wild weather!

You know how when you are little they always tell you how hail can be the size of golf balls, but yet, in Seattle, we don't even have marble sized ones? Well, yesterday, while Nico and I were going to pick up my plane ticket, there was hail, yes! the size of golf balls. It was so intense... luckily we were in the bus, but... as Nico so eloquently put it "this is worse than Iraq!" it really did feel like a war zone with balls of ice crashing down on the bus and world around us. What an amazing demonstration of the power of weather. Alberto told us when he got home that night that 10 people died of heart attacks because of the hail (it was such a shock on their systems), and the news showed windows being broken, people with bruises and an overall state of panic throughout many parts of the city as no one wanted to go out in the extreme weather... there is a reason we say "no throwing ice" when we are having a snowball fight... its so much harder than snow. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me... but I found this picture of it on google to give you an idea of what it was all like...

beijos,
Ana

(Weather: 14 C, cloudy with a chance of meatballs, Craving: Friday night)

I'M GOING HOME!!!

So after missing my flight last night and being very discouraged about making it home within a reasonable amount of time, Alberto called up his friend who works for Delta, pulled strings and got me a ticket out of here for a mere $700 for this friday. Other than that I'm going to have a layover in Atlanta for 10 hours... its better than not making it home at all.

It was actually really entertaining though. When Nico and I went to pick up the ticket, the lady told us that the ticket would be $5000 pesos (3 pesos to a dollar) and Nico told her that it should only be about $2200, and she goes "no e possivel!" but, luckily it was... and we got my ticket and I'll be there saturday at 7:30 at night. (Anyone want to go out?!?)

Yesterday, Nico and I wento to an area of town called "La Boca" that is a really old, and generally poor part of town that is famous for its brightly colored buildings. They are brightly colored because when people lived there and needed to paint, they had to buy whatever was cheap... so as it turns out its all funky colored. That's where we took this picture... I think its my favorite of my trip. So funny and such a great memory. Besides, now I can say that I tangoed in Buenos Aires :)


ate logo,

Ana

Buenos Aires e os Gatinhos

Hey everyone. Here in Buenos Aires now... hanging out with Alberto and his sons. Its been pretty fun, although because of Niko having a pathology test tomorrow and people being busy I haven't seen as much of the city as I might have liked to so far. Although tomorrow, when everyone is working, Paulito's future mother in law is going to take me downtown and show me around.

I officially can't speak spanish anymore, especially argentinian style. They speak so differently than I'm used to, and since I've also got my brain cued into portuguese, i'm even that much more clueless. Luckily, the boys all speak a little english and if they talk slow enough and I talk slow enough, we can usually converse without too much trouble.

Anyways, I'll hopefully have a lot of fun pictures by tomorrow... but even if I don't. I love the family and will definitely come back... hopefully with Nanny and Danny and the girls. i think it would be more fun that way.

anyways,
adios, tchau, beijos, hasta luego...

Ana

ps: ITS COLD HERE!

don´t cry for me...

I´m going to ARGENTINA!

I know its quite a change of plans... but lets face it... Varig is going under and everyone in Brasil is using other airlines for international flights. At this point the only ones that are empty are heading to Lebanon... and who would want to go there right now? So the plan is that I am heading to Buenos Aires for a few days. This Saturday I head out to play before hopefully catching a flight home on Tuesday. And if Tuesday doesn´t work out Thursday and Friday also have very hopeful flights.

I would appreciate all of your prayers these next few days, that everything goes smoothly, that I get on my flight, and that I pack everything I bought in the luggage I have and don´t have to pay extra to cart it around with me :) I´m going to need to pull a Mary Poppins to make it all fit I think!

Anyways, here is a new photo... taken yesterday. I´m just trying to survive this absolutely horrible winter we´re having. I know, its rough...

beijos,
Ate logo,

Ana

Porto Alegre

I spent a few days in Porto Alegre with my great tia Lidia, her daughters, Nair and her family, and Evone. It was really fun. Especially since I got to hang out with my cousins William and Filipe. Filipe is a new dad... he has a beautiful little girl, Julia, with his girlfriend, Ana, and it was so great to hang out with everyone. William was a spectacular tour guide for me as well... took me around to buy things (including a sweet Grêmio jersey... EU SOU GREMISTA!!! which is against his fancy, seeing how he roots for Inter... the other soccer team in Porto Alegre), we went to the river and strolled along the bank with coke in hand, and bummed around. It was great fun. Anyways, heres a picture of everyone for you all. I´ll assume that you can figure out most of the characters here.

everything that I ever wanted...

As my time in Ijui comes to a close, I have been reflecting a lot about my time here and how much God has blessed it. I was flipping through my blog and I came across my entry from May 9th, the one-month anniversary of my arrival here. I was reminded of how disheartened I at that time, that I hadn´t done what I thought God sent me here to do, but now, seeing what I´ve been able to do here, in Ijui, I feel like I´ve done everything that I thought I would, only on God´s timing, not mine. Some of the things that I described being frustrated with was not finding a church, not finding a tutor, and not teaching english, which I was expecting to do with my tia Vânia´s class. But I´m happy to say that I´ve now done all of these things, just in ways differently than I expected.

I have been blessed to be accepted whole-heartedly into Tia´s church. I´ve found a place there that they all say will feel empty this sunday when I´m not filling it. I´ve been able to sing in front of the church a number of times: a duet with Eduardo, a few trio´s with Tia and our friend Raquel, and a group of maybe 6 people a few weeks ago. I´ve also found a place in the youth group, even spoke (poorly) at the service they had last saturday. I´ve swapped worship music with one of the guys in the band, and really feel like I´ve gained a community that I was craving for the first month and a half of my time here, and i´m sad to have to leave it.

Although I wouldn´t consider him "my tutor", Eduardo has been pivotal in my picking up on little nuances in Portuguese that I wouldn´t have necessarily learned without him. We had a few lessons that solidified things that I understood and cleared out doubts, and I can say for sure that I wouldn´t have learned the word "poupança" without his help, nor would have I learned how increadibly hard portuguese is in the first place. It was good being reassured by him that I do know how to speak portuguese, that my accent isn´t really that bad and also being corrected by him a little have all helped a lot. Its been nice having a friend who "speaks my language" to, if nothing less, give my brain a break. But Eduardo and his family have been a lot of the reason that I love ijui so much. Knowing that I always had a place to be, that I didn´t have to have a reason to drop by and was always welcome, helped me find my place, and taught me a thing or two about hospitality. I will always be in debt to them, and I hope someday I can return the favor and take them around Seattle for a few weeks of vacation.

Lastly, i´m going to consider my feeble attempt to help Eduardo in his classes as "teaching portuguese". Although I really don´t feel like I did much of anything, I know that Eduardo liked my presence to explain things that his student´s didn´t understand or give the correct pronouciation of difficult words. I´ll never forget how difficult it is for his thursday night class to say "unimaginative" nor the glimpse of how hard it is to learn english, when it all appears so easy for me. I´m thankful for my time of being available to help him, it gave me more of a sense of purpose here in Ijui and also more of a brain break, which I always seem to need!

So on thursday I leave to go to Porto Alegre, my time in Ijui will be officially over, this place that has felt so much like home will be a place that I long to return to. But I´m thankful that it is this way: that I feel so strongly connected to this place, because it only means that i´ll be back... hopefully multiple times for longer times. God willing, this place will remain a special place in my heart that I´ll get to go back to, and have this feeling grow.

Até mais,

Ana

light in the darkness

We had the pleasure last night of a power outage from about eleventhirty till midnight. Firstly, the thunder storm that caused this outage was amazing, but secondly, I always love the memories and thoughts I have when I´m without electricity.

I was in the car with my ride home, Daniel and his wife and daughter, when it happened. We were at church for the culto do jovens (youth service). We stayed really late because we ate a butt-load of pizza afterwards. When I arrived at tia´s in the complete darkness I stumbled around, feeling for walls and countertops as I made my way to her room, to wake her up and ask about a candle. As I felt my way back into the kitchen, found the drawer with the candles, and then matches, feelings of relief come to mind. Then a match between my fingers, with a flick of my hand a spark and then light. The room is suddenly the place I recognize. I don´t need to aim in a direction and hope to not run into anything. I can see it, and avoid hurdles in my way. This reminds me of a sermon of Richard´s a while back. About our longing for the light in a dark world. About how Jesus is our light and his light is in us, we are the light. How many times have I covered up my light for the sake of fitting in or wanting to have fun? Having this realization of how lost I am without light, it doesn´t make sense to "hide it under a bushel".

I also have fun memories of every christmas eve service that i can remember. The lights are out. Richard, in my most recent memories, maybe pastor John in older ones, lights a candle. The light has come into the world... he passes the light on, it continues to grow until the sanctuary is full of light. We sing "silent night, holy night" a capella to end the service. Such wonderful memories of peace, warmth, my grandma´s lutefisk... ok, maybe that´s not that great of a memory.

The imagery of candle light, the comfort of it, the fact that for about a year i would always light a candle to meet with God makes moments of needing the light that much more meaningful. I am appreciative of these times. As i hop in bed and blow out the candle, watch the red embers slowly fade away, I say a prayer and thank God for being my light, for not needing to worry about stumbling around in darkness feeling my way through life because He is always with me. And He will never go out in the thunderstorms of life.

Future Plans....

Hey all,

Just here quickly to let you all know that I´m here in Ijui until this thursday, then will be going to Porto Allegre through the weekend and returning to Porto Belo after almost a month and a half away to spend my last weekish with Jorge, Vania, Zina and kiddos. I think its going to be really fun to be in Porto Belo with the kids for my last week, although I´m going to miss Ijui horribly. I´ve really enjoyed the friends i´ve made and they all want me to come back like crazy. I also happily joined brazil´s version of MySpace called Orkut so I can keep in touch with all of the people I´ve met here. It is really fun because Orkut isn´t just a thing for young people, like MySpace is... people of all ages are there so even my friends who are real adults (unlike people my age who are just legally adults) are there. It will be fun to show off my brazilian posse to everyone at home... especially since I´ve been so bad at taking pictures of people (like usual)

Anyways, I´ll be back the last week of July. And will probably also throw a coming home party/going to PT School party some weekend afterwards... so get ready to party brazilian style! we´ll only have brazilian things there... like meat and beer and caipirinhas and chimarrão and sagu (my new fave dessert) and samba, forro, and other brazilian music. It will be great, even though we won´t be so die-hard as brazilians and party until 6am... unless people want to :)

beijos e abraços,

Ana

(+2kg... tia´s desserts have done me in, 22 C, craving: mac n´jacks)

Holy Crap its July!

I can´t believe that its july and I only have about 3 weeks left. I also can´t believe brasils run in the world cup is over... at least all of the rumo ao hexa stuff I bought will be good for another 4 years.

I´m officially coming home the last week of July, sometime between the 22 and 29th, going standby again, so i´m just waiting for the news of a flight that´s wide open for me to jump on it. My plans for the next 3 weeks are as follows: I´m going to spend another week and a half here, in Ijui... maybe go to Santa Rosa again for a weekend and then on about the 14th of July i´m going to head to Porto Alegre to hang out with my family there for 5 days. By the 18th I´ll be back in Porto Belo for my last week or so of brazil! I can´t believe my time here is almost over, I feel like its just began, and I have so much to learn about the language of portuguese and my family, and this wonderful place.

News on PT school! I think i´ve arranged a housing situation. The house is 2 miles from campus and I´ll be living with 2 other second year girls. They mailed me pictures and it looks really cute. I´ll keep you updated!

ate logo!

Ana