9/21/2005

Hello all!

Written on Tuesday:

Started school today… that was certainly an enlightening experience… Brazilian schools are so different from both American and Thai schools. The kids are crazy and loud and sit hodge-podge all around the whole room. We got one real break (about 30 min. long) and a few 5-mintue breaks between teachers… Other than that the same 50 (or so) kids sit in the same room the whole school day!! I was late to school today because of my paper work… But, school starts around 7am and ends at 12:40pm…for thoughse of you that aren't math geniuses out there… That's about FIVE HOURS in the same all-white room… The good news is that my classroom is air-conditioned-something that my house is not. The seniors have to go to school on Saturday… (I will not be attending thoughse Saturday sessions althoughugh technically I should be…) I met the three other exchange students who are in my school today… they also happen to all be in my class-so that's pretty sweet. There's a girl from America, a girl from Finland, and a guy from Australia… in case you were wondering, the girl from Finland speaks perfect English-in fact, most Fins (is that what you call people from Finland??) speak amazing English. The two girls have been here 6 weeks and the guy has been here since January (southern hemisphere exchangers exchange from Jan to Jan). They all seem really nice… I think we might all be going out to a club together on Saturday night.

After I went to school, I came home and ate lunch with my family and then I took a siesta…. Brazilians are big on siestas… so are the Kimmers… so that works out well… anyways, my allergies are really bad and it's practically impossible for me to sleep at night with all the mosquitoes and me not being able to breath… I think I might be getting sick because I've gotten such little sleep the last week or more… In case you're wondering about the mosquito situation, my house doesn't have air conditioning, but it does have a tall electric fence around it; therefore, we leave the windows open all day and all night-and there are NO screens… so there are COPIOUS amounts of these horrible blood-sucking creatures in my room. (note to Lizz- I think we named the wrong bug "evil spawns of satan" ESOS)…

After my siesta, my sister and I went to a Capeira class. For thoughse of you who don't know, Capeira is a "martial art dance." It originated in Brazil and is very famous around the world. Capeira came about when the slaves wanted an opportunity to practice martial arts for an uprising against their owners. They had to be sneaky about it, so they made it into a kind of dance. It's honestly probably one of the most extreme sports. Hopefully I will be able to get a video of it and show it to you all because it's very difficult to explain and I feel like I'm not doing a very good job at it. Anyhow… It was absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, because of my bad wrist, I would actually be able to do the dance, but it was fun to go today anyhow… Either this week or this weekend, my sister is going to take me and get me signed up for yoga during the week. I'm really excited about that.

much love,
Kati