Well, I've been a little blog-lazy lately. I don't know what my problem has been. I blame the leeches. They've sucked all the creative blog energy right out of me. And I seem to discover more and more leeches every day. But, I have a ton of blogging to catch up on so I guess I'll just ignore the leeches and blog-on.
And blog-on I will. My goal is to do a post a day for the next two weeks. So, crack your knuckles and stretch out your fingers blog readers, and get ready to comment! (Yes, I know I'm a comment whore.)
So, I'm back in Brazil. After all the time I've spent in Brazil these past two years I've officially messed up my Spanish. But, in a couple of weeks I'm headed to Bolivia so hopefully I'll be able to get back into the Spanish groove there and get some of these Portuguese words out of my head. But, it's been fun to have the opportunity to spend some time with my parents and share in some of their experiences. It's just too bad they didn't go somewhere Spanish speaking.
Anyway, I arrived on my mom's birthday. I hadn't slept at all for two nights by the time I got here so, as you can imagine, I spent quite a bit of the day just sleeping. Luckily, my parents' friends, the Cabrals, brought my mom a birthday cake and came to celebrate with her, because I didn't get around to making a cake.
It was a passion fruit birthday cake...it's not every day that you get to have a passion fruit birthday cake. Oh, and the American flags on the table were left over from my mom's 4th of July party she had a few days earlier...we're patriotic, but not that patriotic to dare fly the American flag in Brazil permanently.
After the birthday cake was eaten we put the Cabrals to work helping us package little bags of American candy (the best) for all the missionaries. My mom said that she looked like an old hag in this picture but that I could still post it. So kind of her. My dad, however, makes me get all pictures pre-approved.
The thing is that if you look good in all your pictures online then when people see you in person they will think you're looking bad. But, if you look kinda bad in at least some of your pictures online then people will see you in person and say, "oh, you're looking so good." So that's why I think it is fine to have a few ugly pictures of yourself floating around. But, then when you die, someone should be nice and destroy all ugly pictures of you. Because nobody can see you in person anymore and then you will be forever remembered as the lady who looked like an old hag (or whatever) in that one picture.
A few days after I arrived we flew out to Juazeiro do Norte, which is another part of my parents' mission. Expo Crato was on and, because Expo Crato is the closest thing to the Idaho State Fair that my dad can attend, he was pumped. It's still not anything as great as the Idaho State Fair, but it's better than nothing.
I caught my dad smiling at the sheep. (Zoom in to see his smile.) He really misses his sheep. I think the hardest part about the mission for my dad has been missing his sheep...and maybe missing his family too I suppose.
Just a flashback to my dad's cow milking days...well, maybe cow milking day. I don't think he likes cows very much and I'm not sure how long he lasted as a cow milker.
The missionaries have a booth at Expo Crato. Here they are getting things set up.
Looks like they've got this kid surrounded. Daytime at Expo Crato is pretty slow so the missionary to investigator ratio is pretty high but at night the place is packed and they get tons of good references. The Church is very small in Juazeiro...I think there are only 2 branches there and 2 branches in a couple of nearby towns. And Juazeiro has about 250,000 people (per Wikipedia). So, it's just good for them to have the booth and let people learn a little about The Church.
The Honda booth was right next door. My mom kept eying this bad boy...I think she's always secretly wanted a little bullet bike or whatever this is.
Just my parents with some of the Elders.
A couple of the Elders looking super excited to be at Expo Crato. The Elder on the left is ready to baptize...white tie and all.
Just chatting.
One of the Brazilian Elders thought this bench was so beautiful and that we should take our picture on it...so we did.
Some of the member girls from the area gave my mom and me a little Expo Crato tour.
Just a picture to show the whole booth.
Holy Cow! Check out how tall this bull is! If you count the hump on its back, it is as tall as that Brazilian guy.
Isn't it ironic...here these bulls are just a short little wall away from a restaurant where they are probably serving up nice juicy steaks. I don't know if I'd like to eat there...it's just too close to the real deal for me. Kind of like Reed's Dairy...I LOVE their ice cream, milk, cheese curds, chocolate milk, etc., but I don't love eating it at Reed's Dairy. There's just something gross to me about smelling cow while you eat cow products.
And, what would a hot Brazilian day be without a little coconut water to drink? My dad is WAY into coconut water right now ever since it mysteriously cured a stomach ache one time. Madonna loves it too. It is supposed to be good for you, so I figure I'll drink all I can here where it is cheap and fresh since it's expensive in the US.
My mom just enjoying a yummy lime popsicle at the Juazeiro airport.
Here's the cute little popsicle lady. My parents LOVE the passion fruit popsicles she sells. You can only get them in Juazeiro so they special ordered 40 of them and we carefully packed them in a cooler with ice packs and checked them on the plane. They made it all the way to Fortaleza and were still frozen. We put them in the freezer but somehow later that night the freezer got left open just a crack and just that much heat entering the freezer all night melted the popsicles to pieces. So sad.
The plane back to Fortaleza. The flight is only an hour but they still serve sandwiches and drinks on the plane. This time they served hot dogs. As many flights as I've flown on in my life and that was the first hot dog I've ever been served on a plane. I guess there's a first for everything...first plane hot dog, check.
Well, I think that's about it. The neighbors upstairs just started BLASTING music. It's almost midnight. I can hear the words of the song. It's actually sort of pretty music. Maybe tomorrow we can ask them, "hey, what was that music you were BLASTING last night?" I guess noise restrictions haven't hit Brazil yet. I don't think they'd go over very well here. And I wouldn't care but my mom and I have been getting up around six to go walk/run at the beach. And, guess what?...the past two mornings we've seen dolphins frolicking around in the water. It is making me like dolphins a lot. I won't be getting a dolphin tattoo or anything but they are pretty cool animals.
And, just the other morning when my mom and I were walking at the beach we passed a garbage guy...you know, the kind that pull the carts and gather stuff to recycle and are usually probably homeless. Well, anyway, we go to pass this guy on the sidewalk and he starts working up a loogie and I think "oh no, I don't want to get spit on or step in a loogie" (because there are lots of loogie spitters here and I have to constantly be looking to avoid them) so I took a big detour away from him just to avoid the whole situation.
And guess what?...that garbage guy pushed his cart over to the edge of the boardwalk and spit off into the dirt on the side. And I said to my mom, "you never know where you're going to find a little class." So, let that be the lesson of the day...you never know where you might find a little class. That garbage guy turned out to be sort of classy (FYI: really classy people don't hawk loogies AT ALL in public) and I shouldn't have pre-judged him and jumped away.
Well, on that lovely note, I'll end. More blogging tomorrow!
