So its been a while....

I feel like I have a lot to say, but at the same time, not much at all. Its been almost 2 weeks since I’ve posted….sorry about that…

Here is a highlight from these last two weeks:

October 4th at 11 pm, I squirmed out of the car as best I could with my 4 inch heals and long formal dress. I don’t quite understand how some women can exit and enter cars with such grace and elegance while wearing such constricting dresses and ankle braking heals… It truly is an art, one that I will never be fluent in…I entered the building with my friend who was the only person I knew there. The music was blasting, all sorts of lights were blinking and flashing colors all around the room. The birthday girl (she was turning 15) was standing at the entrance with her parents greeting all the guests. There were tables with huge flower arrangements, the cake the size of a wedding cake, two TVs playing music videos and disco balls that splattered light all across the room. There was a table of candy, free drinks, people serving finger food of all sorts to the guests. First we were all just talking and hanging out together. It is hard enough for me to understand Portuguese, but in a building with blasting music, the difficulty is multiplied… The birthday girl had three different dresses throughout the evening. One for greeting people, one for the waltz with her father and the other 15 men, which consisted of family and close friends, and one for, well, one for after all that stuff…There was a film of photos from her childhood and then another film which they repeatedly played throughout the night of this girl doing a photo shoot. It was, in fact, quite repealing. Right before the waltz, everyone gathered around to watch this film where the girl flaunted her skinny body off to the whole world. The worst part about it was afterwards, her father was clapping and almost crying in admiration of his daughter. “Wow, how great, this girls father is encouraging his daughter to continue to believe that life is all about looks. And that how we appear in this world and to those around us is what will determine our worth in life”, I thought to myself. After that, everyone got up and starting dancing. And I mean everyone…the parents at this party were no different then the kids. Drinking and dancing. I had fun lots of the time during this dancing part, although for some songs I just left and went to the bathroom cuz I had no desire to dance in the way that those people were dancing. I thought I was going to have to pull out my slapping move sometime that evening. (For those of you who don’t know, If any boy tries to kiss me, I will certainly slap them). There were multiple people that asked me, “Hope, porque voce nao fica com um homen?” (Hope, why don’t you fica with any guys here?”. They have this expression, “Fica” that means to kiss a guy do what ever you want with him for that one night and then never see them again after that. People continuously pushed me, “Why don’t you kiss some guys”, “I have a friend that wants to kiss you, I will take him to you”, “Come on Hope, its just one night and its fun!”. I just said the whole time, “No! I don’t want to, I’m just not into that kind of stuff, no thanks, I really don’t want to.” After a while they stopped asking me, but man it was ridiculous. This also was a small birthday party and cost about 15,000 reais! (about 7,000 dollars). They have some that get up to 150,000 reais. It is ridiculous how much money these people spend on birthday parties. I will give one note though, the 15 years birthday is one of the most important in a persons life here. Not all parties are like this. This is only for 15 years. It is a special year signifying a child’s coming into adulthood. So this is not a typical birthday party for every age. But that was my first experience at a 15 year old birthday party. It was interesting. If I was to explain it in one sentence, it would go something like this. The party as a mixture between a wedding reception, a high school dance, and a night club.

Well I am getting better at the language. I can now, for the most part, hold a conversation if the person talks a little slower and clearly. My responses aren’t fluent, but I can actually understand things and have conversations. So that is such a blessing! It is interesting though, I can understand almost everything in a conversation, but when listening to someone talking in a Rotary meeting, or my classes at school it is still hard to understand much. I think partly because they talk faster and don’t stop so I don’t have time to think about it all to understand it. And its hard to concentrate. I will concentrate really hard for a few minutes and then my mind wanders off onto something else. So I can see that I am progressing, but I still have a ways to go until fluency.

Well I went to a Fevela (slum) this past Sunday with Rotary. It was Children’s Day and so we gathered a ton of Favela children into the school there and played games, made balloon figurines, and gave out candy and presents to them. There were so many kids and most the time it was like a Zoo! But it was great to just get to help with some of those kids.

Well, my main prayer request right now is that I would not forget what I have been learning. As times start to get easier, I don’t want to go back to how things were before. I have learned so much and I want to continue to apply these things to my life. It is a lot easier to do that when I have no other choice but to communicate without words or totally rely on God. But now that I am becoming conversational and getting used to how things work here, I have to choose to continue to communicate through my actions and continue to rely on God for everything. This is much harder.

Thank you so much for your prayers,

-Hope