Hey everyone!

Boy, I have a lot of stories for this week, but I think they´re all going to be trumped by the reason why I only have a little bit of time to do emails today.

So in the middle of São Paulo they have this giant market. It´s got probably the best fruit in the entire world, but you have to pay out the nose for it. They also have a bunch of little crafty vendor people from other countries. Anyway. We decided to go there today and take a look. We weren´t 100% sure if was inside our mission or not, but we went anyways. It was pretty cool. Bought some cool stuff, tried some tasty fruits (for free), saw a bunch of tourists (they´re funny), etc. Then, when we were done, some of the other sisters decided they wanted to go to this really tall bank where you can go up to the top and take a picture of the whole city. I voted no, since we would have to walk through a part of the city that we definitely are not supposed to go in without permission, but we ended up going anyways. (Just had to throw that in so yáll know that the following events are NOT my fault)

We walked towards the bank. The shyest, sweetest, newest sister pretty much got attacked by a Jack Sparrow street actor. We got to the bank and only and 2 other sisters and I could even go up to the top because we were the only ones with ID. It was going to be a half hour wait before we could even start the tour thing, so we ended up not going anyway. And then. We parted ways. My companion and I headed for the metro. Entered the metro. Went to use our metro cards and.....discovered that my companion had been robbed. Awesome. Now she doesn´t have a public transportation card, and we don´t have our cell phone. Obedience brings blessings folks. :P

So now we don´t have a lot of time because we need to sort out this mess.

We also got to go to the hospital this week. For two weeks now my companion has been getting a horrible cough at night. Only when she tries to go to bed. She starts coughing so hard that she throws up for like 15 minutes. Every night. Problem. Finally she called the President´s wife and she said we could go to the hospital. Problem #2: we didn´t know how to get to the hospital. The secretary in the mission office told us what metro to take, which Ónibus to take afterwards, and then told us to just ask the driver where to get off. Totally fine. Except that the people in that particular area are horrible. The driver never told us where to get off, and after going in the wrong direction for half an hour, this lady told us to get off and catch a bus going the other direction. We did that and asked THAT driver to tell us where to get off. Except he didn´t. So then, we ended up causing a scene and everyone on the bus got really mad at us, but hey. Who cares? Not me. We finally got off at the right stop, and then it started pouring down rain, so that was a fun walk to the hospital. We got there, neither of us had ever been to a hospital in Brasil....so we ended up dripping water all over the poor information lady´s desk while she explained the health care system of Brasil.

In the end, they took an x-ray, and she doesn´t have pneumonia. She´s just allergic to the pollution in the air. I don´t know if I´ve mentioned it before, but the pollution here is absolutely terrible. They also gave her a prescription that we didn´t have enough money to buy. :)

The next day was THANKSGIVING! :D Sadly, Thanksgiving is just another normal day here. But we wanted to make it special. That morning we looked at what we could use to make a feast...and remembered that the only food in our new house is salt, oil, and an unopened package of fake coffee. Plan B was to go the store and buy something to eat....but the mission allowance didn´t go through. So between us, we had 1 cent. The most ironic part of this is that Brasil doesn´t even use a 1 cent coin. Someone gave it to me as change because they thought it was a 5 cent piece. So we had an old, valueless, 1 cent piece. Hmmmmmm.

After a very trying Thanksgiving day, we gave up and went to the store to buy a lime pie with our personal debit cards. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. I also bought a bar of chocolate, but the termites got into it before I could finish it....sad.

The funniest thing that happened this week, was by far the BEST rejection I have ever seen. I always enjoy seeing the ways people come up with to avoid talking to us, but this one takes the cake.

We walked up to this guy who was sitting on a wall and my companion said hi and went to shake his hand. He avoided the handshake and just gave a thumbs up. Undeterred, she started to talk to him and he started gesturing about how he´s deaf. I was sitting there trying to see if I remembered any sign language, when I saw that he was sitting there with a PHONE in his hand. A house phone. Not even a cell phone that you can use to text. A completely normal house phone. Sister Bruno tried to give him a pamphlet, which he turned down, since apparently fake deaf people also can´t read. I barely made it around the corner before I started cracking up.

These next two stories pretty much explain why an old man here once asked if I was a vampire. We were talking to this girl in her house, and she was talking about my companion´s green eyes. Then she told me I had dark eyes. I was like...what? My eyes are blue. She was like No, your eyes are black! I was like no....I just have abnormally large pupils. After stealing my glasses and performing an uncomfortably intense analysis she agreed that I just had freakishly large pupils. Then everyone who lived in the house had to come see. So that´s why people never talk about my light eyes. They think I have black eyes. That´s interesting.

Second. We had a stake FHE last night and we were taking a picture with our district leader because he goes home in a week. His companion was taking the picture, and after a couple pictures he started asking how to turn off the flash. We asked why, and he informed the whole room that I wasn´t showing up in the pictures because I was too white, so he wanted to try it without the flash. 

Moral of the story? I really am a vampire...

Also at that FHE. All the missionaries in the stake were sitting up on the stand and after they closed the meeting they announced over the pulpit that they had found a cell phone in the bathroom. I automatically knew it was ours. And it was. And they made fun of us in front of the whole stake. Thanks.

This last story is a little embarrassing, and a little bit gross, but it´s too funny to keep to myself. :)

We got to lunch yesterday and we commented on how the lady had rearranged her kitchen. She was like "Yeah, the walls were super dirty and it was driving me crazy, so when I cleaned them I just rearranged everything." And they are very clean walls. Perfect white with little flowers sprinkled on them. Very cute. We ate lunch and everything, and then she brought out the dessert, which happened to be red jello. We started eating the jello and everything was fine and dandy until I put a huge spoonful of jello in my mouth. Out of nowhere I got a randomly HUGE sneeze. With a mouthful of red jello. After the sneeze I assessed the damage and realized that I had sprayed red jello all over my hand. Gross. She gave me some toilet paper, and I cleaned it up. After lunch, I was helping her clean up and I saw that there was half-dried red jello sprayed on her nice clean, white wall. I started wiping at it with the toilet paper, but it was too late. I informed her and she was super nice and said it was no problem. Shame. Burning with shame.

Anywho, that´s all I have time for! Sorry everyone that I didn´t email back!

Tchau!
Sister Peart