A little home sickness

A little home sickness...I think that is what you would call it. This week my mind was definately in Ohio with my family. I did not want to go home, I just wanted to be with my family.



But things are still going strong here. I am understanding much more Portuguese. I am really going to focus this week on trying to understand my teachers. They speak very fast and in the past I have beens unable to understand what they are saying... It is truely exausting to focus all of my attention on a sound and try to recognize words. Last week I was reconginzing a good majority of the words but was unable to actually understand content. Last week my brain became fried after my first period(1 and 15 minutes) and so for he rest of the day I would look up words in my minidictionary, day dream and write poetry.



Last weekend I spent Saturday and a good portion of my Sunday with other intercambistas...I mean exchange students. I met students from Germany, Denmark, South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Tiwain, Canada, and other Americans. We spent two days and one night in the very cool city of Botucatu (Boat-two-catch-oo). There, we bonded, ate great food, played games, had a pizza party at a very nice home of a Rotarian. For the night all the students we split up and sent to the homes of rotarians to spend the night. The family I stayed with was friendly and had a very lovely home. The next day we were told of the city's history..but in Portuguese...so I cannot really tell you what they told us. All the exchange students met the mayor or Botucatu, were were given books about the city and all were autographed by the author. Then we boarded a bus and drove to the country. Our first stop we ate lunch on..kind of a side of a moutain...It is really difficult to explain. Our second stop was at a waterfall, but before we got to the waterfall we had to hike a rough path for about 3/4 of a mile. The waterfall was beautiful..but my camera died..so I will have to steal pictures from other exchange students facebooks/orkuts..
A rotarian from Piracicaba, Rosali, gave me and some other exchange students a ride home from Botucatu. The drive was kind of long and at some point it was necessary for us to stop for gas. However, the gas station we stopped at did not have any gas...and Rosali did not have enough gas in her tank to make it to the next gas station. Sounds bad...but not in Brasil. With in twenty minutes there were two guys cking gas out of their own tank and putting it into our car. Of course Rosali payed them for teh gas...but only in Brasil..I dont even know of people in the loving town of Monroeville would do that.




On Wedensday (quarta-feira) this past week I skipped school and traveled to Sao Paulo to be with my sister Natalia at her university. I went with her to some classes and she gave me a tour of her "campus" and some labs. In the past she had told me about the rats she works with (bio medicine) and how cute they were. In one of the labs she took me two she chose a box/cage of 4 test rats and set it on the counter of a small room that only the two of us were in. She opened the box/cage and picked up the biggest rat. To both of our surprise the rat took off running around the counter that stretched around two walls of the room. I figured I would be helpful and assist my sister in catching the rat so I grabbed it. The rat with lightning speed crawled up my arm on to my chest and got to my neck before my sister grabbed it off of me and threw it back in its box/cage. She said that had never happened before and later referred to the rat as the rat from hell. hahaha.

Somethings I've Noticed:
-The soil here is a dark red
-It is not uncommon to be in a random place..like school, or on the street, or a church and find a tree with fruit and just eat right off of it.
-All gas stations are service gas stations...drivers do not even have to get out of there cars...but they do to make conversation for enjoyment.