I love Brasil and my family!

I think that the most fun part about this weekend was the ability to reflect on how much brasil is not like the united states and how great my family is down here. We left Thursday morning on the 5 hour drive to Ponta Grossa where a huge pchunk of our family lives. Immediately as we set into the groove of things on the road I was able to relax a little and observe so many comparisons that are just mind-boggling on some levels but really enjoyable on others and also noticed all sorts of fun things about my family that I LOVE while we spent the weekend together! I got a real feel for what Lifehouse means in their song “breathe” when they sing ‘waiting for your scraps to fall off of your table to the ground’. When we first arrived in Ponta Grossa we went to my cousins house and had a barbeque. Their dog, Kiki would wait so patiently for the smallest piece of fat or charred meat or anything she could get. I learned about why my cousin Marcos’s hair is unusually short... he and a bunch of his friends shaved their heads to support their friend with cancer. I got to get an earful about the different churches in the Porto Belo neighborhood... my tia vania had a lot to say about them all. She said the hardest thing about trying to get her family to go with her is that the one that is the most normal seeming to her only has about 10 members the rest sound like they are full of holy rollers. Upon leaving Zina’s house, her...well basically husband, but they aren’t married... Rafael came out with a beer and passed it around while we were all in the car before we drove over to visit with more family. I was told that I am far more brasilian in looks and mannerisms than my cousin Tanya (who has spent a significant chunk of her life in brasil). That I will always be able to get away with people thinking I am because I look the part, can play the part, and, if I learn how to speak portuguese well, I may even be able to pull off sounding right too. It was a huge compliment. Rafael also complimented me on being the first american he’s met that fit in, could be brasilian and that he liked a lot... he said I was very “Legal” which is basically cool in street speak. On the topic of speakin’ street I found out that the reason I have a really hard time understanding when young people talk is that they have slang for everything... for example, a cute guy is a gato, which to most people learning portuguese means cat. I had the hardest time when my cousin patricia told me about how we should go out and meet some cute gatos at night, I was like “cats? Why would we go out to see cats?” it was only after I was showing her pictures of my friends on myspace that I figured it out... by the way Ryan Wink... you are a gatinho lindo (cute little cat... it ranks high... trust me) Our daily schedule went something like this: 8-9 breakfast, 9-12 snack, lay around, drink tea, 12-4 lunch, 4-7 snack, lay around, drink beer, 7-10 dinner, 10--- snack, lay around, drink more beer, sleep. My tia natalia is incredibly impressed with how well I speak portuguese, she held my face in her hands and would say things like “Thank God! You are beautiful and healthy and now we can talk to each other!” And there are also funny things about how things are in brasil. The fact that my 1 1\2 year old cousin just climbs around on the seats when we drive places, the fact that Rafael will drink a beer as we drive somewhere and when I asked him about it he says ‘eh, i know the cops, they don~t care”. And that works the same for wearing seatbelts... on the highway they are on, but in towns... and i mean the very moment you are in town you take it off. It was a good Easter. Although we didn~t go to church I felt like my time was still spent reflecting on everything Christ has done for us. The family still prayed before meals, and we prayed before startin gon the road. I had some good talks about church and easter with different family members. It was great and wonderful, and although not what I’m used to, the reason I came down here was to experience something different, so no need to grovel over wishing it were normal. For kind of an update on everything else... my portuguese is getting better. I~m pretty good at having one on one conversations with people, it gets exponentially harder when i’m in a room full of poeple all jabbering about different things. I’m wishing I could learn verb tenses faster... I’m finding that I’m Ok at present, past and future, but when I want to talk about things I should do, or could do or might do I just get confused and have to pass the sentence up. I’m still doing good on my goals. Although I feel like I could pass on eating for about 3 days straight, my pants still fit, and I haven’t hooked up with any gatos like my cousins were talking about doing last night... so it looks like i’m home free till I visit again... but I do plan on visiting, so we’ll see how it goes. Feliz Pascoa! Ana (probably about .5 kg heavier, 3 bug bites, two of them right on my hand, 73 degrees F)