.) The mother was getting the two little girls ready and the teenager was playing with his birds. They were happy to see me, which made for a nice visit.

Church was actually really good today. The Stake President gave a combined RS & EQ lesson that was really powerful. The testimony meeting was so full I barely had a chance to share a quick word towards the end.

At 5 pm there was a special fireside – the men met at the Kobrasol chapel, while all the women held a conference at the Forquilinhas chapel. It was an inspirational missionary fireside where each family was given a Preach My Gospel book.

My Sunday was finished its usual way – catching up on my blog, and chatting with family and friends until late into the night.

2006-03-06T20:48:00.000-07:00

Saturday, March 4, 2006

The cloud’s white halo glistening in the pink and blue sunset made my heart ache. I don’t think I’ve ever loved a country more than I loved Brazil at that moment; and I ached knowing that in a few short weeks I would be seeing the same setting sun from a very different point of view.

Driving through a deserted countryside with nothing but my own thoughts and music in my head – now that’s my idea of relaxation. And as I relaxed on our way home from Tubarão I realized just how much I loved Brazil. I remembered my first impressions – São Paulo, hot, humid, dirty, over-populated. It was my first time out of the United States and my outlook on life was pretty narrow. I realize that I now look at the same scenery but see a different picture – people like you and me, families, love, hard work, happiness. The dirty streets and half-constructed houses don’t seem to be in focus as I look around; it’s a great feeling to love a place and people as much as I’ve come to love Brazil.

And if I was feeling this much love on 5 1/2 hours of sleep, just imagine what it would’ve been like if I were well rested. The hotel wakeup call rang at 6:30 am and I quickly hoped in the shower and got ready for the day. Dave went downstairs to get on the net and get an early start on breakfast.

We started the course at 8:10 with merely three participants present. A half hour later, six more arrived, and we finished the day with nine total.

Dave and I have been really blessed – each group we teach seems to be getting better and better in the final, mock interviews. This group did a great job practicing their power-statements and was quite impressive. Unfortunately, in our mad rush leaving yesterday, we forgot the cable to watch the video camera on the TV, so instead, after we closed the course, we let them all gather around the 2-inch LCD screen on the camera and watch. They enjoyed it, nonetheless.

The class was happy when we finished a few hours early. Then, instead of taking a bus back to Florianópolis, we arranged to get a ride from Cabral, a director from the Institute in Floripa. He was in Tubarão training the new institute and seminary teachers; he’s a very nice guy who speaks good English and is quite spiritual.

To Dave’s disappointment, riding with him probably wasn’t much faster than taking the bus – Dave was anxious to get to the dance at the Institute center. As we were leaving Tubarão we had to stop at one of the stake councilors house and he invited us all to come in and participate in his son’s 8th birthday party – eating lots of pasteis, salgados and bolo.

The ride home was great, and it was fun getting to know Cabral better. He was nice enough to wait 5 minutes for us to get cleaned up a little at our hotel and then give us another ride to the Institute center, where he had to go anyway.

We got to the dance about 8:30 pm and it was already rockin’. To be honest, it’s a different feeling to walk into a church dance and be excited to be there; but the friendships I’ve made in the past week have been unforgettable. It was fun to see everyone and try to bust-a-move. Ha… okay, so I didn’t really dance too much, but what I did dance, Ingridy helped me perfect my Forró moves.
This picture was after Simone cup and I crossed paths... oops. ha.

Much of the dance was spent conversing with Élida and then before I knew it, it was all over. Dave and I bummed a ride in a loaded van that would be passing by São José – it was nice of them to give us a lift.

2006-03-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 3, 2006

I had a few neat experiences today; part of me wants to share them because it illustrates a bit better how life in Brazil is, but part of me doesn’t because I don’t want it to appear like I’m talking myself up, or anything like that.

With that, I’ll get to the stories later…

I was awoken this morning to a phone call from the Cossios. They were wondering what time we were leaving for Tubarão; I told them 14 hours and maybe it was with the company Catarinensse, but I don’t think they understood me. At 12:00 noon, when Dave went to the SRE office to gather the equipment and I stayed behind to shower and get ready, I got a phone call from Dave – the Cossios were already at the bus terminal, waiting for us! It appears they contacted the bus agency Catarinensse and learned that their bus was leaving at 12:45, not 2:30 pm like I had said. Unfortunately, I had told them the wrong agency, because there really was a bus leaving at 2:30, but not on Catarinensse. So Dave and I decided to rush as quick as we could and try to make it in time for the 12:45 bus. Well, we didn’t. We arrived by 1:05 but the Cossios were their happy, smiley selves and didn’t seem to mind the miscommunication.

They are such a sweet, old couple! I’m not sure if I’ve described them, yet, but they are originally from Argentina, and have been living near one of their children in Floripa for the last two years. They still speak with a STRONG Spanish accent, much of the time it’s hard for people w/o Spanish knowledge to understand what they’re saying. They have a number of children who are married and live in the United States and are just the nicest people! They will make great service missionaries.

As I was talking w/ Elder Cossio, a woman who appeared about four months pregnant came asking for food. I knew she was being sincere when she didn’t even ask for money, so I offered to help. I took her to a restaurant on the second floor where you pay by the kilo and I told her she could get R$4,00 worth of food, thinking she’d probably get a little more. As she filled her plate I had my eye on the nearby soccer game; bad idea. Before I knew it, her plate was bulging with food; “that’s at least R$8,00” I told her. And sure enough, the balance read R$8,45. I informed the man I was merely helping the woman and that I’d asked her to get less food; the man took pity on us both and lowered the bill to R$4,00. The woman quickly sat down and ate. The next awkward moment was paying for the R$4,00 meal with a R$50,00 bill. It was all I had for the weekend trip, but to the man I looked like a con-man since I had just talked the meal down from 8 to R$4. ha… oh well.

Dave and I ate a quick bite at a cheaper snack place. Interestingly enough, when I entered the bus terminal there was a crippled man with no legs sitting outside the door. His sunburned skin and dreadlocked hair were a few of the obvious signals that he was homeless. As I passed him, I couldn’t help but think how difficult his life must be. As I finished my snack I bought an extra pastel to-go and carried it out to him. He was very thankful but was still eager to ask for the half liter of water I was carrying.

So we took the 2:30 pm bus from Flrorianópolis, non-stop to Tubarão. Dave paid for our four tickets (which he’ll get reimbursed) and we sat in the very front of the big charter bus. Our four seats were the front of the bus, as the driver’s cab was underneath. It made for quite the view as we drove along the coast. On the way, I worked on my own resumé that I was preparing to sent to David’s mom and as part of an application for a summer internship in Washington D.C. Dave’s mom works in the BYU library and seems to be looking for someone to fill an recent opening.

So we got to Tubarão about 5:00 pm and Richard, an 18-year-old member, picked us up from the bus station and after a quick stop at the chapel, he took us to our hotel – the San Silvestre Hotel. I got cleaned up, Dave checked his email downstairs, and all four of us went across the street to a hotel; not knowing that it was REALLY expensive. Since we were in a hurry, we just bought a few appetizers and split them.

We were trying to be at church by 6:45 pm, since we were informed the course started at 7. The taxi got us there by 7, but to our surprise only two girls had arrived. We were told at least 30 people were expected; by 8:20 there were 12.

But they were a good group and we got a lot done in the 2 + hours of course. Elder and Sister Cossio used the course as a training session and took notes as we went along.

By 11:15 pm we had gotten a taxi and were headed back to our hotel. I was asleep by midnight – exhausted.

2006-03-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

Thursday, March 2, 2006

We’ve made some good friends from the CASEI trip. This evening we got to hang out w/ some of them: Daisy, Leandro, Flávia and Luiza. We met at the Floripa bus terminal at 8 pm where Daisy picked us up and we drove out near the Historical Center of São José. There, we picked one of many restaurants along the shore and bought some shrimp appetizers, fried cheese cubes, and French fries, along w/ our variety of juices.

It was fun company; we played a variety of games… if only I could remember what they were called. And then walked along the beach to a little peninsula of rocks were we all sat and enjoyed the lights of the Island and the cool ocean breeze. We got home about 12:30 am.

Like my Avaí jersey? It's what I got from the team. :)

Earlier in the day I slept until about 1 pm, since I had stayed up until about 4 am chatting online. The rest of the day was spent at the SRE helping the Cassios and doing other odds and ends. I really need to find more time to do my homework! :)

2006-03-05T19:40:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

I can’t say I’ve had many experiences when I’ve arrived at home late, and reeking of alcohol; but tonight was one of those nights. I guess I can say it was a true “Brazilian soccer experience.”

Today I got to take pictures of the Avaí F.C. stadium, new uniforms, and match against Joinville. Unsurprisingly, it all started off pretty hectic. It was 3:30 pm and I was at the SRE office w/ David and Elder and Sister Cossios; I was expecting a phone call from the Avaí team so I called the hotel to see if I had any messages. They said that I didn’t, but that two men were in the lobby waiting for me! I guess they had called earlier and I wasn’t there, but had come to escort me to the game. It was Thiago from Marketing, and Aldeciu from Print Relations (?).

Needless to say I sprinted to the hotel, got my stuff together as quickly as I could, and we were off.

For a few hours I merely wandered around the stadium, inside and out, taking pictures for their official website.

After that, Thiago took me onto the field so I could take pictures of their new uniforms that they’re going to release in a few weeks. The pictures I took will be used for their marketing campaign.

Thiago was actually really worried about taking pictures of the uniforms because he didn’t want the press to see. But, as I did the shoot, a man came up and began chatting all natural like w/ Thiago, and before he knew it, the man was on live radio and talking about the new jersey I was photographing. Ha… ooops.

When it came to game time I was given a fluorescent-orange, press penny and meandered around the field snapping pictures. I made friends with an experienced photographer, Malfra, who has shot three world cups and now has his own agency that supplies photos to papers and such. He was way nice and very willing to answer my questions and give me tips.

Unfortunately, the stadium wasn’t lit as well as I would have liked, and most of the pictures game out pretty grainy. The game was a 0-0 tie, with about 8,000 in attendance. (13,000 is the stadium’s max capacity I believe.)

With about 20 minutes left in the game, I asked one of the security guards to open the gate behind the goal so I could go up in the press box and take pictures from above. As I waited by the gate, a half-full (instead of half-empty) cup of beer was pelted at my back. I’ll be honest, it ticked me off, but I didn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing it did. Instead I didn’t even flinch, and continued watching the game. When the gate was finally opened I walked off the field to the sound of these same fans cussing me out. Ha.. why? I don’t know, but it made for a better story :).

Here are all of the pictures that I took and submitted to the team:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8EaNnLNs5Zsd8&notag=1

To get home after the game, I had to wait for a few hours until the entire stadium was cleared out and they were done locking up. I sat in their main offices, chatting online and checking email until about 12:30 am.

The cool part was receiving a free, official, long-sleeved Avaí jersey! I was pleasantly surprised. The guy, who gave me a ride home, also bought me a hot dog.

While I was busy taking pictures at the game, David was busy showing off his dancing skills at the local, Kobrasol church dance. From what I understand, he taught quite a few people how to swing dance and seems to have quite the following now!

So that was my day. Early in the day, after sleeping until about 10 am, I got showered and made my way, with Dave, to the SRE office to help train the new missionary couple, Elder and Sister Cossio.

2006-03-05T19:38:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

When I was little I used to get motion sickness in airplanes and in the car. My mother used to always tell me to concentrate on the road and that would make me feel better. As we road home from Mafra, the young boy behind me got sick. Yeah, it was pretty gross; I could hear pretty much everything. But I quickly remembered my mother’s council and went to talk w/ the bus driver. He, “Alemão”, is a very nice guy and said there was no problem letting the kid sit in the front of the bus. So as I went and talked to the boy to sit in the front cab of the bus, Marcelo Dalla Rosa was a nice friend and carried his puke to the bathroom (sorry, did you not want to know that?).

Since nobody went to bed until after 4 am, we got a late start on the day. After a late breakfast we had our closing ceremonies; we got to vote on a few awards from the Conference. They were… biggest flirt, life of the party, best new couple and funniest. David won the ‘life of the party’ award. His crazy break dancing and other skills made him the hottest partner to dance with. To end, we had a more spiritual message and then I was asked to share my testimony with four other people; it was a nice experience.

Here’s a picture of the CASEI 2006 group (minus Marcelo Carioca who flew back to Rio early in the morning):

2006-03-05T19:31:00.000-07:00

Monday, February 27, 2006

I now have one of “those” stories to tell. So after lunch some of us were out on the lawn taking a nap under the shade of a big tree, when I suddenly felt this little “plunk” on my chest. At first I thought somebody tapped me, and I lay there, not wanting to open my eyes. But to my surprise, when I did open my eyes I was greeted by a half-dollar sized bird turd, foaming on my white t-shirt. I rolled over to the person next to me and asked, “um, do you mind telling me what this is?” He laughed, then everyone laughed, and then some pictures were taken. When I get those pictures I’ll post them below…

By 9:45 am the charter bus was loaded and we were off to a nearby water park for the whole day. Two, large outdoor pools, indoor pool and five/six water slides were spread between the lush, green Brazilian trees and rolling hills. Behind the pool area was a fishing pond, a sand volleyball court, futsol (soccer) court and another spacious field.

Marcelo, Leandro, Élida and I started off playing volleyball. We soon had quite the crowd watching our games, as our team kept winning “King of the Court” style. It wasn’t until after a few hours of playing, when the sun was hot and we were tired :) that we lost to the older adults (they were good). I was ready for a break.

The pool was refreshing and fun. After lunch, our nap, the bird poop and more swimming, Luiza, Flávia, Kuka and I started a game of truco; of course we (Flávia and I) won… ha. I think we played three games undefeated, and then Leandro came we I was on his team as we helped him remember how to play.

One of the guys had an American football; that brought some excitement from Kuka, as if you remember from the Joinville trip, Kuka plays American football there. He is a huge guy but can still through a hard, tight spiral.

Other games were played in the afternoon, and then we had dinner.

While the girls took forever taking showers, Rafael, Carol, Marcelo, another guy I don’t know his name (but he brought the American football), and I convinced the park to turn on the biggest water slide; even though it was dark and getting chilly, we enjoyed ourselves doing some crazy dives down the slide.

Once everyone was clean and ready, we had a fireside. Probably the most interesting part of the fireside was when Flávia and Élida made a bet with me. There was a man sleeping on a chair by the front door, and they, for some reason, thought the man was a woman… ha, he “has curves”, they said. Ha… well, after a pretty funny conversation, the man woke up, and they realized their error.

After the fireside (FHE) we danced until 3 am. It was a good time.

Here are some pics from the dance:
Natália teaching me how to dance!

Me and Élida!

Flávia and me!

I didn't say I danced the WHOLE time... 3 am is late.

2006-03-05T19:19:00.000-07:00

Sunday, February 26, 2006

TRUCO! Who knows how to play? To close out a nice Sunday, Marcelo (Carioca) and I were on a team against Flávia and Élida; with great patience they taught me how to play Truco and amazingly Marcelo and I ended up winning! But I’m getting ahead of myself… let me start from Sunday morning.

Everyone arrived to joint Sunday school dragging; most were running on just a few hours sleep. After Sunday school all the women and a few men loaded in the charter bus, the rest of the men (me included) walked the 5 blocks to the Mafra chapel where we participated in the Mafra Branch sacrament meeting. It was quite a sight to see the attendance of 120+ members when it would have normally been 30+.

After a quick change of clothes we packed into the bus again and rode a good twenty minutes to the Rio Negro park in Paraná (a neighboring state). From the leakage on the ground, you can see the bus had some troubles getting there.

But we were served a great lunch in a large meeting hall; everyone enjoyed each other’s company. Afterwards we had time to meander around the nearby forest (forests like this are rare in Brazil) and rest.

Here’s some pictures of my friend Flávia and I on some swings in the woods. We were unaware that probably as we took this picture everyone else was starting the guided trail walk through the park:

What was supposed to be a “spiritual walk” through the park ended up being a grudging hour for many of the girls who were unprepared – their platform sandals and shoes were a nuisance.

But we caught up to the last group; but during the walk Flávia and I got a little carried away taking pictures and got left behind again. We found them in the historic Catholic Church, taking a tour. I actually learned some pretty neat things on this tour – inside the church and also through a museum of ancient artifacts.
Sweet! An old fireplace!

The day finished with dinner and a fireside from an Area Authority. Everyone who was there knows what I’m talking about when I say this man had a BOOMING singing voice. Ha… They also know what I’m talking about when I say he talked about the “usual subjects.”

Many of us finished the night chatting in the lobby until midnight struck – then the games started. Truco was a fun game to learn. I actually became quite addicted. Ha…

2006-03-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday, February 25, 2006

The picture says it all – I danced… sorta; but Dave's mad dancing skills were the big success. I have to admit, Brazilian dances are fun. The music played is often the same as American-dance music, but the big difference is the Brazilian music – Forró, Pagode, Samba, and others I don’t remember, require a certain type of dancing, which at first is a little complicated, but when you’re a foreigner, it makes for a good chance to get to know new people. It’s humbling, I can tell you that. Just look at my face in the above picture… ha… Me, a guy who has probably participated in less than five church dances in my life, had to crawl out of my shell and try something new. The fun guys and cute girls made that change a little easier. J

By 9 am Dave and I were packed and on our way to the Kobrasol chapel to catch the 9:20 bus to Mafra. But first I quickly stopped by Pedro Pimentel’s house (my home teaching companion) to explain that due to our last minute decision to participate in the weekend’s conference, I wouldn’t be able to do our scheduled visits with him.

A little after ten o’clock, the CASEI 2006 bus left Kobrasol and was on its way. I’m the first to admit, I felt a little awkward in the bus, especially when Rafael, one of the directors of the conference, introduced us to the entire bus and said that we had served missions there and “didn’t know why we were back.” Ha… I could just imagine what people thought – what fubekas (slackers).

They didn’t tell us we were to bring a little extra money for food stops, so as most everyone ate a quick lunch, I stood outside the rest-stop restaurant conversing with some soon-to-be friends.

By the end of the bus ride, a few friendships had begun: Leandro - who served his mission with Viviane (who I know from her home town of Colatina, Espírito Santo) and also lived in California for his senior year of high school; Carol and Simone - who speak fluent English; Daisy and Rafael – the main directors of the conference; Flávia – university student studying English and interested in photography; Cristiano – a cool guy who gave me a cool coconut ring. It was clear to me that if we made this many friends in a quick bus ride to Mafra, this weekend was going to be a lot of fun!

The Sussin Hotel in Mafra was a perfect place for our group of 90 and it felt as if we were the only people in the entire hotel.

Dave and I roomed with Lucas, but probably spent more time in Leandro’s room where he, Rafael, and Marcelo stayed. Marcelo’s a fun story – he’s from São Gonçalo, my first area from my mission, his brother was my Ward Mission Leader, and we often ate at his mother’s house. We had a fun time playing the name game and tossing back and forth memories and questions about people there. One of his best friends is engaged to Angelica, an awesome girl I taught and helped baptize.

The meals at the hotel were very good!

After dinner everyone got ready for the first dance of the weekend – and that’s where the picture above came from. Here's a picture of my friend Aline and I:

Thirty minutes into the dance I looked up to find an ex-mission companion staring at me with this look of confusion. I smiled and we exchanged a big hug. Marcelo Dalla Rosa was my fifth companion, and we served for a short time in Campos dos Goitacayzes, Rio de Janeiro.

After the dance him and I and a few others (Ingridy, Carol, Leonardo, and a different Ingridy) conversed in the lobby. To end on a spiritual note we each shared our favorite scriptures, and then went to bed.

2006-03-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a week since I last had time to write, but the wait is worth it. Last weekend David and I went to the CASEI (the Single Adults Carnaval Retreat) and got home on Tuesday. Wednesday I had quite the experience at the Avaí v. Joinville soccer match. Here are some photos I took:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8EaNnLNs5Zsd8&notag=1

Oh, and just to warn you - they asked me to take general pictures of the stadium and of their new uniforms they will release later in the year, so there are 57 pictures in all.

And here are two other sites you can see my pictures: http://www.avai.com.br/ and http://www.avai.com.br/?secao=MostraGaleria&galeria=151

Today David and I are traveling to Tubarão with the newly called, senior missionary couple (the Cassios) to teach CASP and train the new couple.

More details are on their way. Feel free to ask questions.

2006-02-24T21:43:00.000-07:00

Friday, February 24, 2006

So I heard this crazy story and it really made me think; what would I do in a situation like this? I want to share the same story w/ you. Just be prepared, the story is kind of hard to follow at first, at least it took me to while to really understand how it went. But the story is true, and is worth the read:

A 30 year-old Brazilian was arriving home with his girlfriend at 8 pm that same evening when out of nowhere the South African man emerged and managed to rattle out in Portuguese, “I need to speak with an English teacher, please.” The Brazilian was startled, but soon realized that the South African could not speak any more Portuguese than that. The Brazilian had compassion on the man and decided to help him. For fear he was a bandit, the Brazilian left all his valuables at his house and then he led the South African fifteen minutes to the nearest English school that was still open. Apparently, they were both a little untrusting, as when they walked through dark streets, the South African increased his stride and began speaking with everyone that passed, begging for help, in English.

Upon arriving at the English school, the two men encountered an English-teaching Brazilian who helped translate and together they figured out that:
o The South African, who had been studying in Europe, had been traveling from Europe to Brazil to visit a friend and participate in a “Congress” at his Presbyterian church. He had been traveling for the past 12 days, but had been put on wrong buses, had the worst luck and had lost all of his money. He did, however, have a bus ticket to part of his destination, but that was about all the English teacher could understand. The two Brazilians said they felt like someone at the local “Mormon Church” would be able to help the lost South African man.

The American teacher, nervous and suspicious, finished listening to the Brazilian’s story, and then tried to get more information from the clearly shaken up South African man. With success, the American learned he did have money, but hadn’t succeeded in getting it exchanged. Oddly enough, the bus ticket he possessed was bought in a city three hours away when he ran into two American, Mormon missionaries. The ticket was for R$100,00 and he explained that he had the donor’s bank number and was planning on repaying the money. On another piece of paper he had written down he needed R$28,00 to purchase the last leg of his trip, and another R$20,00 to pay for the locker he was using to store his luggage at the airport.

This confused the American; for ten minutes they conversed, trying to understand what the South African man needed.

The two Brazilians and American finally realized he needed $48,00. The American at first said the “Mormons” had already helped quite a bit with his tickets, and R$5,00 more was all he could offer.

The Brazilian man then offered to give him a ride to the airport to get his baggage, and then a ride to the bus station where he wanted to sleep for the night before getting his bus in the morning. The American translated; the South African rejected the idea – he did not want to sleep at the bus terminal with his luggage, for fear of it being stolen. The Brazilian then offered to give him a ride to the bus terminal, 25 minutes away; the South African agreed.

At this time, the English-speaking teacher felt her service was complete and that she should go home. To help with translation, the Brazilian asked the American to accompany him and the South African; the American felt nervous, but upon judging the character of the individuals, decided to help.

The four of them walked to the edge of downtown, accompanying the English teacher to her home, and than returned to the Brazilian man’s house, got his car and girlfriend, and drove to the bus terminal 25 minutes away.

During this whole experience, the South African spoke much about God and how thankful he was for the good heart and help of the two Brazilians and the American. His gratitude was clear as he made the American translate, over and over, “Jesus will bless you. Thank you. Jesus will bless you.”

Upon leaving the man at the bus terminal, the American reached in his pocket and donated another R$20,00 to the man’s cause; the Brazilian and his girlfriend pulled together another R$28,00. And after his many thanks, the man was gone, with nothing more than the hope and charity of the Brazilians and American involved in his journey.

___

Quite the story, wouldn’t you say? What would you do in such a situation? I learned the details from the story first-hand, as I was the “American teacher” in the story. This experience just happened tonight!

I was at the ERS office at church this evening, helping Aldo and his son learn how to use email (Dave and I had just made Aldo a gmail account this afternoon). Out of nowhere appeared Keller - the English-teaching Brazilian woman, Adriano - the Brazilian man, and Andrews - the lost South African man. At first I was VERY suspicious, as during my mission we ran across many people with wild stories, just trying to get our money. But the more I spoke with this man, the more I believed his story. There were many points in his story that I didn’t quite understand, but we didn’t exactly have an easy time communicating; he was very stressed out and spoke very slow with an accent.

When Adriano asked me to drive w/ him to the airport and the bus terminal I got kind of freaked out; I thought of the weird kidnappings I’d heard and read about in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and wondered if these three people could really be scamming me? As a missionary I developed what I consider a good sense of character and I trusted Adriano and Keller – I still questioned the intent of the South African.

After kicking everyone out of the soccer court out back and locking up the church, I ran to the hotel down the block to let David know that I was going to be driving to the Island (Florianópolis) with Adriano and Andrews – ha, when I told David the story I couldn’t help but realize how crazy it sounded. When I hung up I said, “Well, if I don’t come back in two hours, at least you’ll have an interesting story for the police.” Dave had the good idea of getting Adriano’s cell phone number, just to keep in touch, which I did.

So, like I explained in the story, the four of us walked through downtown São José to accompany Keller home – Carnaval festivities were already starting, lots of people were in the streets, and its well known that crime is more frequent during the days of Carnaval.

As we walked, with out inquiring, Andrews shared with me what he knew about the Mormon church – Joseph Smith’s vision, New York, missionaries – and then he made me translate to Keller and Adriano an invitation for them to come to our church. They smiled, and accepted, each giving me their phone numbers for later contacts.

Upon arriving to Keller’s home, his parents are girlfriend greeted him with relief; they, too, had been waiting anxiously, not knowing what had become of Andriano and his charitable deed. Fernanda, Adriano’s girlfriend, accompanied us to the bus terminal, as they had other errands they had to run before returning home. I accompanied them on one quick errand, stopping by one of their friend’s house, and then they drove me back to the hotel in São José.

The entire way we talked about how weird this situation was, and debated about whether Andrews was telling the truth or not. There are two things that I question:

- 1. Why his European money didn’t exchange?
- 2. I think I should have gone to the ticket counter at the bus station and asked about his ‘ticket’ and the how he could best get to the city he was looking for. But the terminal was bustling with people because of Carnaval and we almost didn’t find a place to drop him off.

Before sharing your comments that you think he was a scammer, send me your questions and maybe I left out some important information. J

Anyway… before 8:00 pm, I was still having quite an eventful day. At 2:00 pm we scheduled to meet Aldo at the office to record the mock-interviews for him (which we didn’t figure out) and we made some finishing touches to his fliers and made him a gmail account, and taught him how to check his email. He’s in his early thirties, and I think this was his first time using a computer, I promise. He really enjoyed it, and I really hope this help gets his business going. He shared with us how his family is really struggling; lack of food, work, and money. I took the time to explain the importance of Fast Offerings and why we have them, and I encouraged him to talk to the Quorum President or the Bishop. I hope he does, his family needs it.

At 7:30 pm Dave and I met the newly called Senior Missionaries who we will be training to take our place when we leave! That was exciting for us because it means that our organization and hard work won’t go to waste. They are a fun couple from Argentina and speak Portañol (Portuguese and Spanish mixed). I imagine I’ll get some great Spanish lessons.

Today I also made follow-up calls to the people in Joinville; Pablo got a job! He is an English teacher! Makes sense, since he served in the Provo Mission.

All right, well Dave and I have to be packed at the chapel by 9:20 am. The bus for the Single Adults conference is going to pick us up, and than off we go for four days! I think this blog is long enough to keep you busy for the next for days.

Happy Carnaval!!

2006-02-23T22:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday, February 23, 2006

I’d like to specially thank the manager of Pattin Pizza for their considerable charity; after this evening’s CASP course I bought a pizza from the Young Men’s campout-fundraiser. The only problem is – we don’t have an oven. It was about 11 pm as we strolled into our hotel lobby and I asked one of our friends (worker) at the front desk if it were possible for them to cook our pizza. His reply was kind of disturbing, “well you have a microwave don’t you?” A microwave to cook a large pizza? I don’t think so.

My next idea was to ask the nice people at the pizzeria across the street, Pattin Pizza. As Dave waited with the pizza on the other side of the street, I walked in and waited patiently to speak with the manager, who at the time was working the cash register. I think he recognized me from eating there the night before, and as we talked I explained how we were living in the hotel across the street without an oven, and that we had bought a pizza to support a youth group from church; I then asked if they could bake our pizza and he agreed without hesitation. I then stepped outside and called Dave. Oddly, our pizza was bigger than their oven, so they cut it in half and after 5 minutes, it was baked, sliced, and ready to eat. To show my appreciation, I bought an overpriced can of Guaraná.

Of the five CASP courses I’ve taught in Brazil, this week’s was the best for the following reasons: they were all eager to learn, we started and ended the week with the same number of participants – 10 (though a man named Rodrigo had to quit, but another man named Rodrigo joined), they did their homework assignments, they make contacts after the first day, most showed up to class tonight dressed as if they were really going to an interview (we didn’t even ask them to, they just knew today was the mock-interview day), and they preformed the best during the mock-interview. Congrats Kobrasol participants!!

Here are some pictures of the group:
From left to right: Lurdes, Paulo, Vanessa, Iasmin, Helamã, Sônia, Luana, David, Luciana , Rodrigo, Geoffrey, Aldo

Oh, and contrary to popular belief, most of the time Dave and I are not dressed in a shirt and tie, that is only while teaching the course (which is about 12 hours a week). I will try to post some pictures of us in normal clothes at the beach or just site seeing.

CASEI 2006 , here we come! (CASEI - Conferência dos Adultos Solteiros das Estacas Integradas.) Dave and I decided to participate in the Five-Stake Conference for the Single Adults this weekend; Carnaval starts this weekend and goes until Wednesday (Ash Wednesday – the start of Lent), and if we weren’t going on the getaway conference, I’m not sure what we’d do. But it should be pretty fun… here is a site to learn more about it – it has links to pictures and stuff like that - http://www.casei2006.cjb.net/

2006-02-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

It was about 10:30 last night and David was wrapping up the CASP course; I quickly stepped out of the room to converse with Aldo’s 12-year-old son. Aldo and his wife are two of our 11 participants, and their son has been participating in the Young Men’s pizza making/selling fund-raiser this week at the church as well. (Aldo and his son are also the two people with whom I played soccer at the church a few weeks ago; we’ve become good friends.)

As we laughed and joked, I shared how I hadn’t eaten anything all day (the buffet pizza we ate the night before had filled me up); the boy replied, “me neither.” I then said I’d only drunken some juice; the boy replied, “I haven’t drunken anything.” Naively, I smiled and asked, well why not? His head bowed in shame, and I immediately new – it was very likely he didn’t have any food at home; I quickly changed the subject, not giving him time to answer, or giving the silence more time to get awkward.

It’s easy to forget the daily troubles many Brazilians face; on the mission I was reminded of these struggles daily, but during our internship we have been living a more sheltered lifestyle.

Other than the hard downpour at 6:50, causing more than half of out class to arrive more than 20 minutes late, the course went great!

This group seems more timid than most; we practiced entering and leaving an interview and most of them struggled. Practice is a good idea, I suppose.

I was especially proud of Senhora Lourdes who shared with the class who after the first day of CASP she went to the post office (where she wants to work) and asked to speak with the manager. Most everyone succeeded in making at least two contacts after the first day of class!

After class, Aldo asked me to type up some fliers for his painting and remodeling business; I was more than happy to accept.

Earilier in the day I was glued to the TV watching the Barcelona v. Chelsea soccer match on ESPN. Wow, UEFA soccer is intensely fast! What an exciting game, and win for Barcelona. One of the main reasons the game was showing on Brazilian TV is that the main star for Barcelona, Ronaldinho Gaúcho, is Brazilian.

Keeping up w/ my reading for my BYU courses always keeps me plenty busy as well.

2006-02-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The High Priest’s room was filled this evening as David and I taught another course of CASP at the Kobrasol chapel. Twelve desks arced the classroom, and only fifteen minutes after the advertised start time of 7 pm, ten of those desks were filled; seven adults, three teenagers, and all eager to participate.

Being our third course in as many weeks, tonight went very smooth; in only three hours (when we had planned for four) we got through half of the course with each of the participants beaming with enthusiasm and bubbling from our practice activities. This is really the best group we’ve taught until now. Maybe part of the reason is each of them is looking for work and has thus come with open and willing minds.

We have tomorrow and Thursday scheduled to finish the course.

After lunch at the usual home-style restaurant down the street, David and I took the bus (the wrong bus, that cost R$3,00 instead of R$1,75) to the Historical Center of São José; once there, we stumbled upon a theatre and took a quick look around.

As I took pictures inside, another man walked in and gave me a weird look; he reappeared with his own camera, tripod, and assistant. Upon further conversations, Marcelo (the guy) told me he was a City’s photographer taking picture for some new brochures they were making. I took advantage of his knowledge and asked where some other nearby historical sites was and he directed us a few places.

First we admired the church facing town-square; nice rooster, eh?

We then visited a nearby spring where slaves would scrub clothes. Slavery was legal in Brazil until May 13, 1888.

Just up the stream, approximately 100 yards away are some modern-day signs of what was done by the slaves some 120 years ago.

The local museum was our next stop, but photographs were prohibited in there; but during our visit, Marcelo (the photographer) showed up to take pictures and when I told him they wouldn’t let me take any, he asked to exchange email addresses so he could send me copies of what he shot. I was surprised; that was awfully nice of him to offer.

A 1945, German film projector used in a leper-only hospital was one of the items that caught my attention. I hope they’ve disinfected it… ? I noted many other interesting artifacts, most of which were imported from the United States or Europe.

Speaking of exchange, the dollar is at a five year low; 1 Real is only worth $2.12. Just to get a sense, I remember during my mission only two years ago that 1 Real was almost worth $4.

2006-02-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

Monday, February 20, 2006

THE GAME OF LIFE – tonight Dave made a pretty sweet homemade version of a ‘Game of Life.’ It was a game that he and a companion on his mission created, and today he spent most of the day drawing and coloring to make the same game for tonight’s family home evening. The family of Rubens and Valdmiria invited us over again to have FHE with them, this time we were only in charge of the message – but Dave went above and beyond and made quite the game/message. They really enjoyed it.

It was fun getting to know their kids on a more personal basis, too. I mostly hung out w/ Thiago, a 16 year old, but also got to know the others (Rubens the younger, and Rodrigo – who just got home from his mission a few weeks ago). I also helped out quite a bit w/ Valdmiria cleaning the dishes and making pastels.

She told me how her family was pretty instrumental in establishing the church in some of the more rural cities of Santa Catarina. For many years, her and her husband were the district leaders and told me about all their sacrifices with their 4 children. What I found interesting is that she clearly missed those days, even though they were more challenging. She said the lessons they learned as a family and the way they grew together and in the gospel made all their sacrifices worth it.

The rest of the day was spent studying or walking around town in and out of the shops while it was raining.

U2 is performing in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro tonight! (for those who care)

2006-02-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Last Sunday I got to do a web conference with Scott and see his new baby girl. Here’s a look:

With aim, webcams, skype, msn, I feel like I’m still just a few hours away from my family. Sundays are my day I sit for hours talking (mostly skype) with family and friends. David can attest to that… I hope I don’t disturb his sleep. Oops.

Last night I got an interesting, random call on skype from a gay, brazilian man living in boston. I guess he saw on my skype ID it said I was living in brazil and just called me. When I answered his call I answered in Portuguese, thinking it would throw him off, but I didn’t realize he spoke Portuguese… so that didn’t work. When the conversation turned to religion (which of course it did since that’s the main reason why I’ve been in Brazil through out the past 3 years) it got pretty interesting, as I’m sure you can imagine. But luckily that wasn’t that highlight of my day.

This evening Pedro Pimentel and I did some home teaching visits. Pedro and his family are new to the church and thus he hasn’t had much experience with home teaching; he did a great job, though he was quite nervous. We visited the family of Claudio, his wife and 19-year-old daughter. They had a pretty neat story of ‘faith and trials’ relating to their temple marriage that went along perfectly with this month’s Liahona message.

Before our visits David and I were at the chapel from 6 pm to 7:45 pm watching the replay of last weeks worldwide training video about families. It was a packed house with leaders from all over the Stake; I think most people thought the training was live, and they even tried to play it off as live, but the “play” and “stop” projected on the wall kind of gave it away; that, and seeing on lds.org that the conference was given last week.

Church meetings were normal, nothing too exciting or different.

Lunch consisted of roman noodle and a ham & cheese sandwich I made during breakfast, put in our fridge, and microwaved after church. Oh, and a banana.

To practice my Spanish, Sunday has been my day to watch the General Conference DVD in Spanish. Está bien.

2006-02-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Power Statements!

What’s a power statement, you ask? It’s when you’re trying to sell yourself (like during an interview) and to answer a question you share (1.) … shoot, let me go look at my English book, I can’t think of the word in English for ‘habilidade’. Okay, got it… the word is SKILL. So you first share a skill that you have, and then (2.) briefly describe an EXAMPLE when you used that skill, and (3.) finish the statement off with a RESULT of your skill and how it can benefit your future employer.

We finished the CASP workshop in Palhoça today. At 6:15 pm there were only Bishop Robson and a new participant, Alexandre, present. So, we started anyway, since we were already starting late; another hour into the course Richard game, sweating in. An appointment he had on the island (Florianópolis) ran late, so we caught him up on everything he had missed. About that same time, the bishop’s 15-year-old son, Péricles joined us as well, along with a few of his friends.

Here is a picture:

Left to right: Alexandre, Me, Robson, Richard, David, Péricles, two other youth that participated for part of the day, and the bishop's daughter.

We managed to finish the course by 11 pm; making it so we didn’t have to make the trek back there this afternoon. Being that this group was 3/4 adults and 3/4 already had jobs, Dave and I had to teach a little differently to keep their attention. Robson is a meat vendor and has goals of managing and even teaching in the future; Richard is a musician who also models for commercials and advertisements; Alexandre is a physical education teacher and trainer at a gym. But they did a great job!

The rest of the day was spent sleeping in, studying and traveling. Speaking of which, we really appreciated Bishop Robson for his sacrifice the past two nights, giving us a ride from Palhoça to Kobrasol. It’s not anymore than a 10 minute drive, but I believe it was still a sacrifice for him and his family; I heard them commenting on their lack of gas.

I think Dave was sad we couldn’t make it back in time for the dance at church; I on the other hand was quite all right J. But maybe next time…

2006-02-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

Friday, February 18, 2006

Bishop Robson, his fifteen year old son, and two other adults were our only participants in Palhoça this evening. Palhoça is a city 20 or so km from São José, and when we first began asking local leaders which area needed us to visit the most, they kept telling us to go to Palhoça; so it was one of the first cities we scheduled with when we first arrived.

To the bishop’s disappointment, and ours almost nobody came; but that didn’t mean the course was a bust. In fact, the small number of participants meant we could focus on each of them individually and we could get through the course a bit faster.

Gleici and Richard are the two other participants; Gleici is a student studying to be a physiotherapist, while Richard (her boyfriend) is a musician who just moved to the area a few weeks ago. It was a great group, and they participated well.

The rest of the day was spent trying to study or watching the winter Olympics. We also worked a bit at the SRE center and made a few phone calls about job vacancies in the area, and sent emails to the bishops of the Florianópolis and São José stakes with this information.

Oh, so I emailed one of the local professional soccer teams, Avaí, and offered to take photos for their website. I got a reply email asking me to call them, and yesterday during our conversation they invited me to take pictures of a game on the 1st of March, and they also want me to take general pictures of the stadium and things like that. No, they’re not going to pay me, but they will provide transportation (which I negotiated for) and so at least I won’t be paying anything, and it should be a great experience.

2006-02-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Ana Giórgia got a job!!

She was one of the first participants to arrive Friday night; sat, quietly in the back row, almost sad; she told us how she was a history teacher and had been teaching until the beginning of the year when she was laid off.

Adults are those who need our course more than anyone; they are also those who pay more attention and can give more to the class with their experience and knowledge. But also, adults are the hard because some of the activities we do seem childish. In Joinville, of the 20 or so participants, 8 or 9 were adults.

This afternoon I started making follow-up calls to the participants of the Joinville CASP; they were so happy to know we cared enough to call and see how things were going. Granted, some of the people hadn’t practiced or made any contacts looking for work, but many of them had, including Ana Giórgia.

She answered the phone sounding half asleep, which at first made me feel sorry for calling. But when she heard it was us, from the CASP course, she perked up. She began telling me how she had put her new knowledge into immediate use and this past Monday she made some phone calls and scheduled a few interviews. She said she was able to apply everything learned in the course, especially the parts about ‘filters’ and her power-statements. After her Tuesday interviews she was offered three different teaching positions! She started working right away, and has been teaching 8 classes of history at one of the schools! Ha… she was almost complaining of having too much work.

So this is her story in my words, but hopefully she will write me an email this weekend with all the details from her success story. I’m so happy for her and her family!

Hearing her success just makes everything worth it.

In the evening today, Dave and I went to the island (Florianópolis) and visited a job agency to find out about job positions in the area so we can be more educated and helpful to those who come to us looking for work.

We then went to the Institute, thinking there would be a class at 6:30 pm, but we were informed the Thursday classes wouldn’t start for a few more weeks. We took advantage of being there and played some foosball, Brazilian pool, and ping-pong. And we met some of the other nice people there.

That about sums it up.

2006-02-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

What’s long, blue, hallow, see-through at some angles, and takes over two hours to go 35 km? The Florianópolis bus system, of course.

By 2 pm David and I headed off to the beach, hoping to go to the Joaquina beach. From the bus stop in front of our hotel we went to the terminal in Floripa, from there we went to the terminal in Lagoa da Conceição, and after waiting and waiting for the Joaquina bus to show, we took the bus to Praia Mole instead (the beach we went to our first time).

A blanket of clouds covered the afternoon rays. The high tide made for smaller waves (it seemed) but still fun to play in.

Our biggest ‘oops’ came when we first arrived. We wanted to go to a different beach, so we walked down the coast to the beach along side Praia Mole. Ha… well, as we were approaching the beach we saw a big sign “nude beach”. Dave was quick to point it out, just in case I hadn’t seen it. Needless to say, we hadn’t brought our birthday-suits, and decided to stay in our bathing-suits.

Today I took it easy because I was still feeling sick from the night before. Right before I went to bed I took some medicine on an empty stomach. Forty-five minutes later I was on my knees, hugging the bathroom stall – throwing up. I felt fine afterwards, but it made for a queezy feeling the rest of the day at the beach and after.

2006-02-16T07:33:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Valentine’s Day in Brazil isn’t until June, and even then it’s called “Significant Other’s Day” (or literally translated, Boyfriend/girlfriend Day). I was talking with a friend from home and she helped me realize that Valentine’s Day is much more than that, in the U.S. It’s a day to share your love with everyone, not just your boyfriend/girlfriend. Or in other words, Valentine’s Day gets everyone to spend their money, while the other is only for those who are dating or married.

Though it wasn’t Valentine’s Day here, that doesn’t mean love wasn’t in the air. On my way home from the day’s activities I saw quite a funny scene: at the corner of two cross streets was a teenage couple pretty into their make-out session. Only two park benches away was a homeless man sleeping (bless his soul). Maybe you just had to be there.

The real excitement for today came about 3:00 pm when Humberto, our director from Porto Alegre came to visit us at the SRE. It was a nice visit, a short visit.

Humberto was a little short on time, so he invited us to take a taxi with him to the airport in Florianópolis where he treated us to a good lunch and some dessert.

By 6 pm we took a taxi back to São José, and on the way the taxi driver dropped me off at ‘Ella Hair Company’, a saloon where a member of the church, Eliane, invited us to get our haircut. It was my first time getting cut at a true hair saloon, and quite a nice experience.

As soon as I got home I got into a shirt and tie and went to visit my home teaching companion, Pedro Pimentel. We didn’t have any visits marked, so I just hung out with his family and got to know them. Awesome family; less than a year ago Pedro and Elizeth got married and them and a few of their children were baptized. At home, live three kids, a 13-year-old son, and two little girls, both adorable. Just for fun I showed them a few ‘magic’ tricks that all missionaries learn.

Jenna, Pedro told me that about 10 years ago their house used was where the missionaries lived. It is a house a few blocks in front of the São José chapel, in the fundos of the yard - there are a few houses in the yard. Do you remember where you lived?

2006-02-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Monday, February 13, 2006

Skate or Die, dude. (Brent, do you remember that Nintendo game?)

Juan Tomur Silveira, 17; Guilherme Felipe Portes, 15; and Rodrigo Pectro de Souza, 21 put on a personal skate show along the coast of São José as I had a good time and photographed.

Here are some of the cooler pics:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8EaNnLNs5Zsc4¬ag=1

Earlier in the day I went to run a few errands and brought along my camera. Stopped by the bank to get some money, got some lunch at McDonalds, and then decided to continue walking down one of the main avenues, President Kennedy. Towards the end of the avenue is a nice walking path along the beach, a playground, and a skate park. When I got there only two little kids were playing around on the skate park, but as I was leaving, Guilherme arrived and was eager to get his two friends so I could shoot them skating. A half out later, they arrived, and the pictures are the results.

Juan was eager to get the pictures, so he invited me back to his house so I could load the pictures directly on to his computer. Over the few hours photographing them we had become friends and I trusted them – I didn’t feel any danger going to Juan’s apartment; the other two came along, too. It took a while to figure out how to get my pics onto his computer (I couldn’t find a program to load the pics), but we finally got it working. Unfortunately, when the pictures loaded onto his computer, they erased from my card… ha, so now I had to put the pictures I wanted back on my jump-drive.

Before I ran my errands, I stopped by the SRE and made some important phone calls and organized a few things. We have been receiving calls from a few companies letting us know they have job openings, so we have to take that information and pass it on to the local leaders.

2006-02-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday, February 12, 2006

In mid-afternoon, from our 6th floor window, I noticed a strong rainbow shining across the São José sky. To get on party-deck on the roof one needs to be accompanied by a hotel employee; after a quick phone call, he was on his way up, and I took the stairs to the top floor.

A ladder caught my attention as I crossed the deck; actually, it was 3 ladders strung together. “Hey, can I climb that too?” I jokingly asked the hotel employee, who was about my age. “Sure.” I kind of bit my tongue, “um, have you ever done it?” He smiled, “No.”

So… I climbed. Here is the picture that resulted.

Earlier in the day David and I went to the Florianópolis Stake Conference in the Centro de Convenções on the island. Elder Arnold of the Seventy and Area President of Brazil – South presided over and spoke at the conference.

The rest of the day Dave and I just took it easy and caught up on some lost sleep.

Since we got in so late, we didn’t have time to buy any groceries – not much in our apartment, so Sunday’s meals consisted of Ramen noodle. Emmmm, yum.

2006-02-14T19:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday, February 11, 2006

“Our main goal is to get a team good enough to be apart of the NFL and play exhibition games with them.”

He’s about 6 foot 4 and well over 250 pounds. In the picture of the group he’s the dark man in the front row with the black jersey. Kuka is his nickname, while Robson is his real name. As we were getting lunch today I asked Kuka if he liked football, mainly just commenting on the football jersey he was wearing. Above was part of his response. I guess he plays for a local team and they are really into it and are trying to get a league going in the area.

To be honest, his response shocked me; I had never met anyone who actually liked American Football, needless to say plays it.

Lunch was a much-needed break between our 10 hours of teaching. Getting six hours of sleep wasn’t so bad; the hard part was teaching after only so little rest. I was up, showered, and ready to leave by 7:50 am. The rain had let up; we chose to walk to the chapel. It was a little further than I had thought J. When we saw it was 8:10 and we still weren’t there, Dave ran ahead (he had the keys to the church) to let people in, and I stopped by the bakery to get two little (personal sized you could say) French breads with butter, and two one-and-a-half-liter bottles of water.

Class was to begin by 8:30, but by Brazilian time that means … well, later. We started at 8:45 with most of the class already present. Everyone but one returned, and we even gained two new participants.

Our goal was to teach the course with us talking 20% of the time, and them talking and practicing 80%. I think we did pretty well. They got pretty into their activities and it was fun individually helping each participant, learning a little about their lives, gaining their trust and sharing our advice when we could.

Here's a picture of them during one of the activities.

By noon, Irmão Manoel and another sister (I presume it was his wife) had prepared a banquet of food for all of us – spaghetti and salad and soda; it was a nice treat and a well-deserved break for our class.

We tried to finish the class by 4, but we ended taking longer than expected with the filming of the mock-interviews. At the end of the course we do a mock-interview with each participant and ask two questions; filming helps us as teachers see how well we got across to them and how well they understood what was taught. Overall, I was impressed with the results and am really proud of this group. Yes, there are some frustrations in teaching, but I think they did a great job and if they continue practicing they’ll all do great in the real world. By 5:30 pm we were done w/ the course and everyone filed out.

For the next half hour Dave and I moved all the tables and equipment back to their respected places, and then took a few pictures in front of the chapel.

Here’s a translation of what the plaque says:

THE FIRST CHAPEL OF THE CHURCH IN SOUTH AMERICA
On the 25th of October 1931, President Karl Bruno Reinhold Stoof, of the South America Mission, coming from Buenos Aires, dedicated this chapel.
98 people were present.
At the time, the Joinville Branch had 46 baptized members since the first missionaries came in 1927.

The bishop from the ward was nice enough to give us a ride to the bus terminal and there we waited for a few hours for the 8:40 pm bus to Florianópolis. Spy Kids wasn’t exactly the most exciting entertainment, so most of my time was spent sleeping and listening to my ipod.

By 11 we were in Florípa and waiting, some more, for another bus to the neighborhood of Korbrasol, in São José. We were in bed by 1:30 am, after dropping everything off at the church, getting ready for bed, and finally sleeping.

2006-02-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

Friday, February 10, 2006

There’s something about the trials in life that make me smile. I don’t think it’s because I like: fracturing my back, breaking my foot or falling into septic tanks (among other things), but I figure I must either be a little crazy, or have a decent understanding how trials can make me a better person; thus I smile. Or it’s merely because smiles and laughter are my body’s way of coping instead of crying. Either way…

Walking the few kilometers from the chapel of Kobrasol to the Lazer Copy Xerox store -in the rain, with a suitcase full of teaching equipment and only one umbrella between Dave and I - brought back some good memories of the mission, and a smile.

In preparation for the 50 participants in Joinville, Dave and I made 50 copies of our CASP student manual; we only had 20 to start out with, and wanted to make sure everyone got a copy. Irmão Plínio is the second counselor of the São José Stake, and the owner of Lazer Copy, so he was more than willing to help. And because of the heavy rain, he gave us a lift to the bus terminal a few blocks away, and helped us arrange our tickets to Joinville.

On a side note – that’s probably only interesting to my father – while waiting for the noon-bus, a Caterpillar Service vehicle (VW Golf) pulled up with parts to ship on our bus to Joinville. I really wanted to strike up a conversation, but as I imagined how it would sound – “So, you work at Caterpillar? Neat, I did, too, and so does my father. Yup, way up there in the U.S. at the headquarters. Welp, see ya.” – I decided against it.

The highway to Joinville I believe is Highway 1, and accompanies the Atlantic for most of the three and a half out trek. Gorgeous view, by the way. Wouldn’t mind owning a beach house anywhere along there – peaceful, beautiful, very nice.

Here is a map, courtesy of Google Earth, showing where we are living (São José), Florianópolis, Porto Alegre, Joinville, and then other major cities in Brazil – São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

On the way we received a phone call from our director in Porto Alegre. He politely informed me that I was an idiot and hadn’t attached some information in the email I had sent him a few days before, like I thought I had. I started to panic; I didn’t bring my computer to Joinville, now how am I going to send him the information he needed? Then I remembered; I’m not sure why, but on Thursday, after sending the empty email, I copied the file onto my jump-drive. What a blessing! I told them I’d shoot them an email as soon as we got to the hotel.

“It’s been raining none stop for the past few days,” said our taxi driver from the bus station in Joinville to the Mercury Prinz hotel, just a few blocks away.

By 5 we had gotten settled in our room, I had paid the extra R$10,00 to use the internet and send the file to Humberto and we were off to the chapel to set up for our class at 7:30 pm. Again, since it was pouring, we took a taxi – and again, because they’re jerks, he drove in circles ripping us off. When we got out I tried to give him a tip, but he didn’t accept it, probably because he felt bad for ripping us off. His driving in circles would cause problems for us later in the night.

Uncharacteristically loud, thumping music welcomed us to the Joinville chapel – tonight was not only a night for the Career Workshop, but they were preparing for an all-Ward Dance; just our luck.

The Joinville Stake Employment Specialist, Manoel, welcomed us as we arrived. He showed us to the High Council’s room (the only with air conditioning) and told us that 40 people had confirmed their participation, but probably less would make it (that’s how it was in Porto Alegre also). We then began preparing the chairs and looking for tables – that was harder than it sounds. Because of the dance, at first we didn’t think we’d find any tables, but after rummaging around through each room and even in the attic (they have 3 class rooms in a type of attic above the stage, pretty cool actually) we came up with enough tables, big and small, to make a big U around the room. Our plan was to have participants sit on both the outside, and the inside of the U – those on the inside still facing towards the front of the room.

By 7:15 we had about five participants; by 7:30 we had roughly 15. When we started the class at 7:40, 22 or so people had arrived.

To teach the 12-hour course, we were scheduled to begin with 2 1/2 hours Friday night, and finish up Saturday morning and afternoon.

We had a great group of participants! Most everyone paid attention and the activities went well. We ended the night teaching the “Me in 30-Seconds” and challenging them to practice it over the night before the next morning’s class.

Most participants were members of the Joinville Stake, and those who were having their first impression of the church I think really enjoyed everyone’s company and that atmosphere we had – though the American accents of Dave and I took a while for them to get used to it seemed.

I know this is a well-known fact, but Mormon-world is a small place. Let me give you three quick examples why:
1. Pablo, one of the participants in the course, is a return missionary from the Provo, Utah mission. He was a companion of Craig Guincho who lived in the Portuguese house with me over the summer term at BYU.
a. Pablo taught David’s BYU Portuguese teacher the gospel and David was at her baptism.
2. Élida Ripole is a friend of Pablo and while talking with them I discovered she is a return missionary from the Rio de Janeiro North mission; she got home while I was in the MTC in São Paulo at the beginning of 2003, so we never crossed paths in Rio.
a. Élida’s mother thought that maybe my sister Jenna had served with her daughter. Jenna served her mission in Joinville 10 years ago, about the same time Élida’s sister served as a ‘part-time’ missionary with an American Sister, her mother thought it may have been ‘Sister McAllister’.
3. While learning Forró (more details to come) I spotted Elder Portela, my third companion from the mission. He is from Curitiba (2 1/2 hours away) but came down for work and to ‘get to know’ a girl (he was specific to say they weren’t dating, yet). Boy was he surprised to see me!

So that’s what I mean by, Mormon-world is a small place.

For those who don’t know, David, my friend and partner here, is quite the dancer. He’s been on a few teams at BYU (Folkdance and Ballroom) and wanted to give the Brazilian dance a try. And than there’s me: I think I was injected with a DANCE vaccine as a kid, because there is seriously a chemical reaction that takes place in my body where I usually end up, well, rejecting the atmosphere. In other words, I’m not much of a dancer. Trust me, I’ve given it a try a few times (boy have I tried), but I’m just chemically not made to dance. With that said, after noticing Dave was taking a long time to come back, I wondered to the cultural hall to see him dancing Forró with some girl. I meandered over to the food tables and was disappointed to notice everything was gone. Then, within 30 seconds I was being called by one of the sisters (mothers) in the room. “Geoff,” (she remembered my name) “come dance with Élida.” I stammered back a reply, “But irmã, I don’t know how.” Ha… that didn’t work, of course. “Oh she’ll teach you,” was her response. So I found my way to the dance floor and Élida was nice and patient enough to show me how to dance Forró. It was actually pretty fun, and easy.

While we were dancing was when I looked up and saw my companion from the mission, Elder Portela. You can actually see him in the background of this picture. The arrow is pointing to him.

Obviously the dancing was interrupted by our reunion and it was fun catching up. I’m pretty sure he forgot my name, which was fine because I couldn’t remember his for the life of me. Ha… but after a few minutes we figured it out.

It wasn’t much later that Dave and I left and headed back to our hotel… or so we thought.

Like I said, the taxi driver drove in unnecessary circles, and that messed me up when we left the church. I thought we were supposed to walk one direction, and after 10 minutes walking that way we stopped at a pizza restaurant to order to be delivered and as we looked at a map, explaining where we were staying, I noticed we had been walking the opposite direction!

By 12:30 am we made it to the hotel. From there I called the same pizza parlor and they delivered – probably the tastiest pizza I’ve had in Brazil.

By the way, the hotel was probably one of the nicest I’ve ever stayed in. Unfortunately, everything else cost money – breakfast, internet. (pictures can be found at http://www.accorhotels.com.br/guiahoteis/mercure/hotel_main.asp?cd_hotel=269 )

Watched Legally Blonde on TV while we ate pizza, then went to bed.

2006-02-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

it's been a fun last couple days! i have LOTS to catch up on, but ... you know that feeling that you have so much to do but you just don't want to start yet? that's how i'm feeling w/ the blog.

but to wet your whistle, here are some pics from what i did today:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8EaNnLNs5Zsc4¬ag=1

enjoy...

2006-02-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

Thursday, February 9, 2006

So last night when we called Bishop Marcelo from Joinville he told us to expect at least 50 participants this weekend! That caught me off guard, since we are prepared to teach a class of about 25, so this will be interesting. Dave and I plan to divide the class in 2 and each teach the entire course, switching back and forth between classrooms to give the participants a different teacher every now and then.

We realized we only had 20 of the new manuals, so first thing today we went to Lazer Copy, a copy place owned by the 2nd Counselor of the Stake Presidency and we made 50 copies off the CD we received from training in SLC. Hopefully they have them done by the time we have to leave tomorrow (noon).

Rained again today. The usual Thursday night soccer had a low turnout, a few kids, and Irmão Aldo (the less active man and his son that I made friends w/ last week and played w/ until late). But this week Dave and I didn’t play; we were having a meeting with Sister Natchigall. Her and her husbands had been the SRE workers/ CASP teachers for the past few years and have done a great job!! She told us many a story about their sacrifice and the blessings they received and all they’ve put into this program. They were part-time missionaries, who lived from their nearby home, had 4 kids, and Harold (the father) had just retired. Not much of a retirement when he was working so hard for 2 years. So now they’re taking a well-deserved break. I felt really bad when after hearing many of her stories she leaked out (not sure if she meant to) that she had heard from 2 people at church that we were complaining about how things were unorganized! Honestly, I did not say that to anyone. Maybe they got that impression because we had to call so many people trying to get updated phone numbers (the list we had wasn’t very updated), but that was the only problem. So Dave and I listened and tried to let her know how much we appreciate her and her husband’s work.

It was about 9 pm when we got done w/ our little meeting, and it was still raining pretty good. I was kinda sad about her thinking we didn’t appreciate their work, so I wanted to eat away my troubles… across the street from the hotel there’s a rodizio pizza. For those who are unfamiliar with rodizio pizza, it’s like a buffet for lazy people. Instead of getting up and walking to the buffet table, waiters come by and serve you pizza at your table – constantly coming by with different, good, pizzas. Last night they were having a special. For the same prize I’d pay to get one medium pizza to go I could sit down and eat all I wanted. So, even though I was by myself (Dave wanted a hot dog instead), I enjoyed the rodizio.

During other parts of the day I found time to study, type a paper, and organize more things at the SRE office.

2006-02-08T18:59:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

According to Understanding Contemporary Latin America by Richard S. Hillman, before Spanish and Portuguese explorers discovered the Americas, the population exceeded 50 million inhabitants. In 150 years, 90% of those inhabitants died due to a number or reasons (war and disease are a few). It took almost 400 years for Latin America to repopulate what took 150 years to lose.

So I’ve been studying a lot these last couple days, trying to keep on top of my studies. This weekend we won’t have much time to study because we’re going to Joinville to teach on Friday and Saturday, and Florianópolis is having Stake Conference on Sunday.

It’s been raining off and on; I finally bought an umbrella today, and some clothes hangers J.

When we weren’t studying, we were at the SRE office following up with last year’s participants to see if they’ve found work. Thos who have always had fun stories they wanted to share. Most everyone was pleasant on the phone… but it’s normal to come across a few that must have been having a bad day and don’t have the patience or desire to listen to an American accent.

2006-02-07T18:59:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Pretty quiet day today. Dave and I studied during the morning, ate lunch, went to the SRE office and called 2005 course participants following up if they found jobs or need help with anything. We called a few other leaders around the state, marking more visits.

The cleaning crew was at the church, so while we had the office open they took advantage and cleaned it. it took longer than we expected, so I went out back and played some soccer with the neighborhood kids. Then went back to the hotel and found The Terminal movie on – thanks to all those who emailed and told me the name of the movie, it’s nice to know people read this thing. Unfortunately, the movie was in Portuguese this time. Tom Hanks in Portuguese just isn’t quite the same, so I’m looking forward to watching it again once I get home.

After the movie I went back to the office where Dave was, and called more people.

Came back to the hotel, watched Mean Girls (I think that’s what its called… ha), skyped for a bit with my brother, did some reading and went to bed.

Just for fun I took a picture of my back – I look like a leper. I have spots where my burn peeled, and then I burned the fresh skin while some skin still hadn’t peeled off, so now its all done peeling but just left me w/ spots. Not too sure how good you can see it. Like the self back-portrait?

2006-02-06T18:59:00.000-07:00

Monday, February 6, 2006

This afternoon I was quickly reminded that after a quick, heavy downfall the streets often flood and the drainage sewers get backed up. It was about 7:45 pm and I had just run to the church to quickly call my home teaching companion. As I arrived, a HUGE bolt of lightening struck and the proceeding thunder blasted my ears. And then the rain started… and wouldn’t stop… Dave and I were invited to a family home evening at 8, so I had to get back to the hotel. I decided to make a run for it, since our hotel is a mere block away. As I ran out the church and shut the electric, sliding gate behind me I began crossing the street… and unknowingly, decided I would go for a little swim. Shin-deep in water, my momentum helped me wade through the water to the sidewalk on the other side. Soaked were my sandals, feet, legs, and lower part of my shorts. Oh well.

We sat in the hotel for a few minutes, waiting for the rain to lessen – I was trying to dry off. A good show was on the movie channel, something with Tom Hanks and he’s a foreigner who just arrived to the US and his country had been taken over. Anyone know what that movie’s called? I didn’t get to see more than 20 minutes because we were on our way to FHE, but I would really like to watch the rest.

So FHE was fun. It was at the home of Irmá Valdmiria – the sister who invited us over for lunch on Sunday. It was her, her 2 sons and her sister who was visiting. Their tradition is to start with food, and end w/ the message, so we sat down at a table with a pot of boiled hotdogs, buns, corn, potato sticks, mayonnaise, ketchup and guaraná.

When Irmá Valdmiria called us at 7 pm, inviting us to come, she made it clear that the message and the game were our department. She wanted our help to get her family back in the habit of having FHE. Ha… so I was in charge of the message while Dave took care of the game. My message took longer than anticipated – I guess it’s been a few years since I’ve done it on the mission. Together we read 1 Nephi 8 and drew the Tree of Life from Lehi’s vision. They enjoyed it. Dave’s game was kind of a magic trick with a coin – not too sure how to easily explain it, but the purpose of the trick is to make the person look silly. It worked. Then Rubens and Tiago (the 16 and 18 year old boys) prepared a trick/game for Dave. It was the candle-plate trick where … long story short… Dave gets his face dark with soot from the candle.

Earlier in the day Dave and I traveled to the island (Florianópolis) to visit Irmão Perrotti, the Institute director. We had a nice talk w/ him and we swapped ideas about how to best teach CASP to those in need. We came to the conclusion that he would talk with his secretary and get back to us with some more specific numbers, dates, and contact information. It’s a nice Institute facility. They bought a nice sized house and turned it into the Institute building. Classes there should be fun.

After eating lunch at a new, good and cheap restaurant we went to the church and made phone calls for a few hours. Humberto, from Porto Alegre, asked us to call all of the participants from 2005, J-Z, and see how their job searches are going. That was an interesting few hours of phone calls. Kinda discouraging ‘cause most of the numbers didn’t work.

The rest of the day was spent studying, sleeping, or something productive like that.

2006-02-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

Sunday, February 5, 2006, 22:29 hours

Ashley Florence McAllister, welcome to the family!! So I have a new baby niece and she’s healthy and so his her mother. This was a big relief (for some reason I was uncommonly worried). So my niece and nephew count has reached… (let me count… 4 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1/2) 12 with one on the way. Here’s some of her information and picture from the new Dad’s email:

Name: Ashley Florence McAllister
Born: 04 February 2006 @ 11:47 pm
Weight: 8 lbs. 14 ounces
Length 20.5 inches

Mom, Dad, and Ashley are all very sleepy, but doing great!

I didn’t get mom’s email until after church, so before the great news most of my day had already passed.

When you’re prepared, you don’t fear.

I got to church fifteen minutes early and made copies of the flier I made so they could be given to the bishops of neighboring wards to advise their members of the CASP class on the 21, 22 and 23rd off this month.

It felt great being prepared. And it’s great to help people fulfill their callings, instead of working around or above them. Márcia Pickler is the stake employment specialist and Mária (something) is our ward specialist and they both attend the Kobrasol ward (my ward), so we got to talk w/ them a bit and mark a later day to sit down and share the plans we have made so they can be more involved and help make the appropriate people aware.

Dave woke up feeling sick – sun poisoning, maybe. Whatever it was, he felt a bit nauseous, but he made it on time for all of church.

I was given a home teaching companion and 5 families today. The brother seemed a little nervous to be with me, as he quickly told me he has only been home teaching two times, so I told him we would learn together :o), but thanks to my dad (and the mission) I have had plenty of practice and experience.

Last Sunday a very nice sister invited us to eat lunch at their house this Sunday, so after church they patiently waited for us to finishing talking with leaders and such and they gave us a ride to their apartment. I forget the sister’s name… but her husband is Rubens, they have 3 kids – one is soon to be returning from his mission (São Paulo Norte), Rubens is 18, and Tiago is 16. Awesome family! Very funny – the father has this serious exterior appearance, but you soon figure out it’s his way of being funny. Tiago is a musically talented kid, and taught me how to correctly hold and play the violin (I managed to squeak out the basic cords… and it wasn’t as bad as I’m sure you’re imagining) and his trombone – which was actually pretty fun and I picked up pretty fast. I all of a sudden wished I would have listened to my mother and played some sort of musical instrument as a kid… but then I wonder what I would have had to give up to practice it, and I think I’m okay not knowing :o). Hey, I can still learn if I wanted.

Lunch was Brazilian stroganoff (a peachish color sauce with chicken, corn, and other good stuff served on top of white rice), lettuce and tomatoes, another veggie dish, Lime-aid, and watermelon and a ‘sweet corn’ dish for dessert.

In the afternoon I took a nice nap completely through the Oct. Priesthood session on DVD I was going to watch, ate some chicken fingers, and then actually watched the session awake – in Spanish.

2006-02-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

Saturday, February 4, 2006

They zip to the peak, and then soar at least fifteen feet beyond the wave, glide like feathers back to the sea and then continue their trajectory along the coast. Never seeing anything like this before I wadded up the coastline with great curiosity to get a better look – and hopefully learn how I could do it, too. I encountered two surfers finishing their runs just as I arrived along the shoreline. They stood on top of boards similar to wakeboards, but bigger. A harness anchored their bodies - fitted in wetsuits - to a large parachute some 30-feet high. The Campeche beach is a windy place, and this was obvious as the Para-Surfers wrestled with the wind to get their parachutes to the sand. From my observations, these men had come with their own equipment, and unfortunately, I didn’t see anywhere to rent a board and ‘chute. But if I ever do, you can bet I plan on giving it a try. (the picture was taken from google images)

So Dave and I didn’t make it to the Naufragos beach like we had planned (we left too late, since to get to this beach we’d have to walk an hour and a half trail), but instead went to the Campeche beach – it was a nice beach, with an island less than a mile off the water's edge providing a peaceful sight. Following the beach south, a peninsula of two mountains scenically protrudes from the water. The waves were a mere four or five feet, but the water and the wind were refreshing.

Before leaving for the beach we stopped by our ERS office to call the institute director, Irmão Perrotti, who had just gotten home from a trip. He didn’t answer, but later that night I called and was able to talk w/ him. He was excited to mark a time w/ us to come by the institute and talk with him. We need to schedule when we can teach the CASP (Career Workshop) course to the institute participants who want help from the Perpetual Education Fund.

Yesterday we created a flier to advertise for an upcoming course here in São José.

Dave thought there was a dance at the church at, so we got dressed up and went (I went for moral support… well, Dave didn’t need any support, it’s more like, I went with him so he could give me moral support. Dave’s on a few BYU dance teams, so he knows what he’s doing… me?? Ha…). But there was no dance, there at least.

Spanish soccer was on ESPN. Real Madrid played Espanola and won three to nothing. Anyone who keeps up w/ Spanish soccer knows that more than half of the stars on this team are Brazilian, so they have quite a big following here.

Scott and Amber? Are you guys okay? Have you had your baby girl yet? I asked my friend to call Brent and ask him to get online ‘cause I wanted some updates on your situation. Unfortunately, he was on his way to a wedding and couldn’t get on, but I guess he didn’t know any more than I did.

2006-02-03T18:59:00.000-07:00

Friday, February 3, 2006 23:30 hours

Slept in, ate breakfast, took a nap, ate lunch, did some homework, went to the laundromat, read the local newspaper, watched some movies, updated some forms and typed some papers for our program, ate a killer hotdog, and… that about sums it up.

So what am I going to do w/ the rest of this space to write?

Ha… well, currently showing on TV is one of many commercials ESPN’s been playing about NFL Football – Americanizations anyone? The commercials are almost funny to watch – classical music, slow motion, trying to show the beauty of the sport. I would say of ten commercials that pass, 4-6 are NFL related. They even have a minute clip telling the NFL Rules with highlights; this afternoon I watched a show about the history of the Super Bowl. They sure are blugging hard to get Brazilians interested in football.

I don’t have any facts to back this up, but I imagine this is a similar technique they used many years ago to introduce basketball, and today it’s surprisingly big. Like was mentioned in an earlier blog, the other day when we were playing w/ the neighborhood kids at the church they would rather play basketball than soccer. And it wasn’t just because they were with two American guys and they thought we’d be good at basketball and awful at soccer (a typical stereotype), but one of the kids – who was actually a pretty decent ball handler – said he didn’t even know how to play soccer (which was totally against the stereotypes I have of Brazilians).

NFL football will take some work for it to get big. There are some big barriers that they have to overcome: #1. footballs are hard to find, #2. fields to play in are limited. Hence, I imagine this is why futsol (soccer on a basketball-like court) was invented and is the main way to play soccer here. In fact, in Brazil I still haven’t played a pick up game of soccer on grass yet --- COMMERCIAL ALERT… so this is the 2nd commercial since I started writing my blog, and what was it? “ESPN PRESENTS, NFL RULES.” Ha… this one was explaining what a kickoff was.

Walking through downtown Florianópolis yesterday we passed a McDonalds. It’s dirty yellow arches on the outside, providing shade for those enjoying their ice cream desserts, looked to be at least 25 years old. Though it’s nice to have some reminders of home every now and then, in my opinion it saddens me to see so many influences of the United States. In a way they take over the ideas and way of life here.

At times I stop and trace the reasoning behind why things are the way they are? More often than not it all comes back to one word: money – the root of all evil. My hats go off to the marketing and advertising agencies that do their job well. I mean, geez, where would Brazil be without “Big Brother 6” (their version of MTV’s Real World, except smuttier), or spending three times as much money to eat a Quartarão at McD’s (Quarter Pounder) or Pizza Hut, or improving their literacey skills thanks to a majority of English television programs and movies.

Of course, globalization does have its benefits. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t recognize that for two years I dedicated my life as one of 50,000 volunteers globalizing the teachings of Jesus Christ. And I am ever so thankful for the increasing communication skills that bring the people of the world together in such a personal way. So I suppose it’s only natural that globalization occurs, taking from one’s culture and sharing with another.

The institute director of Floripa gets in tomorrow, so we’ll get to talk w/ him and discuss our plans for teaching those taking institute who are getting help from the PEF.

Tomorrow, we also plan on going to southern Floripa to the Praia dos Naufragos.

2006-02-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

A new blog has been setup for all of the ERS Volunteers the whole world around. These are the same people who went through training w/ me in Salt Lake. Those who are interested can visit it at the following site: http://byuersinterns.blogspot.com

2006-02-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

Thursday, 2, 23:59 hours

As the six o’clock sun beat down on hundreds making their way home from a long day of work (shopping or sightseeing), in their midst, almost overlooked, stood four pre-teen boys. They too seemed to be in their own world, oblivious of the masses passing just feet from their half naked bodies. One boy, his dark skin covered from collar to shin with white, lathered soap, stood poised on the center island of a public fountain. The other three, dark and sunburned, stood waste deep in surrounding water. I, too, walked pasted them, as many thoughts emerged in my head – what about their welfare, why have their lives had such a different course than mine, will they will ever know a healthier life?

I am careful not say a happier life, for one thing I cannot ever forget from my time in Brazil is that possessions do not make your life happy. Some of the happiest people I’ve met in life are those who have little to no material goods, but they have faith in something better and hope for the future.

To be honest, it’s times like this that I am very proud of being an Employment Service volunteer. I take our responsibility seriously because I know that the things we are teaching don’t only impact the adults that come in looking for help and work, but many of them have families as well.

Next Friday and Saturday Dave and I will be traveling up the coast to the city of Joinville to teach the course at the church there. And then starting next week we have the following two weeks marked with cities to teach, and we’re still trying to arrange courses for each week until the beginning of April.

About 1 this afternoon Dave and I called Salt Lake City and spoke with Stephanie and Mimi, those who provided our training in Salt Lake at the start of this adventure. They just wanted to know how things were going and if we needed anything. :o) They’re so awesome. Training was really a fun week ‘cause we really got to know them on a personal level.

Other than studying for a few hours, we also took the bus on to the island (Florianópolis) and walked through their city fair and went to the Historic Museum of Santa Catarina. Very cool stuff! Floripa is an amazing city – safe, beautiful, well organized. According to this picture I took, it looks like the Carnival preparations are on their way:

We got home about 6:20 and rested for a bit before we headed to the church for Thursday-night soccer. For those who don’t know, most soccer played in the cities of Brazil are played on little courts called a “salão”. The court is like a basketball court (so it’s pretty small) and it’s a lot like indoor soccer, except there are out of bounds (so you can’t kick off the wall) and the ball is a little smaller, and heavier so it doesn’t bounce as much. The teams are small – 4 or 5 on each team, and a goalie. Tonight we had enough players for 3 teams, and we rotated through, ‘king of the court’ style. It was a great time! I haven’t played real soccer in a LONG time. Most people were tired after about an hour, but I stayed and played with Aldo and his 12-year-old son Tiago until about quarter to 10. Good times.

To finish the night I bought myself one of those killer hotdogs w/ grilled chicken breast! Is there a better way to end a day?

On a side note, when I came home and took off my shoes, I noticed a quarter sized blister on the ball of my left foot that had popped and ripped itself almost completely off. The smallest bit of skin was holding it. Since then, it dried and then fell off. I was going to take a picture and post it… but then I decided against it.

2006-02-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, 1, 23:30 hours

Parts of today reminded me of the mission. Walking in the noon-day sun for almost about an hour straight was what did it. You see, last night Dave and I received and email from BYU requesting that we go to the Federal Police Station and register with our passports there. So, being obedient we went (instead of taking the bus to an unknown place on the island – we paid about he same price for the hotel van to drop us off in the police station parking lot. Good deal.) and then waited in line for a good thirty minutes. Two minutes after my number had been called, I was done w/ my interview… the man said we did not have to register since our Visa’s clearly said we could be in Brazil for 90 days each.

Since the Police station was on the “Beira do Mar” we, Dave and I, wanted to see the view and walk the biking/running trail along the ocean for a bit. As we walked we saw downtown was fairly close (ha... look how close in the picture), so we decided to walk to it while going to the bus stop downtown. The walk ended up being a little longer than expected, but the nice part was being able to stop when we wanted, look inside some shops and buy some juice (goiaba, which is my favorite – guava in english) and relax - take pictures, or whatever. Eventually we made it to the bus stop and got home shortly after.

Here are a few pictures I took along the walk...
This is Florianópolis from Florianópolis:

This is across the ocean from Florianópolis:

This is from a look out point over looking the bridge (the bridge is under constuction, hense why this picture turned out better):

The rest of the afternoon I did some reading for my classes, and then we went to the SRE office in the church and tried calling a few more people and organizing a bit.

We then came back to our apartment and waited for 8 oclock cause that was when we thought Tiago, our buddy from church, was going to meet up w/ us to go to a pizzaria. So… he never showed up. About 9 we called him and then walked the short distance to where they were eating pizza.

The pizza wasn’t that great, but it was filling and relatively cheap for an all you can eat.

2006-01-31T18:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-30T18:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-01-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-27T02:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

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).

2006-01-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

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).

2006-01-17T20:32:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-01-16T13:15:00.000-07:00

Monday, 17, 18:14 hours

We made it to Porto Alegre safe and sound. I´ll give more details later.

2006-01-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-01-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday, 14, 2:26 am

My blogg has been setup. I’ve never done a blogg before, but to me it just like I’m sharing my journal with everyone and anyone that wants to read it.

Once again I’m dead tired, but it just had to be done.

Today’s training was one of the more boring days. We went through the “Self-Employment Workshop”, which is an awesome workshop, but I have no desire to start my own business. I’ve probably been scared straight from the parental influences that help me know that’s not what I want to do :o). So instead of being taught the workshop I would have much rather just learned the techniques on how best to teach it. We could have saved a lot of time not doing each exercise, but rather just talking and explaining it. On the other hand, I know many other people enjoyed the activities because they really have new ideas with which they could begin companies.

At about 4:00 pm we took our big vans to Welfare Square downtown to learn more about how the Church fulfills the humanitarian needs of people all across the earth. It was actually a very enlightening visit and opened my eyes even more to the great help our church provides to many, many people.

After Welfare Square one van went back to the hotel, while the other dropped people off at Temple Square. A few people went to the temple while others had other errands to run. Danielle, Rachel, Daniel and I went to the Distribution Center. I traded the conference DVD I was given for Christmas for the multi-lingual version that just arrived today, so I can show it to people while I'm in Brazil. My mission buddy, Jason Hunt, met us at the store and then gave us and Jon and Leah a ride back to the hotel. Then Jason and David (Layton) and I met up with Geoff Gough at the hotel, and then went to Rice-Eccles stadium and met Brinkerhoff and then took off to Farmington to visit Jason Romney who returned from his mission 2 weeks early because his mother is so sick. He’s been home only a week. I love that kid though, great guy. Everyone from our MTC district is just amazing for his own ways.

At Romney’s house we ate pizza with Gamble who led us to Jason’s house. It was so great to see that kid. After supper we played games (pool, table tennis, foosball) and just hung out and caught up on the past few years. At 10:00 pm we returned back to Salt Lake.

One we returned to the Guest House, Dave and I quickly changed into more comfortable sleeping clothes, and then we played a rousing game of Catch Phrase in the lobby. After which we gathered on the 3rd floor and studied scriptures – David, Jeff, Lori, Amanda, Danielle and I were the group who read Alma 42.

Tomorrow’s our last day for training and I need my rest.

2006-01-12T21:46:00.000-07:00

Friday, 13, 2:46 am

So the things I will quickly write have to do w/ yesterday, Thursday the 12th. I am really tired so I’m just going to give some highlights.

Landus Hulbrook and Jan van Orman from BYU came and talked to us about safety and security issues and what are some shocks we should expect and how to deal with surprises and things. It was a good day of class.

After class David, Daniel, Ryan, Ryan, Rachael and I went to the Salt Lake Temple for the 7:15 pm session. It was great to feel the spirit and it helped me put life into perspective, again.

Then we walked around down town around Temple Square, looking for a place to eat but since it was later everywhere was closed. We helped a crippled, homeless man by giving him some change, even though we would have rather bought him some food he said he was just about to catch his ride so we did the best we could and gave him some change. Though he could likely be lying about the ride and really just wanted the money, I did my part and I trusted/believed in him and so the weight’s on his shoulders.

We ordered Papa John’s pizza to the hotel for dinner. We ate in the lobby with Danielle and Dave. Before we went to the temple I let Danielle borrow my computer to do a test for one of her classes or something.

After dinner and everyone left, Danielle and I played chess on my computer. She had taught herself earlier in the night just by reading the directions, and so I wanted to help her learn a little more. She’s really good for a first timer.

A cool experience happened while we were playing. Tyler, a speed skater we had met the night before, was on the computer near by and I was joking w/ him about how he leg wrestled and beat Jeff the night before. After he was done w/ his computer time he came and sat by us and started chatting. And then he brought up questions he had about ‘Mormons’ and the church. It was very interesting and Danielle and I were glad we could be there to clarify a few things. He started off with questions about tithing, and then that led to sharing about fast offerings and how the church helps worldwide. Then we talked about BYU standards and shaving, drinking, chastity. And the conversations went around for about 20 minutes. I hope it made a lasting impression and one day he’ll be open enough to want to learn more.

After that Danielle and I went to read scriptures on the 3rd floor, and as we were just discussing a few ideas we had about the creation and the war in heaven, Eric and Jeff showed up from their night in Provo. So they chatted and we had a good time for about 15 minutes, and then Eric went to bed while Jeff with his English, Danielle with her Spanish, and me with my Portuguese Books of Mormon read from 2 Nephi 9:1-17. Then we split and it’s really late so we should get to bed.

2006-01-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, 11, 10:24 pm

I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun with a group of people I’ve just met than I am having w/ this group. Everyone just has so much in common, even though we are from all around the country, and we all just have a great time laughing and joking around and playing games.

This morning I awoke at 7:15 after David had taken his shower, so then I took mine and got ready for the day. Today we had to dress in our Sunday best because we visited the Church Office Building after lunch. But before that, from 8:00 to 12:00 we reviewed a few more exercises and then split up into three groups again and practiced teaching. It’s great being able to really teach and see how the workshop is from that perspective. And the practicing gets good ideas out and good feedback to remember for the real thing. Our group today was with Jon and Leah (newly married couple) and Amanda and Lori, with Stephanie as our instructor.

At noon, all 24 of us loaded into 2 vans and drove to the church office building. There we ate lunch. Something fun was after we were done eating, Jeff and I decided to practice what we’ll be doing on the program, and we went and talked to random people eating lunch to find out more about their jobs and how they got them. This way we get more of a feel for the communities we’re in and will be able to share more accurate information with our students. Obviously the information for our students will be collected in the cities they live.

After lunch we went back up into a conference room in the heard some neat speakers: Elder Rudd and Brother Rann – both important leaders in the organization. Then we did some more activities with Gustavo and then at 4:00 pm we walked to the Joseph Smith Building to watch the new Joseph Smith movie: The Prophet of the Restoration. It was my third time seeing the film (2 times in Nauvoo over Christmas break), and it really is a great film that shows how Joseph Smith was as a man.

After the movie we got taken out to eat pizza in downtown Salt Lake, it was a fun time! Then we went back to the hotel and the married couples did their own thing, while the rest of us goofed off in the aerobic/exercise room for a while, and then went into the main lobby and played Uno, and then did more athletic activities… like leg wrestling, and then with a tape measurer we did limbo, and then high jump where you had to land on your feet, and then standing long jump. It was pretty entertaining. And the people entering the hotel would often stop and watch. Ha… it was fun.

Now I need to read and study a bit before I go to bed. Only a few more days of training then we have to do this teaching stuff on our own. Yikes.

2006-01-10T05:56:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 10, 10:56 pm

It was a very enjoyable day today. Got up about 7:15, took a shower and then went down for a quick breakfast. Training started at the same church as yesterday at 8:00 am. Today we went through some more training but by the end of the day they had us practicing teaching the workshop in small groups. It was nice to finally get some teaching experience. During our break time we even got to play knockout and dodge ball. It was just like recess J.

At 5:00 pm David and I walked down to the U’s bookstore and I purchased colored pencils and a glue stick so I could come back to the hotel and finish my photography application. Unfortunately I didn’t read every line of instruction on the application until I was done cutting up and coloring this one section called the “creative” part. When I read all the application it said I could not cut up the squares like I had done. So in the next 30 minutes I quickly drew some interesting shapes and ideas. I hope I get accepted!

At about 8:10 pm my friends from Provo showed up. Both the cars got lost, but I was able to coach them how to get here and I was out on the sidewalk looking for them when they each arrived about the same time. Those who came were: Colin Moor, Rubia Fagundes, Michael Priddy, Jared Wilkerson, Stacey Orton (jared’s fiancé), Craig Gincho, and his girlfriend (I forget her name… oops… but she’s Italian). It was way nice of them to come see me and we went to Hire’s Big-H for food and ice cream. It was fun.

Now I need to read my scriptures and study the workshop in Portuguese a little before bed.

2006-01-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

Monday, 09, 9:04 pm

Woke up this morning to a eerie dream… I dreamt I had a little spider on my hand and it had big fangs and I tried to squeeze it before it bit me, but I awoke when in my dream I was bit. The weird thing is when I awoke I felt a dull pain in my finger exactly where the spider in my dream had bitten me.

It was about 6:40 when I finally rolled out of bed to get in the shower. Then Dave and I went down for the continental breakfast. There we met up with the other people from BYU – Provo and met some of the participants from BYU – Idaho. They’re all super nice people. Let me try to remember all from at least BYU – Provo and list where they will be teaching:
- Eric and Jeff: Fortaleza, Brazil
- Danielle and Rachel: Ecuador
- Jason and Kim: Fiji
- Dave and Ryan: Costa Rica
- Mike and Stephanie: Guatemala
- Geoff (me) and David: Florianopolis, Brazil

From Idaho there are another 10 people.

So we were not informed what the dress code for today was. At breakfast half of us (including me) came down in casual clothes, while others were in ties and dresses. To be safe, the rest of us changed into nicer clothes, but were later told that we only had to be in casual dress. Oh well. Dave and I, along with the two going to Costa Rica, were late because we were changing, so we got a ride from one of the directors, Mimi, to the church building where our training is begin held. The others had to walk the short distance.

The speakers today were very motivational and it was a good day all in all. I left feeling more focused and determined to do a good job and do all I can to help teach this program well. The speakers today were some pretty important people. Especially the head head guy over the employment service department in the Church.

At about 3:45 pm my red eye was starting to worry me. Ever since last night on the airplane my eye had been red. On the airplane it even crusted over with mucus while I was sleeping. When I woke up this morning with a red eye I began to worry if I had caught pink eye. So Mimi took me to the Insta-care at the IHC (Intermountain Health Center) and I got a quick check up. Had to pay a 25$ co-fee plus 20% of the total bill, plus $5 for the medicated eye drops the doc prescribed. I do not have pink eye, but rather just an irritation/infection from my contacts – which is what I was suspecting, but the mucus just worried me.

Then I met Dave at the Heritage Center to eat dinner. That’s were the U of U students eat, and we get meal cards to eat there too.

Not much else going on. Now I’m going to try to finish my photography application so I can give it to my FLSR friends who are coming up to hang out tomorrow.

2006-01-09T03:27:00.000-07:00

Monday, 09, 2:27 am

I’ve just arrived at the Guest House on the U of U campus in Salt Lake City. I was scheduled to arrive here a few hours ago, but the plane leaving O’Hare was stuck on the runaway for a good hour and a half – our plan had to replace its microphone (not too sure why that was so important). But anyway, so I arrived about a half hour ago, got ready for bed, and then have been talking w/ David Layton, my roommate and companion for our adventure to Brazil. Now he’s asleep, seeing that we have to get up in a few short hours it’s probably a wise idea. But I wanted to start my Brazil-Adventure off right, writing in my journal every day.

Church on Sunday (technically yesterday) was fun. It was my first time back to my home ward in six months and it has grown quite a bit. But the ‘normals’ are great people and they make me feel great being back home.

After church I said goodbye to a few friends. First I went to Evan’s. I then went by Tracy Kniep’s, but she wasn’t there. So then I went to Molly Kouri’s house and chatted w/ her, her boyfriend Derrek, and Beth Schmidt. It was fun to see Beth, I haven’t seen her and gotten to really talk to her for a long time now… maybe since before my mission.

Then I went home and Dad had prepared BBQ salmon, which is really good. Mom made some great potatoes and we had a good dinner. At 4:45 pm we left and stopped by the Holcomb’s house so I could say goodbye to their kids like I had promised them, then we jetted to the airport.

My flight from Peoria to Chicago I sat next to a very nice man, who I forget his name. He travels A LOT for his work, and was on his way to New York. He has a son-in-law who graduated from BYU, and near the end of our trip I gave him a pass-along card for Finding Faith in Christ. I was proud of myself. He was a very nice guy.

In Chicago I then had to find my way to the shuttle to take me to a different terminal. As I was going down some awkward stairs an old woman in front of me was having some trouble. I offered to carry her suitcase and she joked that I’d better or she’d probably fall and need a wheelchair. I helped her onto the shuttle and then off and together we walked a good 8 minutes to her gate, where she was to meet up w/ her daughter to fly to Buffalo, New York. I then went on to my gate and waited a good half hour for my plane to begin boarding to Salt Lake.

On the plane I sat in the front row of the economy class. I sat between two other kids my age. One from Notre Dame going to Provo for a computer related work conference, and the other a girl from Germany who is studying her graduate studies (after graduating from) at the U of U. I’m pretty sure neither were LDS, which is usually a given you’ll sit by at least one on a flight to Salt Lake. But it was kinda fun to sit next to younger people like that. Besides having to wait on the runaway for over an hour, like I have already mentioned, the flight went well. Three and a half hours after take off we landed safely in Salt Lake, I got my bag w/out any problems, and then got a shuttle that was already paid for by the program and arrived here at the Guest House.

I’m excited to be here, but I’m actually quite nervous. I realize the importance of our positions and the great responsibility that we have. I pray I can be sensitive to the Spirit so that the Lord can direct me as I am taught this week and as I teach in Brazil. I am going to really need his help effectively helping the awesome people of Brazil.

Okay, I’m off to bed. Here in four short hours I should be getting up to shower and head to breakfast.