Recife!

Hey! Do you know, that when people have less two things happen. Children become very aggressive about their possessions, and priorities are righted. But all of this happens in a very strange way, that I wouldn't have expected. Because children FIGHT for things, to get a ball or to play with a toy, or to get food. But once they have it, they are surprisingly willing to share. Once a child has money, he doesn't hoard it, but will go out and buy lollipops for everyone. If he buys a packet of biscuits, they are common property. If he gets the ball, more than likely he will round everyone up to play. It's strange, because I expected way more hoarding. In the 'west' I am used to children offering things, but rather sparingly, and grudgingly, so I really really expected something else. The thing about priorities is interesting. Hannah and I are a part of a church plant, and our church has about a 40 members (we don't really do membership, but about 40 regulars) someti...

Yesterday, I did a pretty silly thing, after another pretty silly rebellious act of which I will tell you more about if I get caught for it, but for now, I would rather keep it under wraps :) I was on my way to visit Jen and Nate about 6pm in the evening, and for some unknown reason I got off the bus about 3 stops too soon, so about 1.5km away from where I was meant to be. Generally that's not a massive problem, but in my case, I catch the one rain day, and it has just gotten dark, the road that I am walking appears at the best of times to be a little sinister especially because it is hemmed in woodland, and there are no lights on the road, also rumoured to be one of the most accident prone roads in the area. So I am walking along, I who generally do not scare easily, with all sorts of scenarios running through my head, in all of which I of course emerge triumphant despite the menacing exaggerated strength of which-ever opponent I was dreaming up in that moment. It took me maybe 15...

Man, Brazil has a lot of bank holidays. THANK the LORD. This month of November there are two coming up, and to be honest, we need them. There are loads of exciting things happening in the next month or two, but it means that we are snowed under with preparation and kids, loving it, but add that to a particularly busy time at seminary handing in essays and such, means that I am a little fed up, and a little more than a little tired. This week has been particularly hard, and at the start of the week on Monday made we want to cry that it wasn't already Friday, but then I was blessed, and blessed again (with the help of our awesome teens) and have been blessed all week, and have made it to Wednesday without incident, and with several good days at the project, so I think I'm going to make it! On Sunday we had an amazing time at Children's day, we rented 5 different 'games' for the kids, two trampolines, two bouncy castles and one ballpit for the little ones and it was a ...

HEELLOO! I am now going to talk a little politics, and those of you who know me (I.e all 6 of you) know that it´s going to be rant, so I´m not even going to try to disguise it as anything else. Brazil recently had it´s elections, and for me the election process was a extremely difficult. There seemed to be about 7 different things that needed voting for, from president to district representative. And publicity was something else, everywhere you went, any free wall space was painted white, and then painted with number of the candidates, presidential candidates had like a double digit number, below some line that I didn´t really understand, then the other representatives had higher numbers, going to 5 digit number for district rep. When you vote you are meant to remember the numbers of all your reps and put them in the voting machine, its maybe a good thing that I dont get to vote, I would have remember the numbers wrong for sure. In any case, voting is manditory or you get fined, which...

Hey all!! It's been a while, I think that I am currently still trying to get back into some sort of routine after the camps in July, there are so many things that we are trying to get done and to sort out that have taken up a lot of my time, so yet again I find myself apologizing. Sorry! Having said that there is so much to say, that really there is little that I can think of, if you really understand what I mean...everything and nothing to tell you all. So maybe this time I will tell you some of the things that I have been noticing around me in Brazil, that have made me stop and think, and really don't have much to do with our project but that you might find interesting.... Kites. What is it about Kites that make them some sort of universal form of entertainment, I had kind of forgotten about kites as I grew up, but I can also remember playing with them as a kid, but as I grew up the only place I thought about kites when I was teaching kids their ABC's it seems to be the m...

Hey! We have started running new courses at the project, and things have started really well, in fact on thursday I had one of the best days at the project that I've had in a long time, and that was mainly due to the fact that we had help this time around. So, at the moment one of the classes that I am teaching is Drama. If anyone reading this has ever seen me act, they might think that that's a bad idea. It's kind of like my Choir teacher in 7th grade, who always invited me to be in the choir, and then asked me not to sing, during the shows, well my drama is similar to that, I spent most of my school years in the school productions, I even landed some of the main parts, but it's not hard to do that when you are a 12 year old, I believe that the main descriptions of my acting skills use the words 'over' and 'acting'. BUT here I am, the kids all got really excited to do drama, so I thought that that would be a really good idea, so far, the classes have be...

Well, One more year, gone! Just like that! Today is my birthday, which I share, with my good friend Dion and Keanu Reeves (and apparently the second cousin of one of the girls at our project) . To tell you the truth people, I'm not getting any prettier, nor do I think that I'm getting any wiser, in fact it feels just the opposite, when I was a teenager I'm pretty sure I knew everything, it's been downhill since then. So all I have to hope for is that I am getting more patient and kinder, but there is yet to be evidence of that, so I won't be putting that on my resume just yet! Just because it's my birthday, and I'm in a reminiscing mood I would like to point out some of the contrasts between this birthday and others. Firstly and fore mostly, I am pretty sure that I had a warm shower last year. Yep, still talking about the cold showers, they are still just as hard to get used too! More than likely last year on my birthday I would have been at work. I can'...

HELLOOOOO!!! Camps are over, who would have believed it seriously! In April I didn't believe that I'd even make it that far really, and now here I am mid august, and am missing them terribly. Although on the last day of camp, I was quite happy to see the back of them, but once the tiredness faded you forgot about all the mud, and how all your clothes were ruined because of the games, how having a shower was a 30 second experience, that felt like a bucket of ice being tipped over you, how you had to eat a whole raw onion in order to get your team a meager 200 points, how you slept only 4 hours a night on a good night, how teenagers have hugly emotional problems, and how you had to throw a tantrum to stop people from eating raw chicken. No, all of that kind of stuff was automatically deleted from my mind and all I was left with was: How nice it was to be continuously surrounded by friends, and you were never lonely. How it was singing and watching the sun rise. How the kids loved...

Blank. Blank. Second week of camps is over, and I am fully aware of the lack of blog for almost a wee while now. I refuse to make excuses for myself, but I am sure that other people would make them for me, these last couple of weeks have been something else completely! I hope you believe me when I say that I started writing this blog several times before giving up because I was just too exhausted to write anything worth the reading. I am afraid that today is no exception to this overall state of mind, so if this blog is eventually published, you must know that it is the result of the grace of God. So two weeks of camps down, and two more to go. As you can imagine, there has not been a whole lot of sleep involved on these camps, and that is the number one topic of conversation most days at the moment, comparing how much sleep we get and trying to deal with symptoms of the lack of sleep, which mostly seem to be that people find each other rather hysterical. In the funny sense. I don'...

Hi, I'm Emma, and I'm late with my blog, again. Pleased to meet you. Well most, if not all of you, already know me, so this should come as no surprise to you, so apologies again. Also if I have promised to email or call you, I probably won't do that in a timely fashion either. But if you are a future employer, I am very punctual with my work. Right. I was just having a little clean of my room, which means that in fact I had a sandal in one hand and was trying to kill the monster ants that have nested in my wardrobe. While I was killing these ants I was struck with the thought that, well firstly, this feels a little like a massacre, with little ant bodies lying all over my floor, do you think that ants can recognize death of a species member, and then I wondered if they did, would they have a sense of self protection and panic, and I felt quite bad. And then I didn't. It's me or them, I am not sharing my room. So that was the end of that. In any case the reason that...

Hello all!!!! Here we are, another week past in a flash, I really can't even believe that we are in June already, which means there is only a couple of weeks left until the camps, until the new step teams, until Mark comes to visit! Lot's of things to look forward too, a lot of preparation to do, a lot of procrastination to resist. Although, it's not so hard to resist procrastination, when really there isn't even much time for that. Our Project World Cup starts next week, with Brazil's first game - Brazil, I am sure shall come to a stand still, at least that is what I am hoping for! This past week has been pretty football orientated, and we have been working a lot with the younger boys, the girls have been settling into a comfortable routine of actually turning up, and only fighting a little bit. The boys not so much. On Saturday we took 26 of the young boys (under 15s) to play the Santa Cruz under 15's. What a day! It took us a good three hours to get there, du...

Hello One and All! The weather here is not giving up at all, it's meant to be the start of the winter months, and it's still hotter than...well some place really hot. Apparently this is freak weather, but luckily for us it means that, because the rains are slow in coming, the builders at the project are able to maybe even finish building the security wall around the premises, which toppled down because of a mudslide last rainy season. The past week and a bit have been worked dominated, but have been really good. I haven't managed to leave Tejipio much (just last monday to go into Beach Territory to "play" some volley ball). So I have mainly just been based around the project with my little animal friends, lots of cockroaches going about just now... One of the new projects that we have set up is another football project (apparently I should just get used to it, football is life and soul of Brazil, I have even been invited to join a women team-there are three of us ...

This week I would like to introduce you to several of my new groups of friends: 1. The largest and by far more involved in my life are my little ant friends. In fact, I am misleading you a little bit because in fact this group has many subgroups, all whom play a large role in my life; There are the little ones, the ones that you would normally not have the capacity to even see with normal human eyes if it wasn´t for the fact that they move in swarms of thousands, over anything and everything that they may misconstrue as sustanance. If you make the mistake of vacuum sealing a bag with bread in it, and there is a nanometer of space that even air can not pass through, you can bet your bottom dollar that the ants can make their way into the bag, and the next time that you go to lift a piece of bread out, your hand comes out crawling with ants, at least at that point you are not so upset about the bread, because you have definately lost your appetite for the rest of the week. These little g...

Hello All!!! I have been without the internet for a good week now! So yet again I find myself apologising for the lateness of this blog. I mean the best, but sometimes it's just not enough. The past week has flown by, and as usual by Sunday I can't even remember if there was a Monday to this week, and if there was I haven't a clue what we got up too. As the days go by, we are trying to get more and more prepared for these summer camps, that seems to be number 1 on the priorities list, but also we are looking at changing around some of courses here at the project. I'm feeling a little thinly spread with the capoeira, since I have not been able to find a group of my own around the area yet. Recife has a lot of capoeira regional, and by the looks of things it's a very violent type of regional. There is a group further away in Rio Dolce with Mestre Sapo that does Angola, and hopefully one of these days I will find time and resources to get myself up there. I am currentl...

Hello All! I am currently aiming for being on time with this blog, we shall see how long I survive tonight, and see if I can get it finished. Many things happened this week, some good, some great, some not wonderful, and some truly upsetting so trying to think of a mood for this blog is complicated, so I thought that I might just tell it as it happened. Monday was our first day without Becky, as you all will know, since I wrote my blog late last week (some of this might be a little bit of a repetition, I apologise) and also we had our monthly latin link prayer meeting. And although, I ran out of gas while baking the cake for it, so that it half stuck in the tin, and that the first of the 'summer' rains started and came through our church roof right into the middle of proceedings, it was still really good to hear where other people are in their projects. It was also really good to see Jen and Nate after a year and a half, and they even let me hold Micah, even though he's on...

I'm sorry about the lateness of this blog, but the activities of the mayday weekend really threw my game I must admit! This week was busy busy busy, and I loved it. What I did not love was the fact that Becky has now left, well semi-left, I have spent my first night alone in my bed (as it was only when Becky arrived that I was promoted from a place on the floor to my very own room, and double bed!). In anycase, we must bid goodriddence to Rebekah Long, and I think that some of the children have taken it even worse than me. Sad days, As Hannah said in our Monday morning prayer meeting, Becky has worked hard the whole time she has been here, and I don't think I've heard her complain about the work once. She's a machine that one, and she will be missed (although I will see her tomorrow and Thursday, so I should probably leave the homage until next week). Not surprisingly I cannot for the life of me remember what happened last week up until Friday. I think it involved scrub...

Hello All!!! It was weird, not writing a blog last week, giving control over to Becky, I wasn't sure that I liked someone else having control of my blog, but seeing as I received so many positive complements about Beckys blog, perhaps I should just let her write it from now on... Well we all know that's not going to happen, but I thought I would just say it anyway. Thank you for letting me know that you enjoy reading the blog, it helps with the writing of it late on a Sunday night. This week was a really relaxed week. There was a day off in the middle, and it really worked to break up the week, and gave us some resting time. I had several long afternoon naps, that usually found me grumpier after I woke up then was completely necessary. The midday heat in Recife doesn't make for great naps, or peaceful dreams. Because of the easiness of this past week, workwise, I have not much to tell you about the project. It feels a little stagnant, but at the same time, every day that I ...

Visiting blogger So I have been given the daunting and very important job of writing Emma's blog this week. She has given me her full confidence to write whatever I wish... so all the stories she has been keeping from you of her life here can now be revealed... but then I remembered I have to sleep in the same bed as her so I think I had better stick to the truth and live to tell the tale. This week has been quite a quiet 1, well compared to the past few crazy one's, but yet I think we all still feel like we've done a good few all-nighter's, so have been very blessed to had less on as I don't think we would have made it to today otherwise. Emma and I both have had a few emails this past week checking we are ok with the rain in Rio: surprisingly enough we are, as Rio is just a weeeee bitty away from Recife, but saying that we have had our fair share of heavy rain this week. Hitting a high on Saturday when we were off on both of our 2nd beach trips, joined by the ...