Brasil!

Oi!

So....this has been a crazy couple of weeks. We were up in Springdale last Wednesday, and I got the call that my visa came and I was leaving on Sunday night. A surprise to say the least. So my companions drove me up to St. George Sunday night and I stayed the "night" (like 5 hours) with some sisters there. Elder Sullivan picked me up at 4:30am and drove me to the airport. After that it was lots of waiting and flying and wishing I could sleep. I landed in São Paulo at 8:30am. 5:30am Utah time. 26 hours traveling. But it wasn´t over yet.

We found some LDS Church Travel Services people, but then they left us standing in the airport for an hour and a half. When they came back, we piled into a van and had the most terrifying drive to the mission home. The whole time I thought I was going to die. I´m not sure if they have traffic laws in São Paulo, or if everyone is in mutual agreement that they don´t need to be obeyed. Terrifying.

We got to the mission home, they through us in the group of Brazillians coming from the MTC there and made us try and introduce ourselves in Portuguese, which is just mean. Then, back into the van to go to the mission office. At this point I was so tired that the driver of the van had to save my life because apparently I jumped out of the van and walked right in front of a bus. My bad.

I got my new trainer, and then I sat in the trunk of a car waiting for her to do some stuff. It was pathetic. It was raining, and missionaries kept trying to talk to me. We were both trying so hard to understand each other, and we were both failing so miserabley that it just looked like we were playing charades.

After that we got to drag our luggage all over creation. We walked to the metro, rode the metro, walked forever after the metro and then got to our house. We live right now with two other sisters, so we went and visited a man with them, because it was pointless to try and go to our area. We don´t live in our area, which is SUPER annoying. If we have enough money, we can take a couple buses to get there, otherwise it takes us between an hour and an hour and a half to walk between our house and our area.

My area is interesting. I pretty much get to go hiking every day, but instead of scenic views, it´s dirty city. It´s very hilly, but that didn´t stop anyone from building there. When it get´s to steep, they chop little stairs into the concrete. Some roads are pavement, some are brick-like things (cobblestones), some are both. There are dogs everywhere. I mean everywhere. In the houses, in the streets, on the roofs of the houses. And along with that comes all the feces. Poop everywhere. Gross.

The day I got here I wanted to shower SO. BAD. When I got to our apartment I learned that they don´t have showers here. There´s a drain in the floor of our bathroom and a faucet above your head. One knob for water (no hot water in the whole apartment), and it has a thingie wrapped around it that will get the shower water at least lukewarm. It was a little bit of a shock. There´s no shower curtain, the bathroom isn´t made any bigger to accomodate the shower. Everything just gets wet. Strange.

Also, the toilets seriously cannot handle anything more substantial than water. It will usually flush pee. Can´t handle poop. Can´t handle toilet paper. You have to throw the paper in the trash can right by the toilet. We´re lucky, because we have a sink. No mirror. It´s interesting.

I also learned that they don´t eat dinner here. Or really breakfast. They´ll snack a little, but mostly they just eat lunch. So we eat with members for lunch. They think everyone in America is fat because we eat big dinners and then go to bed with food in us. Who knows?

We eat rice and beans and salad every day. Depending on who is feeding us, they have other things too, but those are always there. And juice. They have a billion different kinds of juice. My first night I had my first glass of passionfruit Fanta. Pretty good. 

One lady we ate with was so funny. First, you have to know that everyon in São Paulo has a gate. And it´s super rude to touch the gate. You don´t just walk in people´s gates. So you have to stand outside the gate, clap as loud as you can and yell their name. So. This little old lady, whose name is Irmã Leão. We show up at the gate to her apartment complex and yell for her. She´s like four floors up, so she chucks her keys down at us. Bashed poor Sister Sorensen on the shoulder. We go in, up to her apartment and help her rearrange her living room for lunch. She´s chattering away, and I´m not understanding anything she´s saying and then she grabs my plate and PILES it full of food. Tons of food. Then, about every two minutes, she asks if I´m ready for more. Seriously. Every two minutes. She was so concerned that I didn´t eat more. She made enough food to feed my entire family of six, and she wanted us two to eat it all. When we finally convinced her that we couldn´t eat any more we shared a message and left. We took her keys with us on the way down and when we got to the gate she had a string dangling out the window. So we unlocked the gate, attached the keys and she hoisted them up 3 or 4 floors to her apartment. It was super funny.

I have never been more aware of just how white I am. I went from everyone staring at me because I was a celebrity, to everyone staring at me because I´m an anomaly.  Sticking out like a sore thumb. The two phrases that I hear most often are:

"Wow, you´re so white" and

"I´m sorry, I can´t understand you because your accent is too strong."

Ai. My first full day in our area, I was thinking "Jeez, I´m not THAT white, why do they keep saying that?" Then, when we used someone´s bathroom and they actually had a mirror. I was so accustomed to seeing various shades of color that I was shocked by my extreme lack of color. So yeah. Super white.

Also, I´m sorry that this punctuation is weird. I know for a fact that I´m using an accent symbol instead of an apostrophe because I can´t find it on this weird keyboard. I´m sure that´s not the only weird thing. I´m probably spelling everything wrong too, because they spell-check is set to Portuguese, so it´s underlining every English word in red, which is a little distracting. Oh well.

Have a good week!