Day 20: Maceió

Darn, I need to do three more blogs before the end of the week so these might be kind of short.   Well we made it to Maceió, the prelude was a fantastic sleepover with the four coolest people ever ( I am one of those four in case you were wondering!)  It was with Natalia, Sara and Berkley- ♪love them!♫
    It is real hard to be here in Maceió instead of back in Recife, we had the worst day ever today, we had to get up at 6 to get over to the beach and catch a sailboat out to swim with the fish, hard times!

This is our guide, Marcus, my flip flop washed overboard and he saved it for me, what a great guy!

These are some of the good times from our trip.  It was just the five of us that went, Sara and Jonathan Boyack (siblings), Berkley and Natalia.  On the left is Camilla, she was one of Berkley´s companions on the mission.  What a good looking group huh!

So, Maceió has beautiful beaches like Recife, but the best part is there are no sharks here.  In Recife there are signs everywhere and lifeguards and danger flags.  But here no such thing, woot woot!  

It is fun to watch the guys here play soccer on the beach.  There is always a game going on somewhere and they are fun to watch.  And as you can tell, they start playing at a young age, this kid was kicking his ball around right next to this game that was going on, super cute!

Day 17...ish! Hooligans!

Today I wanted to let you get to know a few of the people that I am out here with.  They are a bunch of hooligans that are probably up to no good, so together we are taking Brazil by storm!  I will try to do a few every once in awhile as I really get to know them out here.
   

 First off though I wanted to talk about my new best friends!  They are all between the ages of 16 and 18 and are in an English immersion program out here.  Yesterday we got to meet them and teach them how to play some American sports like Basketball, American Football and Baseball and we had such a good time together.  I met some really cool people, three of them are actually LDS and one of those three is coming to BYU in the fall, yea!

 This is us making our ´sexy faces´as my friends here liked to call them!  Dang we had a lot of fun!  The tall one behind me, Laio, he is a troublemaker and I knew it from day 1!  Of course, he thought I was a trouble maker as well.  He said that I hid it pretty well behind my angel face, but he could tell that I was a trouble maker too.  Of course, I didn´t deny it! The other guy to my left is the one that is going to be coming to BYU this fall, Marcílio is his name and he is super cool, we are going to go to the football games together!

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 They loved being in photos with me...well just any photo!  I just stuck my arm with the camera in front of me, said that I was taking a picture and anyone that wanted to be in it could, and they all flocked.  They really did love me though, and I am not being conceited, it made me feel really good.  Like I said we played sports with them yesterday, I was helping out with baseball.  Well today I went into the party, a 4th of July party, a little bit late because I was waiting for a friend to go to the bathroom, as soon as I walked in and saw them they were so excited and started greeting me and saying they had been looking for me everywhere and that I was the best yesterday!  It was very nice of them and made me feel super good about myself, cause I had a blast with them as well!

 Here are some shots of us practicing baseball.  Unfortunately we didn´t have a field to play on or enough mitts for everyone but we took turns and just practiced throwing the ball to each other and doing grounders and pop-flies, and then of course batting.

 At one point we only had about 10 minutes left, they had called everyone over to tell us that and so I was excitedly hurrying my people back so that we could practice batting, then they told us that they wanted a group photo, and of course everyone was just standing around.  Well I couldn´t very well let them waste all of our batting time so I told them that they needed to get together and quick because we wanted to play baseball!  It was fun and it worked and helped prove to Laio that I am a troublemaker when I want to be.

This is the awesome group that we had today at the 4th of July party.  This group played a lot of games with me.  It took me back to my EFY days because I was putting out so much energy and it was awesome and they were just eating it up!  We played a few different games which they loved and ended up playing Big Booty and we were all so into it, it was fantastic!  When the party was over and we had to go my director Vanessa kept looking at me and asking me who I was because she has not seen this side of me yet!  She kept saying that I was such a quiet girl, bahahaha!  Now the problem is getting me back in the box since I have escaped ;)

Okay, so now I am going to give you an introduction to some of my new buddies that are actually in my study abroad group.  We will start with...drum roll please-drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...Berkley Kershisnik!

 This is the lovely Berkley, it is really funny to here Brazilians say her name, cause they kind of make the R a gutteral sound and it sounds awesome.  Some can´t even pronounce her name so she calls herself Julia sometimes-which has nothing to do with her first, middle or last name at all, but they can pronounce it!

Berkley is super good at playing the guitar and has an awesome singing voice.  She actually performs with her sister at local places in Provo and Salt Lake and has a band.  She learned how to play from her dad and is really good.  She performed at the party we had with CCJ last week.  Side note about CCJ, no matter how many times we tell them that we study at a University in Utah and we are from all different parts of the states, they know us as their friends from New York-though none of us are actually from there!  On the poster that they made for the party they had Berkley on there as one of the performers, but she was on there as Julia from New York, Ha!  Now she has no way to prove that it was actually her!  Berkley is doing her Masters at BYU in Portuguese and she served her in Brazil in a place that has a hard name that I cannot remember let alone spell.  We´ve become really good friends and I am looking forward to continuing that friendship when we come home.  To cement our friendship is the fact that she has seen ´What´s up Doc´, ´Oscar`and ´Some Like it Hot´, three of the movies that I find super hillarious but that hardly anyone has ever seen, it was fate that we met!

Next on the list we have Matt Leary.  Matt is the quiet type.  Last week one of the kids wanted to play M-cubed, which stands for Marry, Make out with, or Murder.  Basically in the game they name three people from the group (of the opposite gender of whoever they are questioning) and the person has to pick which of those people they would marry, which one they would make out with, and which one they would murder.  Well Matt commented that he would be the easy out.  Since he doesn´t talk much and no one really knew him he figured he would get murdered every time!
     Matt wants to get into Med school and become a pediatric surgeon.  He also served his mission in Brazil and has only been home about 6 months or so.  If he doesn´t get into med school he wants to do physical therapy.  He is a super nice guy and has actually started talking to people, so I don´t know if we could quite justify murdering him every time now!

Next on the list is Michele Rivera.  Michele is our basketball guru, and actually knows a ton about most other sports too.  She is from Miami and is a HUGE Miami Heats fan, which leads to some rather entertaining arguments between her and all of the guys in our group.  Michele has a younger brother and a younger sister and absolutely loves going to concerts of any kind.  She is such a frequent visitor at the Velour in Provo that they girl at the front desk greets her by name and is able to tell her whether or not she will like any of the performers that evening.
     Last week Michele decided to go swimming with her glasses on, since she is practically blind without them and doesn´t want to use contacts.  Problem is, the ocean was a little bit hungry that day and ate her glasses, so she is now sporting a beautiful pair of Brazilian glasses that she is not to fond of, but she looks fantastic no matter what so it doesn´t really matter.
    Okay, our last contestant...er, hooligan of the day is Natalia Ortolano

Natalia is the daughter of our director, Vanessa, and she is just amazing.  She just got back from her mission a few months ago and also served in Brazil-maybe Brasilia?  I should really write down that information somewhere!  Natalia is a super outgoing, fun loving person who just enjoys life to the fullest.  She is always trying to pull off some crazy stunt or another.  She actually creates mosaics and is going to teach Berkley and me how to do them when we get home.  Her, Berkley and I compared our favorite movies and are going to have a movie night once a week to hang out and just have fun together and educate each other on the best classic movies out there!  Natalia is just learning to play the guitar, like me she just barely took guitar 101 at BYU.  She was one of the few that was actually able to sing most of the BYU fight song yesterday to our Brazilian friends trying to learn English.
  

Natalia is super creative both with drawing, painting and also she really likes to write papers, essay-ish things.  Kind of like a travel journal about the cultures that she meets and the things around her.  We get along famously and I am excited for you all to meet her and all of the others.  One last thing, Natalia is the kind of person who just jumps in and does what needs to be done.  It doesn´t matter if it is a job no one else wants to do, she is there and she gets it done.  She is always one of the first to volunteer and doesn´t complain.  Her birthday was this past Sunday, July 1st and she is now 23 and afraid that no one will like her because there is a song out there somewhere that says that.  Pish posh, like that would ever happen!  Oh, and she loves to read, so we really are getting along famously!




Well that is it for now my little family,  I will talk to some more people and get the scoop on them for another day,  I think that this novel is already long enough as it is.  Do any of you actually read it all the way through?  Well if you do then I think you are just the cat´s meow...that or you don´t have anything better to do!  Just remember that goblins are real-they steal your socks, but only the left ones, and that frying pans are the way to go : P

   

 Oh, and Mitchell Mender wanted me to send all this information about him: (I told him I was getting info on everyone to send to my mom, you can pick and choose what you choose to believe from his humble description of himself!) ´Ah in that case tell your mom I'm an RM, I have my eagle scout, I'm Pre-law that's why I'm a philosophy major, I'm president of the Pre law association at BYU. I was captain of my football, national track athlete, vice president of my choir, I have an internship at a law firm this fall, and was first counselor in my elders qiurum presidency. ´
    Mitch  likes the AC up super high, he freezes everyone out during class and people have actually started stealing the remote for the AC and hiding it from him.  It is true that he is a philosophy major and that he is an RM, he served in Salvador Brazil.  He is a lot of fun and adds a certain spice to our group-again, take that how you will!

Day: 16, status: fat and sassy!

So a few funny stories that I have been saving up, hopefully someone will appreciate them.  So when you are learning a new language, at least when I am learning a new language, a lot of things sound the same, especially all of the different foods and fruit that they are placing before me.  I apologize in advance for any spelling errors.  So most mornings there is a table full of fruit as well as some sort of root thing like potato or yuka or yam or something.  Well some things also look similar, so one morning I am eating one of those roots

 and it is called macaxeira (mock-a-shey-ra) and they are telling me how to eat it, spread butter on it, eat it with cheese.  So the next morning they put something in front of me that looks similar, they tell me what it is and I think, aha!  I am going to show everyone that I am practically a native now and spread butter on it and eat it like a Brazilian...only why does it taste kind of like pineapple!?  Yep, so I spread butter on my pineapple and they were probably thinking that I was some weirdo American!  The word for pineapple is abacaxi (abock-a-she) they don´t really sound that similar when you hear them together, but they both have an x in the name and they looked kind of the same...okay, I am going to stop defending myself to you all-you come live in a foreign country and try learning the language and tell me you wouldn´t do something similar!!!
These pictures don´t do it  justice, but here you go.

Obviously the pineapple is above, and the yuka root is to the side, but they are kind of similar in color, and they cut them up the same way and I get so confused, I hardly ever know what I am eating!  The juice here is so good, they make fresh fruit juice all the time, but whenever they ask me if I have tried one I have no idea!  They all just taste like heaven to me and I can´t keep track of their names!



That´s actually the only funny story that I can think of right now, other than the fact, you know the day that I completely left my camera battery here at home?  Well the next day I remembered to take it, except I didn´t make sure it had charged all the way before Adelma unplugged it, and it died on me halfway through the day!

Here are some pictures of the beautiful Brazilian kids:

 Some of these photos are of the kids that were at the dance we had with CCJ, the group that we are helping through our internship.

Others of these kids are from our trip into the favelas. These are their homes, these are the kids of the people that let us paint the walls of their houses.

They all have one thing in common though, whether they were from the party, or from our day at the favelas

They are all being raised with many, many challenges.

 Just because we met some at a party and others in the midst of their poverty does not mean that some are better off than others.  Most of the ones from the party come from lives very similar to this.  Life is a daily struggle for them and CCJ gives them a place to go after school, a place to play and have fun.

Wow, that felt like one of those commercials showing the starving children in Africa or something, not intended.  But this is a real problem throughout the world, even in the United States there are families being kicked out of their houses daily, children going hungry.  This world is not easy for everyone.  We need to be thankful every single day for everything that we have, and remember that where much is given, much is required.  We all need to find our own little ways to give back, whether it is through donating, teaching, serving, however you do it, just make sure that you do it!

Day 13-Graffiti time!

       Saturday-Now today was saweeeeeet!  We got to go to a favela and paint some of the houses there.  As I have mentioned the favelas are what you would consider the slums.  This is where super poor people have constructed very rudimentary houses out of anything that they can.  They are all really close together and a lot of people live in them.  The poverty is really sad, a lot of them have very little food and it is a daily struggle.  Drug trafficking is a very real and very big part of life in the favelas and that is one thing that CCJ, the place we are doing the internship with, is combating.  They are trying to take in the kids that have no where else to go, catch them before the drug traffickers do and teach them skills and things to do besides getting caught up in that.  The average kid that gets involved with trafficking does not live past the age of 25, so basically once you start your days are numbered.
     Doug, one member of our group was talking with one of the guys that works with the CCJ and asking him about it, if it was really that big and bad out here, if he had any contact with it.  He told Doug that it is, then he pointed to one of the young men that was with us and told him that the traffickers were trying really hard to get him involved, so the CCJ guy kept inviting him to as many activities as possible to hopefully get him into spray painting and graffitying so that he would take that up instead of getting involved with drugs and death.

 This is the wall that my group painted.  Do you see how narrow it is between the buildings?  The clothes hanging up on the wall are hung up with barbed wire.  Between the two rows of houses there is a ditch, so you have to walk on cement slabs placed over the ditch.  They don´t have running water in all the houses, but they have water spickets placed throughout the favelas so they fill up buckets of water from there and carry them home.

 This is Pedro, we painted the wall of his house.  He was so excited, it was fun to see how happy it made the people there, it was something to be super proud of.  I felt like we were on display because people kept walking by to see what we were doing and asking us to come and paint their houses.  Pedro had a huge smile on the entire time.

    This adroable child is Pedros grandson Igor.  Look at his huge eyes, is he not just enbtirely too adorable!  Most of the kids there were running around in nothing but their underwear (of course that is what all kids everywhere want to do, but our parents make us put on clothing, boo) it is sad to think that one day he might get caught up in the drug rings too, and be killed.  It is a fear that all the mothers and wives have for their sons, brothers, husbands.  I don´t know if women have to deal with it as much as the men, but even if they don´t it is still a huge part of their lives.

 Look at me go!  First you put on a base of latex paint that you tint to any color that you want, we obviously chose blue, then you paint and spray paint to your little hearts content.  I was immensely pleased with my palm tree, I am not much of an artist, usually, but look at me go!

 These are the other members of my group, Mitch in the back, then Cristina and then Jordan.  If you look behind them on the left there is an arm sticking up, that is Avraão...or something like that, he is part of CCJ and he loves painting words, so that is what he is doing over on that wall.

There he is right up front now.  They are all super cool people, they are so good with the children that they work with and it is really awesome to remember that most of them are from favelas as well and they have overcome a lot and now help others.  Imagine if there weren´t organizations such as this that help these kids to find something else to do in life, to love art and have meaning and purpose for what they are doing.

 Here are a few pictures of what the other groups did.  There were so many houses there that obviously we were not able to get to all of them, not for lack of them all trying to get us to paint their houses, but we did run out of paint eventually!  We have some very creative people in our group.

Now we get to some of the ones that the real artists from CCJ created.  These pictures are cool because not only do they show the creative artistic ability of the painters and graffiti artists, but also their photography skills at work, which is another one of the aspects of art that they teach to kids.

This is Carbonel, from what I have seen he is the leader there.  He is a really nice guy and he is fantastic with the kids.  He is super patient and they just adore him.  Before we left we went over to see what he was painting and he had about 15 kids around him, he was letting them all help him with his wall and they were just eating it up, it was adorable.

 This guy is super talented, not sure what his name is, but on Face book he is Preto Ds.  It was really cool to watch this bird come to life, I didn´t get to see him actually finish it but got to watch part of it.  They have so much talent, it really is quite hard to graffiti and have an image turn out this good.  I don´t know if any of you have tried it, but I think we should have a party when I get back and spray paint the old shed, eh, eh!!  That would be a lot of fun...but it would probably end up with palm trees and an ugly beach scene rather than something fantastic like this, oh well, we can´t all be born with this much raw talent or it wouldn´t be so stinkin cool!

Check out this last picture, same picture, and this is the guy also at work, but look at the photography, amazing isn´t it!  These people are so talented!  I can´t get over it.  I love working with them so much because they are so talented, and yet they are working for an organization where they probably don´t get paid hardly anything, if anything at all, and they are doing it to better the lives of those around them, it is amazing!  I think that this might really be a deciding factor of me going into humanitarian work rather than international business or something else.  It has been an amazing experience just in these few weeks to see the difference that they are trying to make!

Day 12- Forró and skin exfoliation

       
      Been awhile sorry.  I need to catch up on a day or two, we have just been super busy the last few days, so I am going to jump back to Friday and get you the goods of what happened because we have been having a lot of fun this weekend, so fasten your seatbelts and hold on to your baby seal leather boots (name that movie you fantastic fish you!)
    Ok, so on Friday we had a little bit of time to go to the beach and we saw the funniest thing ever, well almost ever. 
    Have you ever felt that your skin is too rough?  Have you ever searched endlesly for a way to smooth even the hard to reach patches of skin.  Does your skin often catch on your clothing and frustrate you to no end.  We are here to tell you that you need be irritated no more.  After years and years of studies and tests we have at last come up with the perfect solution!  For a mere three payments of $69.99 you can have that baby smooth skin that you have always dreamt of.  Other products out there will help yoiu achieve soft hands or a softer face, but our product reaches even the most unseen places and gives you a complete body exfoliation.  Call today for a cheap trial run for only two seashells and a wink.  We value our customers and want you to have the best experience possible. 
(I am trying to download the link for our product, please cross your fingers and hope that it works as you will not want to miss out on the complete awesomeness that is contained in this clip!  Even if you have to watch it sideways since I don´t know how to rotate videos...)

      While that is thinking about loading let us continue on, oh, I will at least include a photo of our first client

ah, isn´t he a beaut!?  This man gave me quite a bit of entertainment, definitely made my sunburn worth it!  If the video doesn´t load I guess I will have to keep you in suspense for a few more weeks, bahahaha!

    Anyway, moving on.  After that beach we all took some vans and went to a city named Caruaru which holds a huge Forró celebration for days during June.

 They had all sorts of stands set up, a carnival-I rode a ferris wheel in Brazil, how fun is that.  It was pretty standard, except I thought the guy was never going to let us off!  You definitely get your 2 reais worth on that ride.  The guy was on his cell phone the entire time and around and around and around we went!  It was a lot of fun.

   So the Forró if I haven´t already told you, is super big down here.  It is a type of music and dance and they have used it at all of the dances that we have been to, the entire time!  Except for one song where they do the quadrilha.  It is pretty standard and there are some basic steps, but then you can take it and just kind of go crazy with it.  It is a lot of fun to learn it and dance.  So they had all sorts of food stands and I had the best chocolate filled churro ♫ever♪!  They had a big tent set up where all sorts of performers were doing different forró dances, they had a big concert going on, break dancers, all sorts of different bands playing at all the different corners, art exhibits set up and just a ton to do and see, it was a lot of fun to go to.  Plus, the biggest kick was that we had to take two different busses, er van thingys down and the one that picked up the people in my area had a tv and dvd player, so we watched ´How to train a dragon´on the way down, still possibly one of my most favoritist movies, and it had reclining seats.  We get there, 2-3 hour drive, and find out that the other one did not have tv or reclining seats so the poor people suffered the whole way, :(