"Oh Brazil!" If I had a penny for every time I said that phrase this week... "No worries" might be a close second, but the first is more suitable for the work I have been doing over here. Running late? No problem. Raining? Whatever. Class cancelled? Ok! Everyday is something new, and instead of being prepared for the day, you have to be prepared to not be prepared! Forgetting something or getting lost on the streets or somebody not showing up can all be remedied by saying "Oh Brazil!" For some people, this type of living style would drive them crazy, but I sort of enjoy it. Everyone takes their time with everything, and they can hardly justify getting angry with you when you do something like this if they are a culprit themselves.
That being said, we still are accomplishing what we set out to do. This week we went back to the schools to work on the gardens a bit more and meet with some of the classes again. The kids swarmed just like last week, and Anderson, my work partner, got a picture.
Obviously the kids don't have enough time or patience (or interest) to actually do the grunt work for making a garden, so we are assigned the task. I didn't realize how much I had missed my gardening job, and it felt good to get my hands in the dirt again. It was also rewarding to see our work after we installed the vertical garden, where we planted strawberries.
The rest of the week was spent planning activities that we could do with the kids. We cut out words and pictures to be used in an English-Portuguese word game about the garden, and came up with another conceptual game where they can find the relationships between the words they have learned. The teachers seemed excited to have us going into the classroom in the future, so that has made me excited as well!
The "cultural" side of this week included caldo de cana, capoeira, and you guessed it, more slack lining! Caldo de cana is a juice made from raw sugar cane, and there are little stands everywhere! It has a sort of earthy sweetness to it and is very refreshing after a long day outside. Saturday's agenda included a trip to Curitiba's Jardin Botanical (Botanical Garden), which was beautiful in itself, but we were also presented with a surprise. A huge group of chanting people led us to a capoeira circle! Capoeira is a Brazilian form of dance mixed with martial arts mixed with music, and it is a spectacle to watch. The first time you see it, it looks as though the people are just hopping around doing flips and kicks in front of each other. But when you start noticing how the dancers/fighters are working together, things become much more interesting. If one kicks up, the other ducks down. If one does a foot sweep, the other jumps and does a flip. It was just mesmerizing to watch and listen to, so I got some pictures and a video to remember! Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to put the video on here, but I can always show it to you when I get back.
We visited Barigui Park on Sunday where we slack lined to our hearts' content. Barigui Park is a huge area where tons of people come to just hang out. It really amazed me to see so many families and groups of friends playing soccer, flying kites, riding bikes, or just sitting under the trees. It even started raining at one point, and there were only a few people that packed up their things and left. I suppose that a park of that capacity might be equally crowded in say Houston or a similar sized city, but I was none-the-less surprised. Some of you might have seen this picture on Facebook earlier this week, but I'll post it again just in case.
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| Slack lining at Barigui Park |
Until next week!! Tchau :)
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