Last Sunday several of us went to a soccer game here in Recife. It featured two teams from Brazil's top division: Sport (from Recife) and Sao Paulo (from...Sao Paulo). I've been to several professional baseball games and some college basketball and football games, but never a soccer game of this caliper. It was truly magnificent.

We walked to the stadium amidst a crowd of fans sporting red and black shirts in support of the home team. We got to the stadium about a half an hour before game time and the stadium was already basically full. We found some seats about seven rows from the bottom which were high enough for us to see the whole field.

Later I heard that there were 32,000 fans packed into the stadium. There were no distinguishable aisles, so if you wanted to find a seat, you had to climb through the crowd. People were lighting off flares and waving enormous flags. An enormous banner was unveiled that was probably 100 ft by 150 ft. A band marched around the field and everyone sang the fight song for Sport. Oh yeah, and then there was a soccer game going on.

I watched some Brazilian league soccer last week on TV, and while they were good, I was actually a little disappointed after seeing some of the Brazilian national team the week before. But when you're at the game, you can really see how good the players are. They can stop the ball at their feet and redirect it without wasting any effort. They can do bicycle kicks without thinking about it. And they can shoot the ball quickly without the goalie even having a chance to stop it.

However, the one thing they couldn't do was score. The game ended up 0-0. Both teams had really good opportunities. In the first half Sao Paolo had a one-on-one shot against the Sport goalie, and the shot bounced off the far post. Sport had two shots in the second half go just wide of the goal.

But it was a fantastic experience. It was like sitting the student section at a D-I football or basketball game, except where the student section consisted of 32,000 people. It felt a little bit like Wrigley field with some fans watching from apartment buildings across the street. I hope to be able to go to some more soccer games while I'm here.

The crowd at the Sport stadium.

The enormous banner with Sport's logo.

A week ago I moved in with my host family here in Recife. Even though they don't speak English, and I don't speak much Portuguese, life is going pretty well. It's amazing how much you can communicate without actually saying anything. Also, I'm very grateful for the little Portuguese that I did know before coming here. I can greet people, ask them how they're doing, and say that I'm doing fine. Incidentally, this can all be accomplished by one simple phrase: Tudo bom. Literally translated, it means "it's going good." So you can ask "tudo bom?" (Is it going good?) and reply "tudo bom." (It's going good.)

But the language learning is taking time. I can express basic needs and wants, but it takes me a long time to form a sentence, so conversation is difficult. Usually "conversation" includes my host parents asking me if I like something and I reply either yes or no. Or sometimes they will point to something and tell me the name in Portuguese. I'm learning, but it's taking time.

One of the small difficulties that I have right now is that I often confuse the verbs gosto (I like) and queiro (I want). Normally this doesn't cause many problems, because I usually like what I want and want what I like. But last week my host dad asked me if I wanted to go to a funeral and I responded "Gosto." He looked at me very curiously until I realized that I had said that I like going to funerals.

My Portuguese learning is also taking place in a class. For three or four hours a day, Mike and I meet with Marta, our wonderful Portuguese teacher and learn vocabulary and verb conjugations while practicing our Portuguese. Erika has her own time with Marta since she had basically zero Portuguese when she started. Mike can communicate much better than I can since he had quite a bit of Spanish before this. I'm hoping I can catch up soon.

But a bit more about my host family: My host dad, Ronaldo is pastor of a small evangelical church here in Recife. He's really cool. He'll often just tell me that we're going somewhere, and I'll hop in the car and go with him. Last night we went to a seminary to plan a mission trip to Cape Verde. His wife, Sinoene, cooks and cleans at home. They have a 24-year-old son who lives in Natal, north of here and he is married with a young son. The youngest son, Daniel (21), lives here with us and he is studying to be a pilot. He's pretty cool to hang out with and we've played tennis a couple of times already.

Ronaldo, Daniel, and Sinoene

My host parent's apartment is actually only four blocks from one of the nicest beaches in Recife, so I've gone down there a couple of times and enjoyed the view and the water.

Tomorrow several of us are going to watch Recife's top soccer team (Sport) play a team from Sao Paolo. It should be pretty great.

Mike and I are doing much better health-wise. Our allergies have cleared up quite a bit and we're feeling pretty good. Thanks for the concern.

During my first week in Brazil there were countless new sights, smells, tastes, and experiences. I'll try to highlight a couple that stand out.

On Monday Andrea (the coordinator for Erika, Mike, and I) took us three to see a typical market in Recife and to go downtown for a little bit. My first impressions of traffic here were that it was totally chaotic. People seem to treat the rules of the road as mere suggestions. There are lanes marked, but if a motorcycle wants to squeeze between two other cars, that's fine. Speed limits are rarely obeyed, and pedestrians never have the right away. The street is shared by buses, cars, trucks, motorcycles, and even horses.

After being here for a week now my perceptions have changed slightly. There appears to be some sort of order within this chaos, for people always get where there going, and I've yet to see an accident. But at this point I'm glad I'm not the one driving around Recife.

On Tuesday we went to the neighborhood of Janga in the city of Paulista north of Recife. A Mennonite church and a school for children ages 4-16 are located in the neighborhood. MCC provides financial support for this school which aims to keep poor children off the streets and provide a basic education. This goal can be difficult as there are currently only 4 teachers for around 150 students.

At the school I was having a hard time communicating to the students with my broken Portuguese. I eventually remembered a question that they were eager to answer: how old are you? "8!" "10!" "11!" they yelled. Then I tried to have them guess my age. "40!" No. "50!" No. "80!" No. "1000!" No! I guess I look pretty old here in Brazil. The kids at the school were also convinced that Erika was Chinese, although she's from Indonesia. I'm not sure if they had ever heard of Indonesia. One boy asked if Mike and I were brothers. Overall it was a very eventful day and we came home exhausted.

These last two days have been spent at an MCC unit meeting. This year is the 40th year MCC has been working in Brazil, so MCC has been having their unit meetings at sites where MCC previously worked. This meeting was at Feijao, near the town of Bom Jardim. Feijao is a community located within the hills of Pernambuco state in Brazil. The road to the town was unpaved and rather treacherous.

When MCC began work in the community 25 years ago, mortality rates due to drinking bad water were around 25-30%. The water that was used at the time was often collected in uncovered and unprotected wells, so water could easily wash down the hillside into the wells. MCC helped to provide covered concrete wells and also stationed a health post in the area to provide vaccines and medical care for the community. Today the mortality rate in the community is around 3%, still high by American standards, but around the average for Brazil.

We toured the health post and talked with community members who spoke highly of the influence MCC had in organizing the community. Today the health post still operates and it is entirely out of MCC's control. It was really good to see the progress that MCC has made.

The view from Feijao.

At the meeting I met all of the other MCC service workers in Brazil and I am very excited to be a part of the team. John and Julie Hurst seem like they will be great resources once I begin work in Monteiro. The Brazilians in Monteiro (Wallas, Marcelo, Socorro, and Orlando) also are very cool, although I can't really communicate with them yet since my Portuguese is pretty bad. At the meeting Mike, Erika, and I were given rings made of coconut, which are given to all MCC workers in Brazil. It's unique to have a symbol like that to be a part of the team. I've never worn a ring before, so we'll see how it goes.

Other highlights of the week include:
Watching the Brazilian soccer team on TV.
Going to the beach.
Watching a movie in Portuguese with English subtitles. (English Title: The year my parents went on vacation. It's very good; I'd recommend watching it.)
Eating several new fruits and drinking new fruit juices.
Trying (and failing) to use my limited Portuguese.

Not a highlight but something to note: Mike and I are both experiencing allergies here. We're not sure what from, but for the last couple of days I've had a runny nose and a slight headache and Mike has been coughing a little with a sore throat. I hope we get better soon.

Tomorrow I'll go to my host parents, and I'm really excited to meet them. My language skills will be required to improve in their home, so hopefully I can start communicating in Portuguese.

After more than a day of travel, we finally made it to Brazil. The flights were fairly uneventful and long. I quickly realized how much Portuguese I have to learn when I was standing in line to get my tickets for the flight to Brazil, and I couldn't understand what any of the Brazilians were saying. By the time I figure out one word, the sentence is gone.

But I'm here, and life is good. I'm staying at the Sede, which is the MCC guest house and offices in Recife. I'm sitting outside enjoying the breeze on this muggy (spring?) day. There is talk of going to the beach tonight and then watching some soccer. It's good to be in Brazil.

After numerous delays at the Brazilian consulate in Chicago, my visa was picked up today and mailed to me. I'm really relieved to know that it is coming. I knew that my visa was approved July 31, but it has taken this long for the consulate to actually issue it. I won't go into the details, but let's just say that there were a lot of unnecessary delays. Anyway, I should have my visa in hand tomorrow and then Mike, Erika, and I will fly to Brazil on Saturday. Thanks for all the prayers and concerns and words of encouragement during my time in Akron. I'll soon be in Brazil!

After hearing nothing from the Brazilian consulate regarding my visa, an MCC colleague in Chicago finally decided to go to the consulate last week to pick up our visas, which we thought were ready. More shenanigans ensued only for us to find out that Mike's visa could be picked up, but mine would not be ready until tomorrow. Don't ask me why things happened like this, but so it goes.

Last Friday I knew that I would be in Akron for another weekend, so I called up my brother-in-law's parents (Emmanuel and Joann), who also live in central Pennsylvania. I asked them whether I could see them this weekend, and they said that they would love to see me. Better yet, they were having a family reunion in southern Pennsylvania and wanted to know if I'd like to come along. I've heard good things about these reunions, so I said that I'd be more than happy to hang out at a family reunion for a family I'm not a part of. I also asked if Mike and Erika could come along, and Joann said that would also be fine.

The Martin family reunion resembled more of a camping ground than anything else. We slept in tents, cooked meals over a campfire, played ultimate frisbee, and went canoeing in a creek. The worst part of the weekend was trying to explain why I was there. Yeah, I'm Mel's brother. Mel is married to Jason, who, I'm assuming, you're related to. I've been staying in Akron waiting for a visa, but...

One of the more interesting meals we ate while there was something called "Frogmore." An enormous pot was filled with kielbasa sausage, shrimp, potatoes, onions, corn on the cob, and green beans. Spices were added, and the concoction was cooked until the meat was done and the vegetables were tender. Then the contents of the pot were simply poured on the table and people began eating straight off the table. It wasn't your traditional way of eating, but no one seemed to care that their fingernails were getting dirty. When you're camping, you're dirty anyway.

Frogmore being dispensed from a pot.

I also played several card games this weekend. On Friday I played Rook with several people, and on Saturday, Mike Spee, Jonathan Miller, and Tim Charles and I played Euchre. I'd only played Euchre once before, but I really enjoyed it this time. It seems like a simplified version of Rook.

Here's my hand during one game of Euchre.

Many of the members of the Martin family are pyromaniacs. For the entertainment last night, Mike and Linford had created a large wire mesh ball filled with crumpled up paper and small firecrackers. They attached the ball to a large pole and suspended a smaller ball beneath this mesh ball. They then lit the mesh ball on fire and attempted to play tetherball with other ball. It was quite impressive seeing a flaming ball flying though mid-air. They also brought out sparklers and bottle rockets for others to play with. The night was capped off with a game of flameball (or fireball) which resulted in a slightly scarred jacket for Erika. But it was a wild night.

Flaming tetherball.

The people were so welcoming during this weekend. It was great to feel like part of the family, even though we really aren't. I had some good discussions with Mike, Kim, Linford, and Chloe, all who had served with MCC at some point. Most of them had worked on projects similar to what Mike Spee and I will be doing in Brazil, so it was good to hear their perspectives on how to work on projects under MCC.

This weekend, called the Martin family Jig-Jamboree by some, was just what I needed. I was beginning to get frustrated with the visa process, and I was tiring of hanging out in Akron. This weekend allowed me to get away from Akron and completely forget about my visa problems. All in all it was a nice relaxing weekend.

Mike Spee, Jonathan Miller, and I trying out the hammocks.