Where Does The Time Go?

This is probably something I ask myself at least once a day... where is the time going? It is hard to believe that a few days ago marked my 3 months down here! Right after I last posted my blog Katie became sick again with something that just seemed to drain the energy from her. As a result she had to miss several days at the program. As much as I hated to see her feeling this way this was a huge growth period for me and Megan. Being at the program alone, all problems that came up were brought to us and anything the kids needed was our responsibility. It was absolutely a test of how far we had come thus far in the trip and our ability to be the reliable teachers without Katie by our side. It was tough at times and challenges arose but I think we both learned that we are capable of a lot more than maybe we thought.
We made another trip to renew our visas, this time to Ponta Grossa, a little closer but a lot more complicated! Who knew the city would have more than one Policia Federal?? It was a long day of asking for directions, lots of walking around the city and scrambling to ensure that we had all the proper documents but by the time we snagged the last 3 bus seats for our ride home, we were officially given permission to stay in the country another 3 months!
Something new we have been doing at the program has been picking a Student of the Week who gets to fill out a poster all about themselves: their favorites, how they show others they care and interesting facts about themselves. We try and pick the student based on behavior throughout the week, attempts to try all the activities we offer and most recently we have been looking for a student with good manners. We hang up the poster along with a picture of themselves on the wall for everyone to see. It has been really neat to see their pride at being chosen and put on display for their good behavior!
Another Friday Megan and I prepared a craft for the kids and had a successful, MESSY, day painting and decorating large photo frames. Although the clean up was tideous and long, it was well worth the fun we had getting creative with the kids. They came up with some really unique designs and now they are hanging on the walls at Peti giving the classrooms some nice color!
We had a special activity for the kids one Saturday, something we have done in the past, where we had trampolines, ball bits and face painting. Our original plan was for this to be our introduction to the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program between our kids and students at FATEB, the local college in our city. Unfortunately, despite our many visits to speak with students there, we only had 3 students show up to help. It was a little frustrating but you have to start somewhere. Despite this we had a wonderday turn out of students and it was a great chance for us to just play with the kids and not feel like we had to constantly be disciplining them, instead we just got to enjoy their company!
Unfortunately the numbers for our Monday night English class continues to dwindle. With a lot of schedule conflicts we are now down to 4 students who come on a regular basis. We had several people on a waiting list so hopefully the class will work for them and we can start to fill in our numbers again to have a full class. For now we are loving being able to give our current students some wonderful one on one attention and it is so amazing to see their improvement each week, absolutely gives us a sense of pride!
This past week we have been hanging out with some groups of friends that we have formed including the Telemaco Borba police force and an amazingly fun class from FISK English school. It has been nice to feel like there are still people in this town for us to meet because it was starting to feel that the town was so small and we were running out of fresh ideas for things to keep us entertained on the weekends!
We sent Sister Rose off to the United States with a pizza party at their house followed by a classic game of Rummikub. There is nothing like putting yourself in the company of 3 nuns especially when you have us 3 young girls who have alright matched ourselves up with one of the nuns and constantly talk about how that is us in a few years maybe minus the religious life but who knows! They are such a wonderful example to us of a life dedicated to service and it is great to just exchange stories with them and soak up what we can of their knowledge. Sister Rose will be in the States for almost a month and situations have already arisen where we have requested her presense only to remember her absense! We wish her a wonderful vacation and break from her hectic life down here and hopefully some of you will get to visit with her while she is in town!
Another new aspect we have added to the program is literatura. Us 3 absolutely LOVE reading so this has grown to be one of our favorite things! The students have about 30 minutes each day for silent reading. Also they are given a new task each day involving some sort of a summary of what they read or designing a picture to depict what they read. It has been really important for them to see us reading as well because it is rare here in Brazil to find people who enjoy reading. Hopefully we can reach out to some students who never knew what they could learn or experience just from reading a book!
We had around 15 students come to Telemaco Borba this past Friday for a capoeira houda. It took place in the front of the church and involved both our kids and other kids and adults who practice capoeira at our gym. It was one of my most proud moments thus far in Brazil. Without taking any credit, I felt so proud to see our students work up the confidence to fight in the middle of the circle with more experienced people. They never backed down and continued to arise to whatever challenge they faced playing with the older students. The smiles on their faces as they left on the bus that night was priceless and the whole night was something I will never forget!
We now have plans to go to Curitiba this Saturday with our selected 37 students who have earned the right to travel with us. Right now the plan is to go to the mall for some food, possibly visit the Botanical Gardens and then finish with a soccer game! This trip was always in our plans but the date being this weekend came together yesterday, giving us 3 days at the program to plan. It has been hectic and chaotic but we were able to get both a bus and the tickets to the soccer game for free!! We are really proud to have been able to pull this off so quickly and we are excited to experience this with our most well behaved and deserving students!
Hope everyone at home is doing wonderful and enjoying the fall weather, something I am sad to miss. We are anxiously awaiting and preparing for the arrival of possibly 18 travelers in only a little over a month! May God continue to bless you all as He just continues to shower us with wonderful friends, experiences and opportunities to spread His love to His most beautiful people here. As usual I would like to thank everyone for their constant support and prayers for us; know that we continue to keep you in our morning prayer as well.
Bejos (kisses) from Brazil!

Another Month Down

Once again starting off with an apology for the time between blogs. Flipping through my journal proves just how much has happened since I last filled everyone in on our lives here in Brazil. Before we got back into the routine of going to Imbau everyday, us girls decided to have a mini retreat/bonding afternoon in the local park. We all prepared an aspect; I started us off with some team building and group bonding activities, Megan followed with a contemplation on prayer and the importance of silence and we wrapped it up with Katie asking us to reflect on our time thus far and Brazil and goals for the remaining time. It was such a special afternoon with the girls and such a unique experience to have here in Brazil. We are hoping to do another one shortly before the group arrives in November and possibly another one when our 6 months is drawing to an end. We have gone to FATEB, the local college, several times to speak with students there about participating in our project once a month to spend time with our kids, sort of a Big Brothers/Big Sisters program. We had a great response of enthusiastic students who want to be a part of it! Right now the 18th of September is set to be our first "fun day" hopefully using the trampoline, ball pit, stilts and other fun toys from our friend Lucas. We celebrated the birthday of our special friend and trainer, Bubbles, by creating a cake out of cardboard boxes that was big enough to fit Megan inside. He had mentioned several times how much he loved when Marilyn Monroe came out of a cake for President Kennedy (I think) so we decided to recreate this for him. We traveled to the gym with our big boxes, stacked them up outisde the gym and prepared for him to come out for his surprise. Our friend Bruno went inside to get him while Katie and I set up Megan and prepared to blow bubbles when he came out. Come to find out he had left early to travel for work so we stood on the street with our large cardboard cake and ate the cake we had bought for him! Luckily we were able to perform our surprise for him later when he returned but nothing can compare to the looks we got from passerbys as we stood on the side of the road that day. We were invited one Saturday evening to attend the youth ministry program at our friend Bruno's church. It was upbeat and lively with teens singing and dancing and praising the Lord. It was just what I needed as I had been missing the youth ministry program back home and being around teens who had such a fun, energetic spirit which they used to praise God! Hopefully this is something we will be able to do again. We finally headed back to Imbau on the 16th of August and I noticed such a big jump in my ability to communicate with the kids; all that studying over vacation payed off! On the second day back one of our afternoon students asked me if I now spoke Portuguese. :) It is amazing the difference it can make to have a little more confidence and ability to speak with the children... now even more so than before I want to spend each and every moment with them, trying to communicate with words rather than only body language. I will never cease to be amazed at the patience they have with me as I stumble to convey my message. The hardest part is still discipling as it is difficult for them to take me seriously. Some of the students are only one year younger than myself but I have learned some lessons from Megan who is quite the expert at commanding their attention! We have finally settled down enough to start other aspects of the program that have been lacking these first couple months. Megan and I began photography with some of the students, taking them through the town and teaching them how to use the computer and basics about what makes a good photo. Some pick it up quicker than others but they are learning so much else along the way. They are required to ask permission before taking pictures in a store and we don't leave until they have thanked them, this is really helping to improve their manners and make them become more of a habit. Also we successfully completed our first community service project. We visited the house of a family who is struggling to provide food for their son as the mom is not able to work because she is home taking care of her husband with a disease that requires that he not be left alone. Our students did a great job bargain hunting to find the best deals on food and provide the family with the most for their allotted $100 budget. We have been spending a lot of time planning for our first travel experience with the kids; right now the plan is to travel to Curitiba for a professional soccer game in late October! We are in the process of narrowing down the list of students who will be able to travel and continue to stress on a regular basis to them the importance of participating and behaving if they want the opportunity to travel with us! We have brought a new aspect to the program every Wednesday. We started this Wednesday with a presentation on the importance of not fighting with the other students. We put on several theatrical shows to demonstrate our point and asked them to do the same with situations they deal with everyday. It was so cute to see them get into the roles and really strive to find the right way to handle arguements. We gave them a 3 step model to follow: first try to ignore the other person, second ask them politely to stop and third ask the teacher to get involved. We knew just how successful the day was when before we left we had a girl come and tell Katie that another girl had been pulling her hair. These were two girls who fought on a regular basis and normally both were in trouble before the end of each day. We were all SO proud that at least for that day she had stepped up and taken the iniciative to follow our advice! Next week we are planning to talk about the importance of manners... we will see how that goes! Megan's birthday was the 28th of August and since she was away from her family Katie and I wanted to plan something extra special for her. We woke her up early on her birthday and sent her on a scavenger hunt around Telemaco Borba, having stops at all our frequently visited places including the bus station, grocery store, photo shop and computer house. At each location she received a gift and a clue to send her to the next spot. For example at the bus station she recieved a ticket for the upcoming week and at her favorite restaurant she received a chocolate pastel! We met her halfway for a snack and then finished up with lunch at the Sister's house. She had such a fun afternoon and we were so happy to do our part to make her day special! We had a spa day where the girls got their nails done as well at the salon of a friend. We all went to Mass together that night before heading out with friends to celebrate her birthday :) Overall it was a fun day for everyone and hopefully a birthday Megan will never forget! This past weekend we traveled to Curitiba, a big city a little further south, to try and renew our visas so that we can stay another 3 months. Come to find out we were too early to do this but luckily when we try again (this Monday) we can travel closer to the city of Ponta Grossa. It all worked out alright though because the girls had a capoeira course in the city this weekend anyways. It ended up only being Saturday morning and afternoon but we got to meet alot of other people who love the sport of capoeria too! We saved a lot of money by staying in the apartment of a friend as he headed home for the weekend. This was my first time actually staying in Curitiba so I loved all the sightseeing and window shopping. It was great to eat McDonalds again too! Sunday night Megan and I were going for a walk and happened to come across a Catholic church with Mass starting in 5 minutes, the timing could not have been more perfect and the church could not have been more beautiful. It was an old church with such beautiful decorations and paintings on the walls, it was probably my favorite Mass thus far in Brazil! One of my favorite things was that we sang the Lamb of God for the first time since we had been in Brazil; this was something my mom told me to listen for to remind me of her and this was the first time that was able to happen. I was overwhelmed with emotion and love for my mom! We had both yesterday and today off as today is the independence day for Brazil. Everything in town in closed so we are using the time to catch up on everything and prepare for our manners course tomorrow. We recieved a little rain this morning but other than that the weather continues to be beautiful and sunny and our jackets are off before noon! Crazy to think that exactly 3 months from today we will be returning home to see our family and friends.. so much time left yet I know the time will fly by with the group coming in November. Thanks once again for your continued support and recognition of the work we are doing here in Brazil, we can really feel the impact of your prayers on days when we are struggling to find the patience or energy to continue and make it through but each day is a blessing, one that we strive to never take for granted. Happy Indpedence Day Brazil! Ate mais :)