First month down

Well, it's been nearly a whole month now that my team has been in Brazil and I"m finally getting around to my first blog entry. There's a lot of stuff to fill everyone in on, so let's get started..

The first four weeks of our stay here has been spent primarily in a satellite town of Brasilia called Gama. Gama is a deceptively big city. I've been told that it is home to nearly 300,000 people, but it seems much smaller due to the proximity of all of the houses and the number of apartment complexes. Dan, Sheralynn, Dani and I have all stayed with different host families for this first month, all of which live within about a 25 minute radius. My host family consists of my mom and dad (Dina and Daniel), my two siblings (Diane and Diego), and Dina's cousin (Risomar) who lives with us and mainly acts as help around the house. I should also mention that I have another older brother, Danielzinho (or Daniel Jr), who is married and has moved out. He, his wife, and their daughter are usualy around the house on weekends though. The whole family has been very welcoming and I am definitely looking forward to spending my remaining two months in Gama with them.

The first month I have to admit has been a little hectic. Thursday through Fridays were usually spent in Gama for our Portuguese lessons every morning. The first three Staurdays and Sundays were spent visiting churches and communities in the other satellite cities that we will all end up spending time in eventually (Samambaia, Ceu Azul, and Ceilandia). Mondays so far have all been orientation days in Brasilia with Betty and Otis Hochstetler. These have been spent doing some sightseeing, learning about some of the many religions in Brasilia, as well as getting to know Brazil and it's history. These times have been a huge blessing so far. It was nice to get one day out of the week to drop our guard and speak english, as well as having lots chances to ask some questions about the culture here from the perspective of people who have been in a relatively similar situation as out group is right now.

This past Saturday was our last day as a whole group before Dan and Dani left for Samambaia. So, to celebrate the end of our language lessons and the first month, we and our host families went to a "chacara" right outside of Gama for some fun in the sun. We had a barbecue by the pool and spent some time enjoying the extremely hot, early spring weather here. To finish off the day, Dan and I spent some time playing futsal with some other kids that were there that day (universal language, anyone?). Our time there soon came to a close and Sheralynn and I had to say goodbye to Dan and Dani as they headed off to Samambaia for the next 2 months.

As it stands right now, Sheralynn and I are remaining in Gama right up until Christmas. We finally started our first classes this week and I couldn't be more excited about them. We teach an English class in the mornings two days a week and Spanish class in the evenings of those same days. Needless to say, I think we both feel pretty exhausted after our Spanish classes. We conduct our classes purely in Portuguese, but end up having to translate words and phrases across three languages total. It is my hope that teaching a Spanish class in Portuguese will help me to differentiate better between the two languages, rather than do the opposite and confuse me even more. I guess my fingers are crossed.

Anyways, I hope this give a little more insight into what I've been up to this last month as well as what I'll be doing in the months ahead. Things are starting to fall into place and a regular schedule is beginning to form now so hopefully I'll be making updates to this blog in a much more frequent manner from now on!