I was laying in the hammock sneaking in a snooze when the maid came and asked me if I wanted some cake and juice for a snack. is this heaven you ask? no, it is Timbauba, where I am now.
I have now passed the two-month marker of being in Brasil and am beginning a new phase. Timbauba is about 45 minutes north of the Alconce and is Tele’s hometown. I am living with his sister Talma, her husband Mossio, and their two children, Mariana and Mateus. I lived here a couple weeks last year also and really enjoyed it. They have an incredible house and yard (surrounded, of course, by a wall) and employ a full-time maid and gardener. I will be staying here and going to high school with Raquel (Tele’s niece) for a couple weeks until the Pastor and his family are ready for me to move with them. The point of this being for me to learn Portuguese. so, I’d better get with the program. I mean, if I am going to be serving here, I have to get the foundation of this language grounded.
I will continue teaching English on Thursdays at the Alconce, but for the most part, English is banned. Only Talma speaks some English, and she is on strict command not to speak any with me…and hasn’t. Classes are going great, and Thursdays are definitely my highlight of the week. I spent a couple hours this morning sitting and dreaming up all these neat things I wanted to create to make “THE PERFECT CURRICULUM” for learning and teaching English. goodness. by the time I am done learning Portuguese, I think I will speak better English also because I am having to relearn all those grammar rules I previously thought were unnecessary.
as far as Portuguese, it is not easy. I am convinced that Brasilians are forced to think before they speak just because of the grammar. I was trying to learn articles. I mean, how hard can “a” and “the” be in a different language? you never know a question is dumb until you answer it: there are four different ways to say “the-” a,o, as, and os. depending on feminine, masculine, singular, and plural form of the noun you are going to say. So when I try to say “The light is on” before I can say “the” I have to know the Portuguese word for light, recognize if it is feminine or masculine (most of the time you can tell by the end of the word “a” or “o”, but sometimes you can’t–like Luz- is z masculine or feminine? it turns out that Luz, meaning light, is masculine…did you know that?). So here I am, standing in front of someone, trying to say the simplest sentence, and it takes me three blank looks and alot of ”ums” just to say the correct word “the.” by this time I am exhausted and ready to forget about moving on to the rest of the sentence. okay, I am exaggerating some, because normally I don’t care if I get it wrong and I just barrel my way through the sentence…but still:), give me a break here!
I made Bolo de Rolo…er…I watched Kattia make it, and I have determined that cooking is another art form. at least how she does it. you know how the cook books say to sift the flour? she actually does it. and she says the gooey part of the egg (that is chunkier than the rest of the egg white) makes the cake smell bad, so she actually separates the egg white and yoke and then removes it from the egg white. I think it took a good 10 minutes to add the four eggs into the cake. by the time we made it, I was thinking that I could probably get the same affect from my 3 minute instant cake mix at home. no, I was not meant for greatness in the cooking world. but I now have the recipe and translated it into English. just in case I have another cooking fit in the next couple years.
I spent the weekend at Tele’s house and enjoyed lots of good times with them, including eating my first ever avocado smoothie. while it wasn’t bad, I still consider avocados vegetables and more suited for making guacamole. They have CNN and I was able to see what’s going on in New Orleans and all that from the hurricane. I chewed my sister out because I did not know anything happened until Friday…after a bunch of different Brasilians told me. Some American I am. When I went shopping for some pineapple, one lady asked Alyssa “oh, is she from that place where the hurricane happened?” wow. that really shook me up. not only do people define America by what they see in me, but they define me by what they see on TV. that is sorta scary.
I had alot of conflicting emotions. I felt like I could kill some of the Brasilian announcers who were dissing our country. I wanted to strangle the Japanese who looked into the TV camera and said “but I thought America should be able to handle anything, this is just pathetic.” I wanted to shove “well, let it happen to you and see what happens” down their throats. Everyone laughed when they heard Cuba was being “so gracious” as to send 1100 doctors to help. No matter how long I live in Brasil I will still have that American pride. But I also wanted to shake some sense into the American announcers. they were saying this was exposing America and how fragile we are…yes and no. what happened happened and to sit there and blame the president and police…it is just dumb. it was like the picture of the woman screaming into the TV camera about how someone had died and there was this dead body laying there and no one did anything…while you see her and a thousand others sitting around doing nothing. they were waiting for the president himself to come and drag the body away to bury it I guess…why didn’t they do it?
I’d better stop talking because I know I am not there and don’t know all the heck they are going through…it is times like this I feel so far away when I listen to everyone here speaking like the situation is 5000 miles away from them…because it is.
when I looked at the TV I saw the inner city. and yes, maybe the announcers are right and it is a “expose” of America. the truth is, inner cities are everywhere, and they are like a bombs ready to explode. when a catastrophe hits, a reaction like what happened in New Orleans is going to happen. There were many times when I was working in Indiana (and this is LITTLE Indianapolis ghettos) that I wondered how our city did not go up in flames. and that was without a catastrophe…because that is what our inner cities are. I was not shocked to see the people sitting there, not knowing what to do, or the looting and shootings–because that is what we have created. we have created a world called the inner city where it pays more to sit around and have children (getting food stamps) with different men than to go out and have a decent job. we have created a world where they know nothing more than the government owes them a living so why should they learn how to read. I sat and stared at a TV screen seeing thousands of people who would continue the cycle of being relocated and provided for again. sometimes it seems so helpless. and like 9/11 and everything changed, I know that when I go back to the US it will be a slightly different place. and I don’t have the answers. so I just turned off CNN.
I was glad to hear of the heroes. I wonder how many books will be written of the bravery of people through this time. there are always so many stories of people who refuse to remain inside this stereotype that I have just written about above. And God is always alive and working. see? I am not a complete pessimist:).
Yesterday I went to Sandra’s wedding (she is the one who sang in Portuguese while I sang in English in the band). it was neat to see a Brasilian wedding. instead of bridesmaids and groomsmen they have “witnesses” who sit around the front. These witnesses (including the parents) are respected couples and close friends that will sign the marriage covenant with the bride and groom, and pledge to be there for encouragement, advice, and support. neato. I like that. Most Brasilian weddings are at night, but this was for 9:00am. we arrived at 9:30 (Tele was alittle nervous because after all, he was preaching) but it turned out we could have slept in because the bride did not arrive until 10:15 and they began the processional at 10:30am. it turns out the bride is normally expected to be about an hour late to her own wedding.
Here is what I have been learning about languages through my devotions: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Cor. 13:1) “So likewise you, unless you utter by the tongue words easy to understand, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air (I’ve had that feeling before)…there are…so many kinds of languages in the world, and none of them is without significance…” (1 Cor.14:9-10)
it was rather funny after my heart stopped beating so fast. 
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