Another one bites the dust....

I just got home from school and logged into Facebook to discover that another old friend just got engaged.  My roommate, Kaitlyn, asked what I was so excited about.

So I was like, "One of my friends just got engaged."  

We both kinda pause for a second, then at the exact same time, we both start singing:

"ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!"

Ha.  I seriously can't get over how funny it was.

If you're not laughing right now, it's probably just because I can't capture in a blog post how funny that moment was.

Or maybe it's just because you don't have a sense of humor...

But I guess I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.  ;)

Engrish

Never again will I complain about classes in English.

Actually, that's probably a lie... but at least I will complain with added perspective.

Class is SO much harder in Portuguese.  Why, you ask?

Here, let me tell you:

• Classes go FOREVER.  Instead of having classes multiple times a week, most of them just meet once for several hours.  So all my classes are for 2-3 hours.  The worst is my class that meets every Friday night from 6-9:40pm.  Gross.
• It's hard to pay attention.  Even in English it gets hard to focus sometimes in class, but when it takes twice as much concentration as usual to be able to learn anything from class, it gets even harder.
• I sit in constant fear of being called in.  Ok, that's a big of an exaggeration, but not too much.  I'm getting to the point where I understand a lot more of my classes, but still not quite enough to feel confident commenting or answering questions.  Usually the teachers mostly ignore me, but sometimes they pose a question to the class, and my heart beats so fast when they look at me, because I know if they really do call on me, it probably won't go well...
• It stinks being a foreigner in school.  I've lived in Tonga and China, but for some reason I feel a lot more labeled as a foreigner or "estrangeira"in my classes.  
• My Portuguese class is ridiculously easy.  Which is good when I tell myself that it's easy because I'm so smart/naturally gifted at Portuguese...but less good when I remember that I really need to learn Portuguese, so if that class isn't teaching me anything, what's the point? 

But there are a lot of good things, too.

• Lots of nice teachers.  I love not having really intimidating professors.  So far, I feel like I can approach all my teachers with questions (as long as I already figured out how to say it).
• Days when I understand!  I understand way more of my classes than I thought I would.  Some days are still hard, but sometimes I walk out of class and just want to tell everybody, "guess what?  I understood most of that discussion!"
• Friends.  Lisa and Kaitlyn, the other two girls from BYU, are fantastic.  Lisa lives in another apartment, but probably spends more time at our apartment than hers.  They're both better at Portuguese (Lisa served her mission here, and Kaitlyn served in Honduras, so she's picking up the Portuguese a lot faster with her Spanish), and they're super helpful.  Sometimes we feel like missionaries.  It's fantastic.
• This list is a lot shorter than the other, for some reason.  Really, there is a lot more good stuff than bad/frustrating!

And best of all:

• IT'S GETTING BETTER.  It wasn't ever bad to begin with, but sometimes it was a little discouraging.  But every day is a little better than the last.  I already love it so much here, and the next few months are going to fly past way too quickly.
  

Life is good.  So very good.  :)

Thousands of words...

Just to compensate for the lack of pictures.

Haha.

Just kidding.

Well, actually, I'm serious...

I'm sorry about the complete lack of pictures (especially since my blog views have drastically declined since my last post with pictures...), but the internet does not like me trying to upload things.

I really did try!  But after waiting for almost a whole hour for one picture to upload less than 25%, I gave up.

I'll try again soon.

But for now, you'll just have to use your IMAGINATION.

Check Your Itinerary

Always.

More than a week before your flight earns bonus points.

The fact is, sometimes you'll find yourself on an island in the middle of the Amazon with no internet and not be able to check last-minute like you were planning.

Yeah, you guessed it...that's what happened to me.

So here's the story:

When we got to Manaus, we heard that the hotel we were staying at (on an island in the middle of the Amazon) would have wireless internet.  So we took off, and I figured I'd just re-check my itinerary right before we left for the airport, even though I was pretty sure my flight was around 4pm on Friday, which was perfect since the group was planning to arrive around noon, leaving me plenty of time to check in, etc.

Then our hotel didn't have wireless.  Or internet at all, for that matter.

But I thought, who cares?  I'll just pull up my flight info at the airport, no sense stressing about it right now.  The only other stuff I needed internet for was blogging, emailing, etc, and it was actually really nice to get a total break from that.

Then Thursday night I realized that the hotel people were letting us borrow the computer behind the desk if we needed it.  I decided to be responsible and check my flight info!  I log in to my email, pull up my itinerary, and see the departure time:  1:00am.  Date?  August 3.  As in, the morning of August 3.  1am instead of 4pm.  So then I start thinking, "Hmm...shoot.  That means my flight leaves in like 5 hours..."

Then I found Vanessa, who sympathized, but said that there was nothing we could do since there was no boat on the island.  No point stressing at that point, so I went back to the party, and enjoyed my last night with the group from Recife.

Next day, I got to the airport and had them change my flight.  Luckily, even though I had technically already missed 2 flights, they still counted those flights towards the cost of my new one, so I only had to pay $100 (yeah, it sounds like a lot, but not bad all things considered.  Plus one of the other girls in my group had to change her flight and had to pay $500!  So I was counting my blessings :)

The flight they booked me on left about 20 minutes after I bought the ticket, so I basically ran threw security and got in line just as the plane was boarding.  Whew.

Next problem:
I didn't know how to get home from the airport.  I had emailed Kaitlyn and Geovana so they would know I wasn't arriving at my originally scheduled time, and that I would be in touch when I could.  But then my flight came so quickly I didn't have time to email them again.

During my layover in Brasilia, I used my extensive knowledge of Portuguese to get help with the internet (HA, just kidding...about the extensive part; I really did use Portuguese!), and finally was able to message Kaitlyn my arrival info, along with a note saying if they couldn't pick me up then (my flight got in a little after midnight), she should send me the address so I could take a taxi.

Well, I got off the plane in Florianópolis, and no one was there.  Sadly, there was also no internet.  So... I figured I was supposed to take a taxi, but didn't know where I was going.  Ha.

After standing around looking like a stupid American for quite some time, I decided that I shouldn't sleep in the airport, so I got a taxi and told them to take me to our university, since I knew we lived super close.

The cab driver pulled up to UDESC and since I still had no clue where to go, and he said it wasn't safe for me to sit there by myself, I had him take me to a close hotel.  The hotel was $150 a night!  I didn't want to stay there, but didn't have any choice...until I realized the hotel had wifi!  So the nice man behind the desk let me borrow their wifi to find my address.  At which point I caught another cab back to my apartment that I had basically been parked in front of earlier. *sigh*

All things considered, I was pretty proud of myself for getting myself through all those situations by myself.  I was proud of myself for not panicking, and for being brave enough to use my Portuguese (yeah, I'd already been in Brazil for over a month and still super nervous about that...).  AND I was proud---and surprised---to realize that I COULD speak Portuguese enough to get through it!  Talk about a learning experience!  I think Heavenly Father maybe let that happen so that I would be forced to talk, and realize it wasn't as scary as I thought.  It's made everything else so much easier since then!

I didn't die, I only got sort of lost, and I learned something!  I think that makes this experience a winner!

Wasn't that a fun story?  :)

Encontro das Águas and the Amazon :)

The Rio Negro and Solomon River (I can't remember the Portuguese name for that one) meet to form the Amazon, but because of the different speed, density, and temperature of the two rivers, they flow together but separately for quite some distance before they completely merge. It's super cool to see; you can literally see a line down the middle of the river!

Cindy asked me to French braid her hair on the boat, and while I was doing it, this cute girl (~10) kept looking at us. [She and her parents were in our group basically the whole trip, but she only seemed to know about 10 words of English and no Portuguese, so we sort of became smile-buddies :) Their whole family was so cute!] Anyway, she kept looking over, so we asked if she wanted her hair braided. She said yes! I'm not really sure why I was so excited, but it was so fun to feel like I made a friend in Manaus. So here's a picture of us with our matching braids (even though I started hers a little lower on her head so you can't actually tell it's braided haha).

Then they said goodbye and got off the boat, while we headed to a little floating restaurant, complete with monkeys! I have about a million pictures, but since I did an entire post on monkeys before, I'll just post two :)

After that, we went to meet these guys:

Yes, that would be a SLOTH and an ANACONDA!

Yes, I held both of them. Yes, it was awesome.

YES, you should be jealous. :)

In the afternoon we had a hike/nature walk through the AMAZON. They showed us all kinds of cool things, like where certain types of seeds can be found, clove vines (like the little cloves, but it's an entire vine, so you can cut off sections of the vine and use it to flavor tea and stuff), ants that can be squished on your hands to create “Indian Perfume” or a natural bug repellant, and even how to build/set off certain types of traps!

Do I look like I fit into the Amazon?

"I've got a dream!" -Tangled

Have you ever dreamed of swimming with dolphins? Like the ones at SeaWorld?

How about some that were in the wild?

That's what I did today.

We left around seven this morning and boated down the river (Rio Negro/Black River, not the actual Amazon River yet) to a place you can swim with the pink river dolphins. Yes, they're pink. They also have a sort of goofy-looking bump on their foreheads, but they were still so cool!

We divided into two groups to get into the water, standing on a little platform close to the dock. They also had two guys down by us with fish to attract the dolphins (because ya know, the ones in the river aren't trained to jump and do tricks on command—they're legit!). As the dolphins would swim over to get the fish, sometimes they'd swim right up against your legs, but we could also reach out and pet them as they tried to get the fish.

After both groups had gone, they let us go back into the water and swim off the dock as far out as we wanted, and the dolphins just kept swimming around us as we tried to see and touch them some more.

I was a little nervous, even though dolphins are way more friendly than the piranhas we saw yesterday...

It was super fun, though! I swam way out, and had a few swim right under me! It was SO COOL.

My life just keeps getting better and better!!!

I cannot get enough of how awesome this is.

What did you do today?

I hope you did something awesome. Oh, you want to know what I did today? Well, let me think:

I road a boat to a teeny resort (for lack of a better word; it's like a hotel, but it's bungalow-style and miles away from anyone else) in the middle of the Amazon.

We went fishing. Yes, I caught a fish! Cindy got an awesome video of me freaking out; I'm not exactly a born fisher, apparently. (Although I did catch the second highest number of fish in our boat.)

Oh yeah, and besides catching a trout/sardine something-or-other, I caught a piranha!! Yes, you read that right. I CAUGHT A PIRANHA. In the Amazon. With a little bamboo fishing pole.

I'm not sure I have ever felt cooler.

That is, until about a half hour later when...

I held an ALLIGATOR! Actually, it was a cayman(sp?). They're basically small alligators.

We rode out at night, and the guys will stand on the front of the boat and shine a big flashlight around until you see the light reflecting red in their eyes. Then they kill the motor and go up super slowly so they don't run away. Then they reach in and grab them right out of the water with their bare hands!! Crazy, yes? And also super awesome!

So yeah...I hope you did something awesome today.

Because my day was fantastic.

Best day ever? Check.

Manaus

I'm in Manaus. It's very cool, but only in the metaphorical sense. In the literal sense, it is not even close. But I like it :)

We woke up super early today to get here. (No, I'm not just a college student who says anything before noon is early; we met at 3:15am.) We couldn't actually check-in right when we got here since it was still before noon, but they stored our stuff while we went to explore the city.

The coolest thing we saw was this old opera house:

I don't remember specific amounts, but its estimated value is astounding! Probably because it has so many cool features and designs like...:

This fantastic floor design, made of several different types of wood (all from Brazil).

Another cool floor. I thought this was less-cool, until we found out that the two colors of wood are meant to represent the Solomon and Black Rivers, which flow together to form the Amazon. (Pictures of the actual rivers to come!)

Beautiful pink marble from Portugual.

And gorgeous chandeliers and just overall grandeur in the entire building.

I loved it!   

Fortaleza for real

So in the middle of Fortaleza (the city), there's a fort, also called Fortaleza. We weren't sure where it was, and as we were walking around trying to find it, Vanessa asked some guy where it was, and he was like, “You're IN Fortaleza!” I got the feeling he was annoyed at us for being dumb tourists, but I thought it was funny he didn't even realize we were looking for a famous fort. Whatever.

We stopped at this beautiful cathedral (I think it's the second biggest in Brazil, but don't quote me on that...but it's definitely in the top 5).

My favorite part was just walking along the beach, though. I know I still have a long time here in Brazil, but I am going to miss beaches so much. They're so peaceful, and I love watching the waves. I don't think I will ever get tired of the ocean.

Me and Vanessa, so much better after a night of sleep in a real bed! :)

Some things are better left unsaid.

Trips to hospitals in Brazil sort of falls into that category. But not completely.

Things worth mentioning:

Fabulous doctors and nurses. Seriously, they were so nice. I made friends with a bunch of them, and they even laughed at my lame attempt at jokes in Portguese (true friendship, right?). I think I was way more nervous before going to the hospital than I was actually going in to surgery.

Family. Even from thousands of miles away, my sister answered so many questions and helped me figure out what needed to be done, and not to be too nervous about it. (Thanks, Angie!!)

Modern medicine. I don't know how they would have treated something like this 50 years ago, but I'm glad I'll never have to find out!

Vanessa. If you ever have to go to a hospital in Brazil, she's the person to go with! This incredible lady deserves a huge pay raise (or a fantastic mansion in heaven). She has 4 kids here in Brazil with the program, the youngest is 13. She left them all to spend over 20 hours with me at the hospital. She spent the night in a chair. She translated all the awkward doctor questions. She made me laugh. (And she didn't judge me for crying.) She has been like a second mom to me for the last few weeks and I am so sad she'll be headed back to the states soon!

Prayer. Probably the most important on my list. Thanks to prayers from myself, family, and friends, the trip to the hospital could not have been better. I mean, it was still a trip to the hospital. But everything went smoothly, the results were positive, and I didn't even die! :) I think I can attribute my lack of fear and confidence in their medical skills to prayer as well.

So that's pretty much my day in the hospital in Fortaleza, Brazil!