This whole adventure thing seems to be a bit of a recurring theme…

Ok, so a bit of backstory. The week before last a group of 4 young people here in Brazil with the Radical Journey program came to visit the NE for a little vacation/chance to see what MCC is doing here. Radical Journey is another program through the Mennonite Church, and these four young people, two guys and two girls, all recent high school grads, are spending the year in Brasilia, teaching English, Spanish, music, and putting on vacation bible school, and basically whatever else the churches they’re working with want them to do. Now at the midpoint of their program, they decided to take some vacation time here, spending some time at the beach, and also learning a bit about what MCC does here in Brazil. I ended up being the one to accompany them, along with Andrea, spending the week with them, showing them around and talking with them about MCC.

We started in Recife, getting to know the city a bit. After that, on Tuesday of this past week, we set out for the interior, coming here to Brejo, where I’m living. The purpose of this little trip was to visit some MCC projects in the area to get a first-hand look at the work that MCC is doing. Wednesday morning we visited the cistern that I’d been working on the previous week, so that was cool to show the finished (or nearly finished; they were finishing up when we were there) product.

After lunch we headed out to see an apicultura (bee-keeping) project. We arrived at the house of an older couple, and headed out behind their house into what turned out to be filled with all different kinds of fruit trees and other edible/medicinal plants. The owner turned out to be a riot too, so we had a blast talking and joking around with him. Finally, after slipping under a barbed wire fence, we were off to see the bees. We set to climbing up a little hill, and when we arrived on top, there they were. I caught a quick glimpse of several hives, swarming with bees, before it became apparent that the bee’s behavior was not a good thing. Before we knew it they were swarming around us, and not in the most friendly manner… In the next instant everyone started to scatter, swatting at the bees swarming around our heads, trying to run away from them, as they started to get more angry and started stinging us. One not-so-fun thing about the long hair I’m currently sporting is that the bees liked to get stuck in it, and ended up stinging me on the back of the head several times! Everyone, except Dani, one of the Radical Journey folks, ended up getting stung at least once, including Betty, my MCC coworker here in Brejo, who just happens to be allergic to bees!

moments before the mayhem began...

Needless to say, this incident cut short our apicultura visit. Betty and I set out immediately on my motorcycle to head back to her house so she could get some medicine to combat the allergy, while the others stayed for a brief snack, haha. Apparently, these bees are not usually aggressive, and Betty has visited several times without incident. I’m not sure if maybe we were talking too loud, or if it was just the time of day, or what, but they didn’t take too kindly to us! Either way, it definitely made for a memorable time, one that I’m sure none of us will soon forget.

The rest of our time in Brejo was great; several rousing games of Dutch Blitz at Betty’s house, watching Ice Age 2 on a big outdoor screen down in the main plaza (an event sponsored by the new mayor’s administration), and visiting some other MCC projects as well. Thursday afternoon we headed back into Recife, to relax for a couple days before they all headed back to Brasilia on Saturday. Then, Saturday, after dropping them at the airport, I made a quick trip to the mall in Recife to make a couple purchases that’d I’d been meaning to make, the most important of which was… a jersey of the Brazilian national soccer team! Now I can sport that during the next World Cup qualifying matches (not to mention any other time I feel like showing my Brazilian pride, which should be fairly often!).

playing some futebol with the kids at one of the MCC projects in Recife

visiting some cisterns near Brejo

in the community of Lagoa de Pedra, where we visited some rock water storage tanks that Betty and I have been helping with

Now it’s back to work for a week before the onset of Carnaval here. I’m still not sure what my plans are, but I hope to at least get a taste of what the Carnaval festivities are all about, should be pretty wild!

This past Sunday, as many of you I’m sure were aware of, was the Super Bowl. Naturally, everyone here was pretty excited. Wait. Did I say excited? I mean had no idea and no interest in finding out what the Super Bowl even is. Yeah.

A few weeks ago I was talking with Joel and we were thinking it’d be fun to try to get a few people together to watch, though we weren’t even sure if we’d be able to find a place to watch it. John, another one of our coworkers who lives in the same city as Joel, was also interested, so we set about trying to figure out how we could watch. After a bit of looking and some help from his host-dad Ricardo, Joel found a little hole in the wall place that had ESPN International, which would be showing the game. Here’s how he described it to me: “It's actually at what appears to be someone's house… So we'll probably be sitting in someone's living room watching the game.” Beautiful.

We decided to make a weekend of it, so Saturday morning I hopped on my motorcycle and hit the dirt/gravel roads for the roughly 3 hour trip to Monteiro, where Joel and John both live, making a stop in a community called Santa Maria along the way to check the progress on a water pipeline project we’ve been working on there. I arrived around lunchtime, and spent the rest of the day hanging out with Joel and his host family, Ricardo and Cristina and their 3 rambunctious boys. It was great! We wrapped up the day with some backyard/patio soccer in the rain, at least until the power went out. Man those cold showers felt great… right after we all finished showering the power came back. Go figure.

The next morning the whole family plus Joel and I piled into the car and headed off to climb Pedra do Peru (Turkey Rock). I wasn’t sure what to expect, but figured it couldn’t be too strenuous with the 3 boys coming along as well. The namesake comes from a rock formation at the top of a hill that happens to look somewhat like the head and beak of a bird. Not sure how they decided on turkey, but… In typical Brazil fashion (judging from the few hikes I’ve been on), the trail was essentially straight up the hill. I don’t think Brazilians are big fans of switchbacks. It was only about 1 kilometer, but it felt like more. We arrived up top to some great views of Monteiro and the surrounding countryside (I took a nice panorama shot), and had fun climbing around on the rocks.

the inspiration for the name Pedra do Peru

David, Ricardo and Joel looking back towards Monteiro

Inside the mouth of the beast! Or, the turkey.

Our friend that we came upon on the hike. Apparently lethal, according to Ricardo. Good times.

We decided to relax a bit during the afternoon, even nap a bit, since we knew we’d be up late due to the time zones – the game wouldn’t be starting until 8:30. Joel and I decided to make some salsa to go with our nacho cheese Doritos (corn chips are a little hard to come by here) to augment the few snacks we had thrown together. Then, as we were wrapping up dinner the power suddenly went out again. We passed the time playing whatever songs we could think of on guitar, including several renditions of the smash hit “Eu não sei de nada” (I don’t know anything), written that afternoon by Joel with help from his host-brothers, several neighbor kids, and myself, and accompanied by a variety of objects functioning as percussion. Good stuff.

The power finally came back around 8:00, so we gathered our snacks and headed out, picking up John on the way. We arrived at our destination and met the owner (bonus – he was wearing a Werder Bremen shirt, my favorite German soccer team!), who escorted us back to the viewing area. What awaited us was a small, sparsely decorated room, with several folding and lawn chairs and a small folding table. In one corner of the room sat the tv, which actually turned out to be pretty good sized. As we came in, the coin toss was already underway, so we quickly settled in for the opening kickoff.

Well, as many of you I’m sure also know, it was a great game! After much debate (Pittsburg beat Seattle in the Super Bowl 4 years ago, but Arizona is a fellow NFC West foe and I didn’t want to see them win) I decided to root for the Steelers. Joel joined me in that camp, while John and Ricardo took the Carindals. It was quite possibly the most fun I’ve had watching a Super Bowl! Perhaps it was because none of us had watched any American sporting events (or anything other than fútebol, for that matter) for quite a while, but we got quite into it and it was a lot of fun! The commentary was in Portuguese, while the coverage graphics were in Spanish, and instead of getting the American commercials, we got the same 3 or 4 Brazilian commercials over and over and over and over. But despite all that, we still had a blast. And in the end, my team won, take that Arizona! We were mostly just glad to see a great game and spend some time hanging out and relaxing.

So, all in all it turned out to be a very refreshing and enjoyable weekend. The not so fun part was, after going to bed around 1, waking up at 5:30 the next morning to make it back to Brejo and get to work on a cistern we’re constructing. But I did ok, and the cistern construction, which I’ve already blogged about, is moving right along and we’re almost done now! Anyway, that was how I spent my Super Bowl weekend, hopefully all of yours were just as exciting.

And don’t worry; I have now watched all the good Super Bowl commercials on YouTube. Phew!