Day 24

Today was pretty uneventful - I ran some errands with Joyce in the morning, and I played Octupus for a little bit on the lawn before lunch :) I had my Portuguese lesson in the afternoon, and when it was over I read my Bible (2 Peter 1:1-10 - fantastic. I can finally make sense of vs.5-7, so that was really cool), and then I went into the computer room and worked on a book report for one of my classes.

While I was in there, Andressa (there is a picture of us at the end of Days 5&6) came by and we listened to my mp3 player for a little bit, and then she discovered the recording feature and that was the end of that! She loved recording her voice and sang a few songs, and we went across the street to her house and she played everything for Bruna (her step-mom) and her brother and made a recording of her brother and her talking and singing and all kinds of stuff. It was good times lol.

This is Andressa and Linda-Inez's house, by the way.

One highlight of the day was Andressa's younger brother (not the baby) learning to ride his bike! Yesterday apparently he wasn't able, but Brazilian kids are way tougher than Canadians, and this boy's dad didn't hold his bike up or give him training wheels. Instead, apparently, he watched and encouraged his son that "falling down helps you learn to stay up". Today Leiyilton (??) was biking all around Free Flight and proudly dismounting, although also wobbling sometimes or driving into walls, lol. The Cutest moment was when Catherine and I were chatting in some shade and Leiyilton rode past us and tried to bike over a big rock that was sticking out of the ground. He fell right over, and Catherine and I both probably gasped a little bit and asked if he was okay. He climbed out from under his bike and said (in Portuguese), "it's okay, I'm short." This kid is my hero.

On the walk home, Catherine and I saw a really big dog in a yard, and I think it looks like a panda bear. What about you?

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Please vote, so that I can not only be validated for discovering this panda-dog, but also so that I will feel validated that people read my blog :) Although, please also just vote once, because if the truth comes out that only two people read my blog, I'll just have to handle that.

Day 23

Today was the first day of classes at Free Flight. I sat in on Catherine's intro to keyboard class, which was lots of fun, and very helpful for improving some of my vocabulary. It was also very funny to Catherine and I because it was pouring rain during the class, so the roof was leaking in a few places and I had to make a couple of trips to the kitchen for jugs and pots to catch water so it wouldn't splash on the floor or pool on top of the keyboard covers. It wasn't actually that funny, it was just a good Brazil moment for Catherine and I to share unspokenly, as she lectured over the sound of the rain crashing on the asbestos tile roof. Ah Brazil.

I also had a great foreigner moment this afternoon - the rain had passed and it was very hot - hot enough that the grass dried, so I was sitting in the grass with some of the kids at Free Flight, and two of them I hadn't met before, Pricilla and Gabriel, and they clapped for me when I counted to ten in English, and they asked me questions about Canada, and Gabriel kept saying, "say something in English" so finally I told them about talking to my mom over the internet on her birthday, and this kid Gabriel was so excited and thought it was so funny that he could hardly stand up; it was incredible. I'm really pleased to say that my Portuguese is getting so much better that even when I don't understand everything people say, I can usually catch some, and when I don't know how to say something, I am more and more able to talk around it and get the idea across. It is great!

In more of a cultural punch in the guts, I found out today that Linda-Inez' step-mom, who lives across the street from Free Flight in a house made of scrap wood and metal and tarps, who has a four year old and a one and a half year old and two step-daughters who are 11 and 9... her name is Bruna, and she is a couple months younger than my brother. Her birthday is September 2, 1990. Catherine thinks that the dad is older, probably in his mid or late twenties... so I am baffled, floored to imagine this girl's life, becoming a mother and step mother to girls who could be her sisters when she was at the age to be starting grade nine in Canada.

I don't really know what to say about Bruna - I don't know what I think. This is one of those things that is probably way more complicated than a young girl getting pregnant and raising another woman's children as well as her own, but it's also really shocking to think of all the heavy things that are so common among families here. It definitely makes me think of what a charmed life I've had.

This reminds me of a joke that I failed to make with some kids last week though - we were chatting, and I asked them how old they were - 11, 8 and 7. I said that I was twenty, which received the appropriate response of being impressed, and so I said (in Portuguese), "yeah, soon I'll be a grandmother" with high hopes of a little laughter and a new topic (favourite colours, maybe!). Instead there was a puzzled silence, and Linda-Inez whispered to Michelle "ela tem filhos?". Michelle shook her head, and I said that no, I don't have any children, and I think that the nods and half-smiles were acknowlegments of something along the lines of "Canadians are weird" also "you are cool because you are old and speak English and are from far away, but you are weird." That night at supper I asked Joyce for the best way to explain in Portuguese that something was a joke, just in case I forget myself and make some other offhand comment about who knows what.

Confusion is definitely a better response to a failed joke than offense though, so really, of all the possible failures this one hardly even counts. I was thinking about it after though, and I realized that 30 year old grandparents probably happen more often than I'd think.

Anyways, it was a full day here, and I'm sure that the rest of the week will continue to be full between classes and kids and language (and God too! We've been having lots of chats). If the weather where you are is getting you down, just think how much you would rather shovel snow than start a family before high school :)

love from,
Alyssa

A Note About Advertising in Brazil

It is a sunny Sunday morning, and all of us are feeling more or less sick (Catherine more, me less, Joyce in the middle I think). As we are all doing our different things around the house (me, for example on the internet and thinking about Matthew 14, while Catherine is mostly in bed waiting for death to come), our ears are occasionally taken captive by a Brazilian advertizing technique called Sound Cars. These are basically radio announcements that you can't turn off or change the channel to because they are played by cars and motorcycles with huge speakers on the roof or the back, driven by people who are paid to drive them and not allowed to go any faster than 30 km/h. Sometimes they are used to disseminate political messages or to announce where the cheapest and most delicious popsicles are being sold. These vehicles just tour around the neighbourhood (usually keeping to the paved roads) and blast their words at top volume for all to hear :)

Now you know!