On the street where you live
Horizontal street banners made out of white cloth are very popular here, and they carry a variety of interesting messages, from "Happy Birthday!" to "Congratulations, you passed the college entrance exam!" to "Lost dog" to "Detour" and even "Baby, come back to me"...
I was noticing that I haven't been sick nearly as often as I was last year, and I wasn't sure if I'd slowly picked up immunity or what, but now I've got the cold that's been going around at the community center.
At São Gabriel today, we learned that the older brother of two of the kids in the Shade and Fresh Water program there was murdered over the weekend. It seems he was about 18 years old, and his death was probably related to drug trafficking.
We are still working on the decorations for the big Christmas party on Friday for the 600 kids in Shade and Fresh Water projects in Belo Horizonte. I also have a secret assignment from my coordinator to complete before the employee Christmas party on Friday the 22nd.
Because I'm exhausted today, I'll just mention a few things before heading off to bed a couple of hours early. Almost everything here has some kind of cover. I guess when you constantly have your windows open with no screens, you get a whole lot more dust and dirt inside. But oftentimes, the covers aren't necessarily super-functional but more decorational, as in case of the crocheted doily that covers our computer monitor.
Something cool about the language is that Portuguese has one word for both "to hope" and "to wait," which seems to me that the two concepts are more linked in this society.
When in the U.S., I was not in favor of talking on the cell phone while driving, but here where everybody drives a stick-shift, it's really a scary (and, unfortunately, all too common) sight.
I've seen several stores here that I find amusing. One is the diaper store, that carries only diapers, infant to adult sizes; it even has more than one location. Another is the store called "Just Laptops" that has a sign in the window explaining that they don't actually sell any laptops.
Finally, a note about songs. You can never predict which American songs will be wildly popular in other countries. I remember, in the Republic of Georgia, for example, everybody knew and loved "Hello, Dolly." Here, two songs that seem to be quite popular are "Say You, Say Me" and "I Say a Little Prayer for You."
And with that, I'll say thanks and good night.
I was noticing that I haven't been sick nearly as often as I was last year, and I wasn't sure if I'd slowly picked up immunity or what, but now I've got the cold that's been going around at the community center.
At São Gabriel today, we learned that the older brother of two of the kids in the Shade and Fresh Water program there was murdered over the weekend. It seems he was about 18 years old, and his death was probably related to drug trafficking.
We are still working on the decorations for the big Christmas party on Friday for the 600 kids in Shade and Fresh Water projects in Belo Horizonte. I also have a secret assignment from my coordinator to complete before the employee Christmas party on Friday the 22nd.
Because I'm exhausted today, I'll just mention a few things before heading off to bed a couple of hours early. Almost everything here has some kind of cover. I guess when you constantly have your windows open with no screens, you get a whole lot more dust and dirt inside. But oftentimes, the covers aren't necessarily super-functional but more decorational, as in case of the crocheted doily that covers our computer monitor.
Something cool about the language is that Portuguese has one word for both "to hope" and "to wait," which seems to me that the two concepts are more linked in this society.
When in the U.S., I was not in favor of talking on the cell phone while driving, but here where everybody drives a stick-shift, it's really a scary (and, unfortunately, all too common) sight.
I've seen several stores here that I find amusing. One is the diaper store, that carries only diapers, infant to adult sizes; it even has more than one location. Another is the store called "Just Laptops" that has a sign in the window explaining that they don't actually sell any laptops.
Finally, a note about songs. You can never predict which American songs will be wildly popular in other countries. I remember, in the Republic of Georgia, for example, everybody knew and loved "Hello, Dolly." Here, two songs that seem to be quite popular are "Say You, Say Me" and "I Say a Little Prayer for You."
And with that, I'll say thanks and good night.
posted by Christine Piggee at
6:31 PM
1 Comments:
I hope the big party on Friday goes well. Wish I could be there. And, I'm curious about your secret assignment. Do tell.
By
Anonymous, at 12 December, 2006 15:42
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