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.

Language Barrier

How do you communicate when facing a language barrier?

After a five hour bus ride and half of a day flying, I finally arrived in Maceió to visit my friend, Wesley. One of the first things he told me was that his mom wasn’t sure how we were going to communicate.

When we walked in the door, a lot of laughing ensued. Every sentence was followed by gestures of some sort. And, every time I was confused I looked at Wesley and everyone started laughing. Later, I met some other family members. Let’s just say meeting his family included a lot of head nodding, laughing, translating, gestures, and repetition.

Nevertheless, his brother and I found a way to communicate. Starting with shushing him, because he was being very loud (as in not speaking a word), we began a game trying to make the other person laugh or say something. We made faces at each other and then started having conversations in gestures. There were so many times we both wanted to burst out laughing. The ending score was 4-3. I won. I now know he loves everything on his hot dog. Additionally, his parent’s think we are crazy.

The first two days here were eventful. We were in the car a lot, and, apparently, I fall asleep every time. Now there is a running joke about me sleeping in the car. In addition, we ate tapioca (by the way, tapioca is not a pudding here. It is like a sandwich), watched the clear crabs run across the downtown area beach, and continued to meet more and more of his family (his grandma is hilarious). And, the next day everyone, including some of his extended family, headed to a house with a pool near some beach somewhere. We went to the beach, Wesley, his brother and I had freestyle swimming contests, and hung out in the ocean and pool all day.

Barra de São Miguel

As we were packing up for the day, Wesley’s mom asked if I thought the whole family was crazy. Honestly, everyone here is funny and super sweet. They might be a little crazy, but who isn’t? Haha.