I realize it's been a while since I posted my last blog. Perhaps that is because I haven't done anything nearly as exciting or unusual as I did on my trip to Chapada Diamantina National Park. Or perhaps it's because I'm just lazy. That being said, there have been a couple of highlights from my last few weeks.

I will say that my work is going very well. We have limited my project from doing 10 biodigesters this year to just 9, and that lessens my stress significantly. I'm able to spend more time on the biodigesters that I have been doing, and make sure that they are going well. Currently we have 5 functioning biodigesters, and I'm hoping we can get another one going next week. The other three biodigesters might be working before I leave Brazil in July, but the only question there is whether the manure will begin producing gas in time, not whether they get constructed correctly. This project has progressed quite nicely and AMAS is going to attempt to do 20 biodigesters next year with the help of a new SALTer.

The major news around Monteiro is the amount of rain that we've received since the middle of March. We hardly received any rain in February and people were wondering if this was going to be the year when the drought came to the Sertão again. But since Carnaval we've had nearly 500 mm (20 inches) of rain. The average yearly rainfall here is 500 mm, so to have that in two months has caused some signficant problems. Reservoirs have flooded, dams have broken, and bridges have fallen. Some of the communities where MCC works were unreachable by vehicle last week. I went to one community last week and I had to cross three rivers that had been caused by recent rains. In some cases the water was 2 feet deep and rushing up on the floorboards of my trusty 4 by 4 Bandeirante truck. At one point the truck even stalled in the middle of such a river, and I thought I was stranded. Somehow it started up again and I was able to get out of the river, but I was sufficiently nervous about my prospects for a while.

My evenings recently have been spent being enternained by my brothers or by a number of movies that my host parents have rented. My host brothers are entranced by Pokemon right now. I can't go more than two minutes without hearing about which Pokemon cards they have. They've even given me Pokemon cards, and I currently have close to 50 of these things. Perhaps I should explain what Pokemon is to all of you who don't have a 6-year-old friend. Pokemon is an animated show wherein Pokemon characters with unique powers are trained and then fight other Pokemons. Who wins the battles seems pretty arbitrary to me. Why doesn't Pikachu just strike with a lightning bolt against everyone of his enemies? Okay, maybe I know too much, but it's pretty much impossible to not absorb this stuff by osmosis.

My brothers have also taken to collecting Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Yu-Gi-Oh is another show where the characters play a card game with "magic" cards that have dragons, special powers, and specific points. Here the victories are more clearly defined, but the premise of the show is rather hilarious. It's kinda like adults watching Poker on TV. My host brother David has challenged me to several games with our own "not-so-magical" cards. Unfortunately his cards are much better than mine, and I hardly ever win. But I do enjoy card games, so I'll probably continue playing.

The other thing the has filled some of my evenings is watching films that my host parents rent. Unfortunately the selection of movies at the local stores is less than ideal. Most of the movies are from Hollywood, so I don't get to experience Brazilian cinema, even if the films are dubbed in Portuguese. But the movies aren't even the good movies from Hollywood, or even movies I've heard of. Some of them seem to be knock offs of B-rated movies. You may have heard of "The Return to Oz" or "10000 BC," but in the last two days I've watched "Tin Man" and "100 Million BC." It's these types of movies that make me appreciate anything with a good special effects, a well-used budget, or at least a thoughtful plotline. I'll say that I've watched a lot more movies here in Brazil than at any other time in my life. And in between the poor Hollywood films, I have seen some sparkling Brazilian films.

So that's the update on my life right now. Perhaps it's not what you'd expect from an MCC assignment, but it's been an adventure nonetheless. I hope to have more to share after my family comes to visit me at the end of May and beginning of June.