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!

Brazil Team!

So here is a picture of me and my fellow Brazil teammates!

Pictured, from left to right are: myself, Dan Root, Danielle Klotz, and Sheralynn Neff.  Dan is from Springs, Pennsylvania.  Danielle is from Wakarusa, Indiana.  And Sheralynn is from North Newton, Kansas.  So far we have all been getting along well and I am anticipating a great year of getting to know one another better and growing with each other!

Chicago So Far

Well, it's been nearly 2 weeks now that the rest of the Radical Journey participants and myself have spent living in Chicago for orientation. It may be nearly 2 weeks but it definitely doesn't feel like it!

The first week was packed with lots of stuff to do. After all 16 of us became relatively aquainted with one another, we went right in to covenant building and learning how to find our way around Chicago using the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority). After a series of days doing some sight seeing and location finding, we had a CTA proficiency test of sorts on Saturday morning. For the test, each country group (Brasil, Paraguay, England and Sweden) were blindfolded and taken by car to an undisclosed location around town. We then had to find our way home from wherever we were dropped off using only public transportation. My group was the first one back so we got to relax until the others found their way home. The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and taking care of any unfinished business from the week before.

So far, the second week has gone by much faster than the first. Our days have consisted mainly of practicing some spiritual disciplines and learning more about our individual personality types through a series of tests. On wednesday of this week, Dani (a fellow Brasil teammate) and I took a trip downtown to the Brasilian consulate to see if our visas were ready to pick up yet. After all the trouble that we had had with the Chicago branch of the Brasilian consulate this summer, we didn't really know what to expect of our visit. Upon arriving, it seemed that our visas were in order and ready to go. But that wasn't the case.. After about an hour and a half of waiting, we were finally called to the front of the line again and recieved our visas!! Apparently the visas were only valid for 90 days so they had to make some adjustments and extended the validity of them to 300 days instead. So, after months of working on applications and procuring documents for the process, our visas are finally in hand and our whole group will be ready to fly out to Brasilia on October 6 as planned. As the month of orientation is nearing the halfway point, it'll be interesting to see what the next two weeks hold in store. I'm sure the next two weeks will go even faster than the last two, especially given some key visits from home that I have to look forward to both this coming weekend and the next!