Maceió

 Meu Deus! Everyone here wakes up so early! I guess the sun comes up at 5am or something, so everyone gets up at that time. One day I went to sleep at like 1am and didn’t wake up until 7:30/8am. Apparently, this is super late, so I must have been drinking the night before and recovering (this was not true, by the way)…

So, my inability to wake up early means that seeing the piscina natural was impossible. The first morning I wasn’t up early enough, and the second, we didn’t arrive until 9am. (The traffic here is so bad that we left at 7:30 and arrived over an hour later, but returning it took like 30 minutes.) By this time it was already high tide, and we would have had to wait until 5 or 6 at night. Instead, we hung out pass all the algae and went to lunch by some island somewhere.

However, while at the beach we saw a police helicopter flying in circles overhead. After traveling thousands of miles to visit my friend and the two ETAs placed here in Maceió, I found out Maceió is the fifth most dangerous city in the world. Hence, the helicopter.

Police Helicopter that kept circling the beach

Additionally, we headed to UFAL to attend the English conversation course taught by the ETA’s here. We ended up discussing the US, majors and minors, and how different Rio Grande is from Maceió. Everybody was shocked that it was so cold in the south already. Whereas here you have to wait for the showers to cool down, in Rio Grande, you have to wait for them to warm up.

Lastly, when we arrived back from our excursions yesterday, Wesley’s mom had painted me a shirt. She paints towels, etc. in her free time and wanted to make me one. She is so sweet!

Wesley's Mom painted this for me!

So, to thank her and everyone else, I made dinner and dessert: chicken pasta and chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches with toffee ice cream.

Ice Cream Sandwiches...which were VERY difficult to make in Maceió.