MOVING DAY!

The big news for us here is that we have moved houses! Our old home was giving us all kinds of problems with mold growing on our clothes, pillows, sinks- basically everywhere. With Megan's allergy it was crucial for us to get out of there so when the house next door opened up for the same price, we quickly accepted the offer. Monday we spent a good 4 hours moving everything over to the bigger, cleaner house. Our first night there was a success! We are still in need of doing a few home decor things around the house but soon it will feel like home and we will forget we ever lived in the presence of mold! We had a fun house warming party on Friday night with some friends both from Telemaco and Imbau; it was a great time!

Tuesday in Imbau we spent a good while trying to figure things out for a previous student who stopped studying several years back because of laziness. We were under the impression that last year he had started up again only to find out this year that that was not the case. He claimed that the director refused to let him back into the school, as he was probably a troublemaker in the classroom and missed a lot of days but when we found out that there is a new principle, we decided to give it a shot. We took him there to talk directly with them but unfortunately he is unable to start until the new school year starts in January. We are worried that having already missed 3 years of school, it will be tough for him to jump right back in and play catch up so we stopped by the library and got him several books for the 7th grade, the year he will enter into, so that he can start to study a little bit and refresh his memory before he starts up again. Even though he is no longer a part of PETI we arranged for him to stop by once a week so we can sit down with him only for a half hour to practice some math or english. It is nice to see that he once again shows an interest in studying again and we want to encourage that the best we can and support him in this mature decision!

In Erval this week we had several eventful days. On Monday we had a full day of English, breaking into groups to teach the basics and then numbers. For now we are saying that it is a required class as the teachers want the kids to think of PETI as a school in which there are going to be subjects you don't like but you have to still participate in them. On Wednesday we had our capoeira class again which becomes just more of a PE class for the younger kids with tag and cartwheels. I then continued with photography as well. On Friday we scheduled to have a woman come to speak with our kids about the importance of avoiding drugs and alcohol but she never showed up unfortunately so we resorted so a day full of capture the flag- the kids loved it!! We also had a friend come in the afternoon to teach some of the older girls crochet; I myself took part in the class and am learning the basic knot for now, hoping in time I will have the skills to make some Christmas presents! 

Here is our friend teaching crochet

A lot of time on the weekends is spent doing laundry as it is quite a process. Although I am so grateful that we bought a washing machine, it is 100% different than doing laundry back at home. I am used to tossing in a load and letting it run its cycle until it is time to put it in the dryer. Here the wash is 15 minutes, then I have to drain the water into a bucket then refill the machine to let it rinse for another 6 minutes before draining again. Then we have a small machine that we borrowed from a friend that spinning your clothes for a few minutes to get rid of the excess water as clothes come out of the machine soaking wet. This machine holds only maybe 2 articles of clothing at a time then the clothes are hung up to finish drying. Overall it is quite the process! On Saturday night though we were able to go to the wedding of a student's sister. It was actually a double wedding with her cousin who had had a child literally the night before, how crazy is that! It was in a really small church and there were a ton of people. It was a very informal ceremony but it was so special to be there for the big day and witness the beautiful exchange of love. This was my first wedding to go to in Brazil and there were several similarities that I saw with weddings in the States; the bride threw her bouquet, the couple cut the first piece of cake together, and they said similar things when putting the rings on each other. It made me think about how all my family will be gathering together in a few weeks for my cousin Erin's wedding. I will be bummed to miss another family wedding but I pray that it is a great time for everyone who goes and I wish all the best to Erin and C Jay!! 

With the bride and our student (holding the baby)!