American Entertainment

Today was my cleaning day. I cleaned my bathroom, room, and washed my clothes. It has taken me a while to convince my mother into letting me do these menial tasks, but I think she understands that I want to do them for myself. After eating lunch I went to the beach to find Amanda and her bodyboarding buddies. I finished up my required reading on the beach and I am trying to get it done early so that I can focus on my Portuguese and read some of the books that I brought with me. We hung out of the beach till about 3 and then I went for my longest run yet at 4. I really enjoy running because it gives me time to think (in English) and get away from Portuguese for awhile. Normally I do not exercise this much because I do not have time and I just get bored with it. Now I look forward to exercising every day and feel really crappy if I don't. However, I think I am running a little too much on the sidewalk next to the beach because my knees are starting to hurt sometimes at night, guess I'll just have to run in the sand.

After returning from my run, I wanted to go to the movies for a little American entertainment. Nicole, Amanda, and I walked to the Shopping center in Vila Velha and caught a the Valentine's Day movie at 9:30. I made the mistake of going to a mall with two girls so we pretty much caught the last movie of the night once they were done window shopping. The movie was pretty good but I couldn't stop thinking about two things the whole time. First, the movie of course made me miss Laurel horribly. I go through really hard times everyday with missing Laurel, my family, my friend, and America; but then I just put it out of my mind and it usually passes quickly. The massive influx of spoken-English into my life distracted me from this during the movie, but it hit me hard after the movie. Second, I felt somewhat bad for taking Amanda to an all-English movie and sympathized for her for having to hear straight English for 2 hours. The movie had Portuguese subtitles and the movie theater was packed with Brazilians, but still I felt very egocentric watching a English movie (even though all the movies here are total English movies). I wonder if my family ever feels like this? I know that I feel really bad when I am speaking English to Nicole while around Amanda or my family because I feel like I am keeping them in the dark. I don't think that my family, co-workers feel the same way. A lot of times they don't even slow their speech down while around me. I guess I have to take this in context that this is their country and I am a foreigner, but still I wonder if they have the same feelings.

After the movie we walked back to the house and my dad and I drank out on the driveway. I really enjoy talking with him and I like how he tries to use the little English that he knows. He thinks that we can learn from each other since I need Portuguese and he needs English for his job. We talked for a really long time and I found a lot of new things out about his family and his past. It was 3:00 by the time I got to bed, and I was planning on trying to catch up on sleep this weekend!