Saturday Morning

7At 9:30 we went to the port. We drove around trying to find Nicole but it ended up that she went back to my house. She is having a lot of problems over at her house especially with her little sister borrowing her clothes, so she stays in Amanda's room during the weekends. I am really blessed to have my family and I don't have any real trouble with any of my family members. I don't know what I would do without Amanda and Sheila and I really like hanging out with my dad on the weekends.

We took a tour of the port at about 10:30 and it was very informative but completely in Portuguese. I sat next to Daniel to get the shortened translated version. This port is huge and exports thousands of tons of iron ore a day. They do not have a refinery here so they only produce iron ore clumps and then ship them to various places in the world on huge cargo ships. The process goes on 24/7 and that is why there is always ships waiting outside the port. For a large cargo ship to wait outside the port it costs $45,000 per day. These cargo ships can reach Japan and China in 48 days and have to return filled with water when empty of iron ore to stabilize themselves. The following picture is some large machine we saw in operation as they picked up the iron ore and loaded in onto a maze of conveyor beltsFor lunch we ate a a $20.00 all you can eat Arabic restaurant and Amizade paid for half. It was the first "foreign to Brazil" food I had eaten since I arrived and I loved it. I ate way too much but as had to continue my streak of making all you can eat restaurants lose money.

After lunch we visited the convent. If you wiki Vila Velha, this is pretty much it all brings up, so check it out. It was beautiful and had beautiful panorama vistas of Vila Velha and Vitoria. From the top, we were still under the summit of the mountain I climbed yesterday.

Rule breaker, think about it.After we got back, I went to the beach to read my book, but we had to return because Amanda was tired from surfing all day. I came back and wasted some more time on my computer. Daniel and Geli paid Sheila today so she went crazy at the supermarket and our fridge is stocked! Loving it! She also went shopping with Junior and Gabi.
When Sheila returned, she wanted to party for her birthday. She bought a pretty good wine and I went to the corner bar to buy some beer for the party. Daniel bought some really good meat and we had about 3 dinners that night. Fabi and the Italians from my Portuguese class showed up and my parents were overjoyed to have everyone in the house. The party went really late and my mom and I finally went to bed around 4.