Adventures of Living Abroad

I just about lost my mind today. It was Friday night and it had been a long week of work. I just wanted to relax a little bit and decided to try to find a good deal on plane tickets to Iguazu Falls. My mom and I are going there in January. Should be easy right? WRONG...not in Brazil. After spending some time searching on the internet I found a great deal on the Brazilian airline TAM. The site was obviously in Portuguese but with some common sense and concentration I figured it out. Sweet, I thought! And then I reached the payment page.... Paying with my debit card in the US is simple. You just type in your card information or bank account and BAM it's done. Not so easy here. It would not accept my debit card without having to do some extra steps. So next up: my US credit card. NOPE. It didn't want that card either. Then I decided, well I guess I will need to activate the credit card I received months ago. I called the number and luckily I was able to speak to someone ...

So I received the my interesting and unique gift from a student the other day...an ostrich egg....He brought it from his farm...yes, a real ostrich egg. My first question was: Do your parents know you brought me this egg? 2nd question: Is this thing going to hatch on me? Yes, his parents knew he was going to give it to me and no it was going to hatch. Apparently, you can tell by the color of the shell if it is a good egg to hatch or not. Who knew? haha. Anyway, the student then preceded to tell me how to get the insides out of the egg by poking a hole in both ends and blowing it out, but he kept reminding me to make sure I do not breathe in! haha This present came a day after I told the class it was my brother's birthday. I told my students in the morning during calendar and during their recess time some of them made cards and one student created a cake in art class. We then sang to him and sent it through What's App. What a sweet group of students! The ostrich e...

So I had my first dance performance in about 5 years last Sunday. It was so exhilarating to be on stage again! I felt at home there. It was a fun but long and exhausting day. We had rehearsal in the morning and then Lin, the co-owner helped to do my makeup because of course I didn't bring my bright blue eye shadow with me! I threw out all my stage makeup before I moved here. We had two shows that evening and it was so much fun to try and communicate with the other dancers. I started to learn that a few others speak English but they are shy about it because they don't speak well. I learned some new phrases and really enjoyed my time. I know I have said this before but they have been so welcoming and have tried so hard to communicate with me and make sure I'm doing okay.   My very funny and talented hip hop teacher and I at the dance show   Some of the hip hop crew