It’s been a while since I’ve written. I think I need to write about less stuff more often. Anyways, here’s what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks!

We’ve almost completed 5 weeks of language school! Next week will be the completion of our first term!! That seems so crazy! Last weekend we had our first take home tests. They went great! We will have take home tests every weekend from this point on. Our study time is starting to increase, as we expected it to. Our need to have Julia here is increasing as well, and will continue to as the weeks go on.
There have been a few “encouraging language moments” for me this week. We are getting to know the ladies that work at the bakery near our house pretty well, one of them is named Ana Paula. Anyway, the other day she told me, in portuguese, that my portuguese was getting better! It was a small thing because “better” could mean lots of things, but she said better!!! It was great to hear of some progress in my language learning!
We have been venturing out quite a bit. We visited a beautiful park on the other side of the city this week. Its called Parque de Moinhos do Vento. It is located in a beautiful neighborhood, very lush for being downtown. Tons of people were walking and running and there were kids everywhere. The kids played for about an hour on a zip line they had at the playground. We loved it and plan to visit it again soon.
We ventured to an outdoor market a couple of weeks ago. Its called Brique do Rendençao. There were a bunch of vendors setup selling handmade stuff-shoes, jewelry, household stuff, artwork. I got a bracelet and a ring for the equivalent of 5 USD. Gotta love it!!
We’ve been out to several restaurants, all good and most of them all you can eat!! All you can eat is so common down here. We have been to all you can eat fresh sushi (amazing), all you can eat churrasco(rotisseried meat, also amazing), all you can eat pasta (oh man) and a couple of buffets. There is also call you can eat pizza, all you can eat filet mignon cooked different ways, all you can eat pasteis (like an empanada only better), all you can eat just about anything!! The thing about all you can eat here is that you don’t usually go up to a buffet, you sit and they bring the buffet to you one item at a time!!! They most certainly know how to do restaurants down here!! If you want to see some pictures of some of the food we have eaten, follow the link to check out Lucas’s facebook page or twitter. He’s been picture journaling our food journey!
In the midst of all the eating and studying, we’ve been visiting the area ABWE churches and getting to know all the missionaries we’ll be working with down here. We look forward to getting to know them better!
That’s all for now, hopefully I’ll start writing more often. Later!