"Born Again"

I got to sleep in today until 8:30, but my alarm went off an hour early. Additionally, it is really hard to sleep in here, because the sun rises very early and it is very strong early in the morning. I don't have shades on my window and I can't put anything up because I need maximum air-flow just so that I go to bed at night. Even with two fans running and no blankets, I still sweat all night long. A few mornings I have woken up and my pillow and sheets have been soaking wet. It stays hot here all night and the high humidity make you feel wet all the time.

I had a nice surprise waiting for me at the start of my morning. After I woke up I picked my shorts off the floor and put them on. As I walked to the bathroom a cockroach flew out of my shorts and directly into my face. I jumped back against the door of my bathroom and almost had a heart attack as it almost flew into my mouth.

I met Nicole and Daniel at the clinic and we had a short Global Service Learning class and then we went to CADEC for our first afternoon volunteer session. We got there around 10:30 in the morning and we played games for the first hour until it was time for lunch.

After lunch I helped decorate the rooms with Sorria. Sorria looks almost identical to Serena Williams and I will put up a picture soon to prove it. By this point in the day, I was very tired and was already full of trying to understand Portuguese. Sorria tried to express what she wanted me to do, but I was really struggling. Sorria and another lady began to speak to me like a small child and gave me very menial tasks to perform. After I would make a small victory in Portuguese or in completing a task, they celebrated like you would encourage a child. It was very nice of them, but very demeaning for me. I realized that all my power and control that I loved in America had been stripped of me very quickly. Ludwig Wittgenstein said, " The limits of my language means the limits of my world. This is very true. In my case, the limit of my language is the limit of my effectiveness. I must improve my Portuguese quickly.

During this volunteer session, I had some very prideful thoughts. I thought about how much smarter I was than these people and how they were speaking to me like a child. This was totally the wrong mentality, but it consumed me for some time. I thought about all my achievements at WVU and how quickly they had been stripped from me. It is like I don't have an identity here. Everyone I have met thus far thinks that I am just a quiet, happy, dumb, American that can't speak a lick of Portuguese. They don't see the real me at all. Additionally, my white skin gives away the fact that I am foreign to this land almost immediately. I can see the reactions in people's face when they look at me and think "American." Unfortunately, the color of my skin will always mark me as a foreigner in this country, but an improvement in my language may give me some kind of identity.

After CADEC we went to the Clinic and Daniel drove us home. Then I walked straight back to Daniel's apartment for a Portuguese lesson with Geli. This really helped. Afterwards, I ran for 30 minutes and then ate dinner at my house. We had spaghetti, but they make they pasta very salty here. It is not what I am familiar with, but I love the food here.