Calma, calma...

Hello my friends from morning in Brazil.

I am asking for prayers, for myself and for my friends here. For myself because I am getting culture shocked, culture stressed, or whatever you want to call it. I really think that culture shock is a process that is worked through and I´m just in a icky phase of it now, but whatever. The problem is that I am very easily irritated these days. I´ve found myself being over sensitive and easily annoyed at my friends here, which has in turn prompted me to last out and snap at people. So I ask for prayers that God will chill me out. I also have some very stressful situations that are trying to get resolved, so without going into too much detail pray for those.

Secondly I ask for prayers for my friends here to have patience with me and try to understand where I´m coming from and what kind of stress I´m under, and to have an extra measure of mercy on me. They are wonderful, and I pray I don´t wear their patience thin.

Thank you my people. :)

Strange things

So, living in a different culture, experiencing new things, you notice some strange stuff. Here´s a snippet of the strangeness of my life lately.

• Men´s underwear here has no flap in the front. I´m not sure what to make of this, but I´m too embarrassed to ask anyone and honestly don´t want to admit that I´ve noticed it. And for the record, I noticed it on manequins in the mall. :) Honestly, I could probably do a whole blog series on the weirdness of Brazilian underwear.
• The staff at McDonalds knows me. And they all know exactly what I order. Oh my goodness, this is so embarrassing. Que vergonha! My friends think this is really funny and an indication that I eat there all the time. In reality, I don´t eat there all the time, maybe once a week. And some people think that´s awful, and for a long time had me believing it was awful, too. But you know what! I decided last week that I can like and eat at McDonalds without shame! I am proud to be a McDonalds fan! ;) I actually have one friend here who also loves McDonalds. I call him my McMigo (get it, Mc + amigo (friend)... I think it´s terribly clever! Maybe even more clever than "obrigadeiro"...)

McMigos-- because every blog deserves a picture

• I would also like to say in relation to the above weird thing that a LOT of people know me. Itu isn´t a small town (maybe for Brazil, but it has 150,000 people), but they don´t see a lot of foreigners (except for the mountains of gringos that flood in during campaign season), so a lot of people like to talk to me at bus stops or in the grocery store or wherever. So in reality, the staffs of pretty much every store at the mall know me. Not just McDonalds. :) Superstar!!!!

Brasília-- the wrap up

It was a fun trip, and I´m so so glad I went. I knew in going that I was going to put myself in a major case of self induced culture shock, because I was traveling with all Brazilians, to the capitol of Brazil, to a Brazilian wedding and to see a Brazilian national sporting event. And culture shocked I did get, for about 3 hours on Friday. But even when I was frustrated out of my mind, I knew that in a week I´d look back on it and think it was one of the funnest times ever. Now it´s been a week and I can readily say that yes, it was. :)

Here are some random favorite photos!




Ivan, Enidilson and Jorge-- manly men!



Enrique, possibly the cutest kid ever. :)



This picture kind of freak me out, but I think it´s really cool. Aníbal does really cool stuff without a flash on his camera.



Aníbal took this picture on our late night tour of Brasília with Enidilson and Enrique. From left to right it´s Ivan, Edinilson, Enrique, me, Jandira.



Another one of those non-flash photos. I like the colors in this one so much. I knew Aníbal was getting ready to take a picture, but I didn´t know when he took it. Hence the half-posed look. Very cool.



Ha, I love this! Another irreverent picture in the Congressional Palace. :)



I love this picture too! Liberdade!



A too-sweet, Janibal special. :) And I took it, thank you very much. ;)



Jandira and I



Remember the blog about being late to the airport? This is a picture from that time... look at those faces! hahahahaha... :)

That´s all folks! And as always, there are more great photos (at least I think so) in the album. Yay webshots! Yay advertising! Yay give me free stuff! ;)