Lt. John Dumb Bear

I slept in my tent last night and had a great night's sleep except for in the morning. It gets so hot here very early in the morning that it is impossible to sleep in. Since I am not on the ocean anymore, there is no breeze and all the vegetation makes the humidity unbearable. Therefore, I woke up this morning with a dip in the pool.

A lot of my time here in Brazil reminds me of the movie Dances with Wolves. Even though I am taking language classes, they are very easy and I feel that most of my communication is non-verbal. I purposely do not use my dictionary anymore because I find it fun to act out and try to guess what people are saying to me. I am starting to decipher more of the conversation and I certainly understand more than I can speak. Also, my name here is not Caleb, it is any version of the word besides "Caleb." Its kinda like Lt. John Dumb Bear (Dunbar) in the movie. My name is anything from Calebe to Calliba. This is especially true with my crazy aunt. My name changes every time she opens her mouth. She is 52 years old but acts like she is maybe 35. Every time she says anything (which of course I don't understand) the family just looks at me and says "doida" or "crazy." One thing that I did understand is that she wants me to go to Texas and find her a rich, young America. I told her that I would set her up with my doctor cousin Matt.

All day was filled with fun activities. We hiked the mountain overlooking the banana fields and sat by the pool (mom, I still have not gotten burnt here even though I don't think I wore a shirt the whole 4 days). While we were laying around the pool, some monkeys started yelling from the trees surround the pond. Apparently, they were mad at us for blocking their route to the fruit trees. I got some really great pictures of them and some were so close I could have touched them ( I thought this might be dangerous but my family was egging me on.... however, they stood really far away and acted very scared of the monkeys). Also, they make great fruits drinks here. I had really acai berry juice (pretty nasty, tasted really "green" but I told myself it was healthy) and many other fresh juices. We also went "fishing" which consisted of my uncle netting them as seen in the picture. I caught a small fish with one of their poles and they looked at me like a miracle worker. We had the fish for dinner in the traditional food of Espirito Santo- Moceqa.

Tonight was Junior's birthday and so we threw him a Flamingo party (one of the futebol teams from Rio). Half of the family is Flamingo fans and the other half is Fluminense (rival team) so it became a heated discussion and I learned several new descriptive words.

Today is Valentine's day and I really missed Laurel. Since I was at the sitio I didn't have internet so I couldn't even talk to her. I feel like a bad boyfriend and it is these kind of things that make me sad about being here. However, it is a good thing that I was at the sitio because the activities took my mind off of Laurel. Also, it doesn't feel like Valentine's Day here. They don't celebrate it, there is no snow, and I can't stop sweating. It just doesn't feel right.

One thing I noticed today was that I have no privacy. For example, as I was writing in my journal today, two family members came up and looked over my shoulder. While I am working in my room or reading for school, my family members feel comfortable with distracting me for thirty minutes at a time. I am having to be very forward sometimes and just tell them that I need to be alone to work, but I feel very bad doing this. I guess this is just a cultural difference and Brazil has less social boundaries than the US.