Sea Turtles

Our second day in Salvador, we went out to a sea turtle sanctuary.  They're famous for their work with the sea turtles, but they also had some sharks, sting rays, and other fish in the mini-aquarium/display we visited.

It was so neat to see these!  They had life-size models of the different types of sea turtles, and they were huge!  The biggest can get up to like 6 feet long!  This guy was about 5:

 (Crush, anybody? :)

 Shawndeen, Tawnya, and I petting the sting rays.
Tawnya named the big black one Adolfo, and I named the two grayish-brown ones Flotsam and Jetsam :)

Tawnya and I hatching and being turtles

 SUPER cute baby turtles!  This little guy was about 1.5 inches long!

(Again...Squirt?  Finding Nemo, anyone? :)

Sharks! :/

With a cool reflection of coconut trees...

And me by yet another of these things.

But hey, it's a sea turtle.  It's not like I could pass that up! :)

Salvador

I loved Salvador.  It was SO pretty.  It's also one of the most dangerous cities in the world.  Hey, you win some, you lose some...right? :)

I have so many beautiful pictures, but it takes forever to upload (and I doubt anyone really wants to see ALL the pictures I've taken) but here are some of my favorite city/landscapes, and some of the churches and sites we visited.

 Isn't that a spectacular view??

Statue of Christ.  

Salvador means Savior in English, and I love how many churches and statues of Christ they had around the city. 

 Me and Tawnya :)

(She's been my roommate since we left Recife, and it has been so fun!  I think I get a better workout from how much we laugh together than any amount of time I've spent in the gym...)

 Me, Tawnya, and Johnny walking on the beach

 Farrol da Barra

This was the first fort in Brazil, and is also a lighthouse

 Me and Tawnya being cute.  And excited.  And showing off our cute matching braids.

 us putting one foot in the door of the lighthouse (haha Tawnya)

 Me and Shawndeen on top of the fort

View of/from the top of the lighthouse

 Then Brady and I climbed out onto this pier 

 Some sort of government building.  I don't remember exactly what it is...  But I really liked this picture of it :)

 We heard this was "the best ice cream in Salvador", so of course we had to try it.
I believe it!

 Inside a museum with a cute lady who was dressed up in traditional Bahian clothing

 We saw so many cool churches, I don't actually remember all the details or which one was which.  But they were so incredible!  I love how intricately decorated they all are.

This church was wall-to-wall with gold.  The pictures (no flash) just don't even begin to do it justice.

 Another cool church.

We even got to attend mass!

It was quite the experience.  This guy is carrying in a sacrifice/ donation?  I don't know what exactly they were calling it.  But they had a ton of people carrying stuff in!  Oh, I also got some sweet videos of people singing and clapping, but they take too long to upload...  Keep your fingers crossed/remind me, and maybe I'll post them when I go home. :)

And TOTALLY irrelevant (and almost un-cultured compared to everything else we saw that day...), but for the "Tongan clan" especially:

I found the coconut wireless!!

Haha.  that's all I could think of when I saw those phone booths decorated like coconuts.  Who knew they existed, huh?

We should invest in a phone booth like that.

Just sayin'...

Silver linings

Remember how much I hate saying goodbye?  Well, just like all things in life, goodbyes have silver linings.  Like how Xu FINALLY taught me how to make pão chinês (Chinese steamed bread), which has been one of my favorite things since I lived in China.  It is SO GOOD.  

Anyway, I asked him like the first week here if he could teach me how to make it, and he said yes.  But then we just never got around to it.

On Monday though, since I was leaving, it was a perfect excuse to make time.  So at 6:30 in the morning, he taught me how to make this wonderful food:

I don't know what it is that makes it so delicious; it's just white rolls that are steamed instead of baked.  They're super easy to make, and now I know how!  They are so good...

Yep, that's a silver lining :)

I hate goodbyes.

I love the idea of going somewhere new and exciting in life and with new people, but it is so hard to say goodbye.

Which is why Sunday was so hard.  It was our last full day in Recife, and we had to say goodbye to everything and everyone.  (Even without having made any particularly good friends at church, it was hard to leave what really felt like my ward; my calling, etc.)

Then we had to say goodbye to all the other stuff we love:

 Carbonel and his super cute wife.  Carbonel seriously was great.  I was sad that we didn't see him any more after our trip to the sertão, because that's really when I got to know him and felt like we were really friends.  But he was so nice to me the whole time! (Except when he was teasing me like a brother.  He picked up on the fact that I'm exceptionally jumpy/scream really loud when someone tickles me.  He thought that was really funny...)

Shawndeen and I eating at Chinatown for the last time

And of course, saying goodbye to all the delicious Chinese food we ate in the last month...  I'm going to miss egg fried rice for breakfast.  And every other meal...

Saying goodbye to our beach.

It really sort of felt like "my" beach, because I was there so much.  Running every morning, plus spending a few hours there with Shawndeen or Natalia at least once a week?  I'm going to miss that.

 This was my thank-you for my host family.  I had a few pictures in colored pencil that I was going to give them, but didn't love any of them. So on Sunday afternoon, I just drew the Great Wall of China.  Ya know.  Because I'm awesome like that.  Haha. :)
I really liked the way the card turned out, too.

 And saying goodbye to our "family".  I'm really sad I didn't get any pictures with Xu (he left for work before I could catch him), and Shawndeen has my pictures with Melissa.
But here is Jane.  My cute, Chinese, host mom.  I'm going to miss her.

Have I mentioned that I hate goodbyes?

But then I remember some words of wisdom from Dr. Seuss:

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened!"

It did happen.

It was wonderful.

And I'm not crying---

I'm smiling.

It's not over...

...but it feels like it is!

It's really weird to think that a) I've already been here for a whole month, and b) we leave Recife on Monday.  MONDAY.  Meaning, less than 48 hours from now, I will be getting on a plane to Salvador, then we will continue around to some other cities (Fortaleza and Manaus), continuing to see cool things and experience more of Brazil.

The other weird thing is that I feel like I'm going home soon.  Everyone keeps talking about what they're going to do when they get home, and I'm always like, "Oh, I'm going to.... oh yeah...in 5...months..."  Lame.  Actually, I'm super excited to be here for another 5 months, but it sure does feel weird that everyone is leaving me here!

Anyway, I don't have any really great pictures from today.  I'll add some later if I find my cord again, but I mostly just wanted to write that little blerb.  Blurb?  I don't know how to spell that.

Good night, World!

These are a few of my favorite things :)

Sometimes I don't post about everything.

Actually, that's usually the case.

(What?  You really thought you'd seen all the same cool things I have, just because you look at the pictures on my blog?)

So here are some cool things I've done in the last month that didn't make it into the blog post from the day it happened.  So they're kind of all over the place.

But if you're going to live vicariously through me, I feel like I need to do these things justice! :)

 Me pretending to eat that giant millipede we found (at least I think that's what it was)

Me and Natalia in Olinda 

Inside yet another one of those things you can take pictures in.  I don't even know what this one is supposed to be exactly, but I really like it :) 

Brazilian otter pop.  It actually tasted pretty similar to the ice blocks we used to eat in Tonga.  This was one was strawberry-coconut.  So good.

We happened to walk past this mini version of the Washington monument on the 4th of July.  We were in a hurry so I couldn't go up and (try to) read it, so I have no clue why it's there.  But it was kinda cool, especially on the 4th.

With 'apeli 'Initia!  Man I missed this stuff!  I love it so much!  I can't get enough of it.

(In Portuguese, it's called graviola, in English, it's soursop...weird.)

 Passionfruit! (aka maracujá)  SO GOOD.

Such gorgeous skies here!  I loved the contrast from the sky to the ground when we drove through the sertão

 So many pretty flowers here.  Mom, you'd be in heaven.  This one is for you :)
(cue primary song here...)

 Standing inside a cool hat at a museum 

 Taking pictures of cool bathroom signs.  I think I'm going to start a collection.  So far though, none have come close to the epic-ness of these ones:

 Ya know, just creeping through secret passageways in old forts.  That's my sneaky face.

 Still being Chinese in pictures :)
(Johnny's going to China next spring, so he's practicing, too)

Me and Shawndeen being cute roommates

And possibly my favorite picture of the trip so far:

Some things are just worth waking up for at 5:30!  :)

And now you know some of my favorite things!