I stole some photos!

So quite a bit has been happening but due to the lack of camera, I haven't really wanted to post anything on here. Who wants to just read a bunch of words? But problem temporarily solved! Meu amigo, Leandro, took photos on our hike Saturday. So here you go.

There's an ecological reserve/zoo right next to my school. We got to hike through the forest! And it was free because the school covered it as an educational excursion.

These are a bunch of the kids in my class. The way classes work here is different. They pretty much hand you your class schedule for the whole 5 years. Everyone takes things in the same order and you have every class with the same group of kids for the whole time you're in college. So basically, they're all really close.

Luckily Brazilians are super sweet so they're adopting me pretty quick. I have basically all their phone numbers now and talk to some of them online. Next week I'm going to the beach with Leandro, Amanda, and Felipe (that tall skinny guy in the middle.) His nickname is Magro, which means skinny.

Our guide in the back, Tayara, Luciola, Janete, Me, Valtson, Xélen

Mud mud mud mud mud. My shoes are still gross. It also poured on us at one point and continued to drizzle on and off. I was the only one who kind of enjoyed the rain. They're all tired of it by now but it's still a bit of a novelty for me.

This house was the end of our hike. It was really neat. There's a super cool story about the woman who lived there. I couldn't understand all of it...but basically she was a very wealthy Jewish woman who was known for being good with medicine and herbs etc. After a while the Catholics labeled her as a witch and I don't know exactly what they did to her but before she died, she threw all of her valuable possessions into the water surrounding her house. Now people throw in small change and treat it basically as a gigantic wishing well.

Other than finding FOUR ticks feasting on me the next morning, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. And yes I showered that night...the ticks here are just ridiculously tiny. I would never have overlooked homestyle ticks.

The next day, Sunday, I walked around the city for like 4 hours. Monday I went to the school to register for classes. Today I basically just watched Brazilian music videos on my computer, looked up whatever words I didn't know, then sang them a few times. It was relaxing while still being semi-productive.

In other news, I may be leading a conversational English class twice a week...