Blogs from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, South America - page 7

Yesterday I boarded a small bus heading for Farroupilha with 13 brazilians and 3 other foreigners from the gym I joined on Saturday. It might come to a surprise to some of you who know me well when I say the purpose of the day trip 2 hours from Porto Alegre was repelling. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a fear but standing near the edge of extremely high places has never been one of my favorites. So I decided to as some people would say to face it or as I prefer to say just take it to the damn limit. The pictures do a pretty good job explaining the day but I'll give a quick summary. We arrived in Farroupilha early Sunday morning and did a quick hike to the ... read more

url='/Videos/2836.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/2836.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'Gremio vs Caxias What a busy week! I think my new found addiction to Brazilian coffee didn't make me realize how tired I was thus I slept about 15 hours on Saturday. Anyways to begin with I have moved apartments. I am now living with two sisters, Aline (23) and Fabiana (27). My room is pretty much a small box with a mattress, which I guess is a good thing because it means I never want to be there except for sleeping. On the up side, it is a perfect location with only a 10 minute walk from work and the girls are very nice with again an unbelievable amount of patience with my portuguese. Things at work this week really picked up because both of my bosses arrived from Germany and Rio but ... read more

we are back into the heat wave here.... plus 36 or so today, its been much cooler the last week and a half or so. work on the house continues to move along well, herman told us that when a team is here working they usually puts them ahead of schedule by approx. 3 months. this is our last week here, we are going to be sad to leave, but we are missing our friends, family, animals and our privacy!! its funny what you take for granted until you are rooming with at least 15 others for 5 weeks. we went out again tonite to the pizzaria, and we are pizzaria-ed out! we are looking forward to canadian pizza again. (other things we are looking forward to are: our own bed, english television, tim hortons, ... read more

The new team is here, and we have had a pretty productive week. They arrived on wednesday afternoon and were ready to work first thing thursday morning. Work at the new house is coming along nicely. Aside from some odds and ends to finish up the top floor is completed. Power and the water still need to be brought into the house, but the well was put in this week so that was great. It was neat to see that process, as its such an ingenius system they have for it. The highlight of the week for us was a birthday party we were invited to, by one of our sponsor kids, Taciane. She turned 9 and made sure to give us a homemade invitation. Although we couldnt read it, we made sure to have ... read more

Today was a sad day for us here because the team from lethbridge went home. The place seems empty because its just the 4 of us here now. We didnt get a whole bunch done today, we had decided to go into porto alegre to see the team off at the airport. After we got back to the campus we headed down town to see if we could find some stuff. Nunes the volunteer coordinator here drove us around and we experience a brazilian bank for the first time. WOW, they have major security to get thru, almost makes the airport security seem slack. Then you had to take a number, can you imagine.... Nunes´ # was 241, and the count was 199. So almost an hour later he was finished and we headed out ... read more