Dia Um

Today was intense. It started off easy enough. I woke up at 7:10 instead of 6:30 and realized my cell phone time was 7:10 PM... Well at least I didn't miss class!

Our lovely hostess Sister Jones gave us a ride to the school. We thought about going on foot to see how long it would take... I'll come back to this because I now have an answer for you.

Today we went over the class itinerary. We're studying the Brazilian culture.  I realize that I really don't know a whole lot about the country's history. Looking forward to being a bit more informed.

The school we are studying at. NO I DO NOT KNOW WHAT "ABA" STANDS FOR

After school orientation we went to the mall to get SIM cards for our cell phones. As we passed by the stores and window-shopped, the first-timers in Brazil were astounded with the prices of some of the products by sold, which included american items and electronics. My friend Brady brought up a good question: "Why, in a country where a good amount of it's citizens are unemployed or earn less than $300 a month, are the prices so high?"

I didn't really know how to respond to him... and I still don't. It's sad to see that people with significantly less financial means than I would have more trouble getting hold of something that I take for granted, such as a cell phone.

a view of Recife from the top of the ABA school

I learned something about persistence today. As we went into the phone store, we had to insert a test Sim card to see if our phones were unblocked. The employee who was doing it would stick it in, wait for the phone to turn on, and see if it would get service. The problem was that he would only wait for a couple of seconds for the phone to get service before taking the chip out and saying that it didn't work. This is exactly what happened with my phone.

As my normal, passive, complacent self, I would never have made a big deal out of this. However, there's a story behind this phone....

I found out one day before my flight to Brazil that I'd have to get a new, quad-band, unlocked phone to be able to use during this study abroad. My sister's graduation was on this day as well. In the morning  I searched for a store which sold unblocked phones. I found one about twenty minutes away from my house. What should have been a simple one-time visit turned into a day-long ordeal, because the cheapest available phone in the store still had to get unlocked. I just about made my sister late to her graduation to get this dumb little cell phone.

Anyways, as we walked away from the store to go get the SIM chips for the unblocked phones, I plucked up the courage to go back and ask if I could test the phone myself. Some of you are thinking "Well, duh! I do stuff like that all the time!" but it was a big step for me.

It worked that time.

After we had all the SIM cards, we debated how to get home. Being that our apartment was right on the beach, all we had to do was find the shoreline, and follow it until we got home. Easy enough right? It seemed a little far and we had been on our feet in the mall for about two hours, but I being my cheap self, thought that we could walk back. Enough agreed with me to make this the group decision.

NOW, returning to that question of how long it would take to get from home to school to home, I now have an answer: TOO LONG. We walked SEVEN MILES. I've heard stories about people in Africa walking 10 miles just to go to church, and I realize that I might go inactive in such a situation.

My feet were killing me and I had on hiking boots! Everyone else was in flip flops. I. would. have. DIED. I'm so glad that I did bring them. I don't care that I'm the only white-faced boot strapped "Alemao" (All- ey - maow) (German descendant) on the face of the beach. it was worth it! I didn't get robbed.

This picture was taking somewhere on the trip home from the mall and you still can't even see the apartment!!

As we got in, my friend Josh and I decided it would be a good idea to take a swim in the pool while it was raining. No, I don't know why but it actually felt really good!
I'm gonna take a shower now. I smell like chlorine. and salt(ed/y)?
Thank you for reading!