Friendship, Farms, and More Good Food.

This past week and a half has also been pretty busy. Last Sunday me, Leah (exchange student from Canada), and Julia (exchange student from Germany) went to a rotary barbecue with Julia's rotary club. It was out on a farm about a half hour from our city and it was absolutely beautiful. We ate more amazing churrasco (Brazilian Barbecue) and talked with many different people about our home countries, and about our experiences these past two months. A girl who is thinking about doing exchange and her two younger brothers sat and talked with us, and I got to play chess with the youngest little guy. He is the same age as Ben, my little brother in the U.S. and it was really great to be able to play with a little one again.

This is Leah and Julia, I am going to be talking about them a lot this year so I figured you should see who they are. Leah is in the yellow shirt, and Julia's the other one :)

Later on Sunday night, my host family and I went to an event at our church, it was a ton of fun, we watched a presentation and then ate pizza and had birthday cake. My host sister from Cuiaba, Juliana, her husband and little son Heitor were at our house for that weekend and part of the week which was really nice. I love playing with Heitor, and we had a great time playing with his toy cars, and with some other games.

This past week I was really busy after school because everyone in my class learned that I could make friendship bracelets, and so they all picked out colors and I made about twenty friendship bracelets in one week. I am still not done with all of them, and now the other graduating class at my school wants them too, so I have a ton more to make. I have also started running after school because it is so beautiful outside, and I can't just stay in my house. It is helping me practice my Portuguese because I end up talking to people, and I get some much needed exercise. :)

This weekend was really busy as well, on Saturday it was my friend Camila's birthday party. The girls dressed up as guys, and the guys dressed up as girls, it was a ton of fun! I wish I had better pictures to show you, the boys really outdid themselves. It was insane. My best guy-friend from school, Joao Carlos, was dressed in a mini skirt, and a corset with high-heels and makeup. He is normally sort of a cowboy and I never guessed that I would ever see him in a dress. It was incredibly funny. This is me with him after he changed back into his normal clothes, it's really blurry though sorry.

At the beginning of the night they did a runway show and I got a video of Joao, and some of my other friends doing their "walk" down the runway. The one in the front is a girl and all of the others are guys. Joao is the one in the black mini skirt. 

(Dad, if the video doesn't work can you email me, I've never posted one before and I don't know if it'll work)

After the runway show, we ate dinner and then sang happy birthday to Camila and ate cake and other treats. After that we all danced and then the guys each threw one of us in the pool even though we were still in our normal clothes, and then soon everyone was either swimming or dancing.

(The girl in the blue shirt is Mariana, she is one of my best friends at school)

The next morning I went with my host parents to the rotary building in my town, I didn't know what was going on, all my host mom had told me was to bring an extra change of clothes and my camera. We got there at around 6:00 in the morning, there were a bunch of kids from Interact there and a big bus. We drove about an hour and a half out to this small town to play with the kids because it was Dia de los Criancas, Day of the Children. There were about 60 little kids and we played lots of different games with them and handed out presents and it was incredible. One of the guys from my Rotary club dressed up like a clown and all of the little kids stuffed balloons in his suit and then he danced around and played with them. We also put on music for a little bit and let the kids show us their dance moves. 

After leaving the small town, I thought that we were going back to Tangara, but we actually went out to this really small Native community and ate lunch at this small water hole on a river. After eating, we all walked down this trail to a waterfall and went and played in the falls. It was incredibly beautiful, but I don't have any pictures of us at the bottom because I couldn't bring my camera 

After the long drive back to Tangara, my friend from interact invited me over to her house to swim and just hang out with her and some other people. We made popcorn and had a really relaxing time swimming and talking. It was a great weekend because I was able to make a bunch of new friends, thankfully today we have school off because it is Dia de los Professores, Day of the Teachers. (Happy day of the teachers mom).

I'll post again soon, I hope that everyone is having a wonderful October!

Tchau,

Liv