its a rough life on the beach...

porto belo beach
Originally uploaded by ana.brasileira.

I figure its time to show you all a picture of the beautiful place that I get to call home. This is basically the best part of it all... the beach, which is also quickly becoming my sanctuary. I have been coming here daily: to run, to walk, to think, to pray, to sing, to splash my toes in the warm water of the atlantic, or all of these at once (although i suppose running and walking at the same time would be hard to do). I haven´t gone swimming yet, although I´m sure that it will happen pretty soon.
Last night I went running at dusk and it was much more beautiful than this. At night the beach is basically a sidewalk, everyone comes out to walk, there are even streetlights on the beach and it was just amazing yesterday with pink skies, and people enjoying the slow life down here. I´ll be sure to take a picture at dusk some time for all of you since it is truly a sight to behold. Funny thing happened when I was running though. I told myself that I was only going to go for 20 minutes, but when I got to my 10 minute turning around point I was so close to the end of the beach (opposite direction of picture) that I figured that I´d go the whole way. Because I did this I had to run pretty hard back because I told Jorge and Vania to come looking for me if I didn´t come back in 30 minutes. I was doing pretty good at beating the clock, but when I turned the corner, off of the beach onto the 2 blocks back to the house I was pretty darn tired. I´m running by a few houses that have dogs barking at me, but knowing that they were all within their fences I didn´t think anything of it... until I heard one right behind me! I started running as fast as I could because I didn´t know what type of dog it was and it was catching up... it gets right on my heals and I look behind me (at this point i´m envisioning a huge dog) and there is this little tiny dog that really thinks its tough stuff. I felt like such an idiot, but at least the last two blocks of my run were fast and strong :-)

I asked my aunt Vania about getting a portuguese tutor today and she gave me this huge hug and said "I´ll tutor you!" and then she showed me all of these work books I can go through etc. I think its great that she´s so willing, but really she´s the only person out of my uncle, cousin and her that will really have a conversation with me in portuguese. So it would be nice to get out of the house, have a little companionship for an hour each afternoon and get to know someone new. She said that if I really want to pay for someone to help me she would ask around. I think what I may do is just work on a few of these work books on my own when she´s not around and get my talking out when she is. I´m thinking pretty seriously about going to visit my tia Ana in a few weeks, so maybe then, after I´ve really gotten my bearings I´ll look around Ijui where she lives and go to the language school there where I know they could help me. I´m overall feeling pretty good about how quickly i´m catching on though... eventhough i´m constantly in my room looking words up and jotting down what they mean, I feel like my overall progress is pretty good and I should stop being so hard on myself...I have only been here for 3 days, I think for that short of time I´m doing pretty well.

I think that´s about it. We leave early tomorrow to go to Ponta Grossa, have a long weekend with family and celebrate easter. I probably won´t be back online until monday.

take care all,
Ana (assuming no weight gained/lost, but my stomach has been stretched out a few times; 4 bug bites, 66 degrees F, but its night right now, I´d say it was about 80 at the hottest part of the day)

ps: sorry about the funky format... i tried a new way of posting and it turned out weird... won´t do it again...