Day 2

Some pictures from Joyce's house!
This is the front of Joyce's house inside the gate. As you can see, it is a pretty yellow house, and she keeps lots of plants so it is very nice. The door is usually open when we are home unless someone is going out the gate so the dogs don't run into the street (where there are lots of other dogs and they might get in fights - there are often dogs barking throughout the neighbourhood).This is the view out of Joyce's back door - to the back house where Frank lives. There is a little bit of grass between the houses and some more potted plants as well as a sink and the washing machine. You can also see some socks hanging on the clothes line, and see how big the mango tree is that grows in her back yard (although I haven't eaten from it yet)This is my room! It's pretty simple, and the view is just of the wall between us and the neighbours, but I like it (and it's bigger than my room in Toronto was when I shared with Jo and Laura!). There is a dresser beside my bed just out of view of the camera, and the yellow panel you see on the right is my wardrobe. The wall beside the bed is the one I share with Catherine, which is the picture below. You can see there is about a foot and a half of clearance, but it doesn't really matter because Catherine and I don't spend too much time in our rooms anyways. You can also see that the roof is very simple, just stuck onto the walls to keep the rain out, and the lightbulb hangs in the middle of the room.
Today was another great day - I went with Joyce to run some errands in Taguatinga (tah-gwah-Ching-ga) and spent the rest of the day at Free Flight. I had a chat with a really cute little girl who was sort of following me around when Frank was showing me more of the centre. I asked her how old she was (9) and when she asked me questions I was able to tell her my birthday and that I did like mangoes :)

I had my first Portuguese lesson today, which was also really good. A lot of it was reviewing basics that I had already practiced before I came, and we also worked on numbers, which get very tongue-twisty in Portuguese! Some end in o and some in a or some with s, so it gets very confusing to count, especially in the hundres. 354 would be trezentos cinquenta e quatro. Anyways, I will practice tonight before I fall asleep and again in the morning... Tomorrow we are going to work on telling time, knowing the alphabet (I have most of it down), and I think I will request to learn some body parts! Fun fact: in Brazil they call the neck of a guitar the arm. But they also call the head the hand, so it makes some sense.

I saw my first cockroach tonight - Joyce was spraying stuff in the kitchen to kill them, so a big one ran into the living room to try to escape. I was not impressed, but I also did not freak out (let the record show). I wasn't wearing shoes and didn't have any within reach, so Joyce chased it down the hall and killed it - yuck. At least I have some confidence that if I see them far away I'll be able to handle it and probably even kill some myself, but I am also sure that if one surprised me I would be outside in tears before anyone figured out why I screamed :|

The rest of tonight has been pretty uneventful - Catherine and Frank and I went for a walk after supper, so that was good for getting out in the neighbourhood a bit. The best part of tonight though was dessert! Free Flight has opened an icecream shop and they make their own ice cream and sell little candies too for extra money, and Joyce brought some ice cream back to the house, and it is so good! I forget what the flavour I had is called in Portuguese, but it is coconut flavour with chocolate chunks, so we would probably call it Bounty Bar ice cream. Joyce had cotton candy ice cream, which I might try another time.

Well that's about it - I am going to work on an assignment and practice counting then probably head to bed :) I want to say a big thank you to everyone who is praying for me because things have been going just about as perfectly as I can imagine so far, and I know God is taking care of me. Until next time!