Last Minute Tourism

My ride to the airport doesn't leave until 2:00pm, so I went walking around Salvador one more time. It's kind of cloudy today and the beach wasn't too crowded.


I didn't go in the water (all of my stuff is packed), but I took a few more photos and did a little shopping. I had a few realis (Brazilian currency) left and bought a cute bracelet. I also went to Frans Cafe (the nice coffee shop) and got their version of a Frappuccino. :) I must say, for anyone who is thinking of coming here, things are not cheap! Everything costs about the same as it would in the US (e.g. Frappuccino $5, dinner last night $17, ticket to the Bale show $20, etc.). But overall, this has been another wonderful experience. :) I enjoyed working with the kids, even though I only learned a few words in Portuguese. And we (the volunteers) all had so much fun in Pelourinho! Good times. :)

Love, Laura

Friday Fun

Today was our last day at Saint Tereza de Lisieux. We had the typical routine of playtime, snack, coloring, more playtime, and lunch. But we also had to say our good-byes and take a few more pictures.

Yasmin & a little boy in the 2-year-old class

Gabriel & me

After work, I went to the Carlos Costa Pinto Museum (the one our history teacher recommended). There were many artifacts and antiques from the 17th-19th centuries - luckily, this museum had the descriptions in English (and Portuguese), so I could actually read about the history of each item. :) Then a couple of friends and I headed out to Pelourinho for dinner and a show. The dinner was so delicious! We had shrimp baked in pineapple topped with Parmesan, and pineapple rice on the side. Mmm . . . It was the best meal I've had while in Brazil. :)

The show we went to was called Bale Folclorico da Bahia. It was a theater show that included tribal dancing, drumming, singing, fire dancing, and capoeira. I can't begin to describe how amazing it was - the combination of the music and movements were so high-energy, everyone loved it. (Every volunteer at CCS went to go see it this week!) As we were walking back to the town square, we stopped to listen to more street drummers and also found a samba show! Pelourinho has TONS of live music every night! It's so cool.


This was just the perfect night to end the week. :)
Love, Laura

Picture Day

We started taking pictures of the kids at the daycare today. And we're very fortunate because one of the volunteers is a professional photographer and she brought her fancy camera! She took some really nice portraits of each child. I don't have any of her pictures on my computer right now - she's going to send us the link when we get back to the US. For now, here are some of my pics of the kiddos!

Bernardo & Sabrina

They're playing a game & hiding from the teacher.

Gabriel & Joao

Work went by really fast today - besides picture-taking, we mostly just played games in the court area. The kids also get a snack time, a shower (after running around and sweating so much), and lunch time. With all of that, there's hardly a time for class!

This afternoon I visited the local mall because I needed to go to the currency exchange. The mall is VERY nice - similar to Park Meadows. Salvador is one of the wealthier cities in Brazil, but due to the uneven distribution of wealth, there are still very poor sections. Hence, the need for volunteers. The cultural lesson for today was about the African influence in Brazil. We learned about the slave history, religion, Voodoo, etc. And our teacher recommended a couple more history museums! It was a fascinating lesson. :) We all had so many questions that time ran over and our Portuguese lesson got cut short. It's okay - I probably won't speak Portuguese again for a long time, but I'm definitely going to check out the museums tomorrow!

Love, Laura

Work & Relaxation

I'll continue with last night . . .
A big group of us went back to Pelourinho for a lovely dinner at Mama Bahia. The music festival was pretty big, so half of our group went to the concert stage and the other half went to see the drummers in the streets. (I was in the drummer group.) :) We saw a group of African women drummers, and they were phenomenal! I'm going to see if I can find a CD of their music. It was a great night.

Then today . . .
My class was nuts. I found a coloring book at the homebase and xeroxed one picture to give to the kids. I thought it was simple, fun, and something to do. Unfortunately, the kids don't know how to share. As soon as I passed out the crayons, they started fighting, screaming, and hitting each other to take the crayons. I spent the whole time trying to quiet them down and keep them in their chairs. It didn't work out too well. Then later, the teacher passed out toys to each child - and they start fighting again. There were LOTS of time-outs today. Ugh.

I spent the afternoon on the beach and in the ocean. It felt so good to unwind and do nothing. :) I headed back to the homebase when I saw storm clouds rolling in. We've been very lucky so far with lots of sunshine, but it's likely to be rainy for the next few days. I also went to the Portuguese lesson that CCS offered. We just went over some basic language structure, but had some good laughs too. This is a really fun group of volunteers. :)

Tonight I'm just going to lay low at the homebase. Maybe get some gelato . . .
Love, Laura

Pelourinho

I had another fun-filled day with my daycare class. And apparently some kids were absent yesterday, because today there were 6 more! We practiced the alphabet by making the letters out of play-dough. And there is a court area for playing sports, etc. - we do that for 30 minutes everyday. A few of the little boys started doing capoeira! It was the cutest thing ever!

After lunch, my volunteer group went for a tour of Pelourinho - an historic neighborhood in Salvador. It was absolutely beautiful. :) We walked around for several hours and visited a number of museums. I love all of this history! I could write all about it, but I don't have much time. We're all going back there tonight for dinner and the music festival. :)

Gotta go!
Love, Laura

Yesterday & Today

Yesterday after lunch, I went walking around town again and stumbled upon the Museu de Arte de Bahia.
There was a lot of artwork about religion and history - and also a lot of antique furniture. I always enjoy learning about culture. :) And I made it over to the smoothie bar for an acai & mango smoothie. Delicious!

Our orientation meeting went well - it was nice to hear what everyone else is doing (only 4 of us are going to the daycare). We ended up skipping the music festival, so that we could prepare some lesson ideas for Monday. (And plus, there's another music festival on Tuesday. Ha ha.)

Then TODAY, we went to our placements and met the kids! At the daycare, there are 4 classes of different age groups; so each volunteer has their own class. I'm with the 3-4 year olds. :) It turns out I'm pretty lucky: my class is small (only 11 children) and the teacher is very nice. Unfortunately, no one at the daycare speaks English, and we don't speak Portuguese. We've been trying to get by with the little Spanish we know. I immediately tossed out my lessons, since my class mostly just plays around. We can't take pictures of the kids until later in the week, after they get to know us. But they're already so welcoming and affectionate towards me. There's a little boy, Gabriel, who's very patient with me and trying to help me with Portuguese. It's too cute! :)

We leave our assignments around lunch-time and Monday-Friday afternoons we have our cultural lessons at the homebase. Today was a capoeira lesson! It's a combination of marital arts and dancing - very unique to Brazil. I'll post a picture of it, but you really need to watch a video. Look up capoeira on Google or Youtube to see what it is. :) Very cool.
Ok, that's all for now. :)
Love, Laura

A Perfect Day

It's only noon right now, but so far, it is a perfect day. :)

I woke up at 5:45am after 9 solid hours of sleep. It was great. :) Then a shower and coffee on the patio and I was completely recharged.

After breakfast, everyone went off on their own. I ventured down to the beach again and went to a few shops nearby. I didn't stay too long - I didn't want to get sunburned on my first day. The weather is hot & humid! . . . and there's no air conditioning. I'll get used to it. ;) A group of us just went and checked out the local cafe - it's very modern and has a huge menu. Open 24 hours so I can get a cappuccino anytime! Ha ha. There's also an Acai smoothie bar right next to it - I'll be going there later. There are 3 volunteers who have been here for several weeks and are giving us tips about the town. It's nice to have them show us around and they're pretty fluent in Portuguese.

We have our orientation meeting today at 4:00pm and tonight a bunch of us are going to a music festival. So I figured I'll write a little bit now, since I might not have time later. :)

Love, Laura

Welcome to Salvador!

Well, I finally made to Brazil after 25 hours of traveling. The journey was not very pleasant. I won’t go into the details because once we landed in Salvador, I realized it was totally worth it.

I love the fact that this experience is totally different from Costa Rica. Salvador is a major metropolitan area – the homebase is definitely “city living.” And just a few blocks away is the Atlantic Ocean. Although the actual beach is very small, there’s a sidewalk all along the coast. (A group of us already went for a 2-hour walk tonight.)

It’s only 8:00pm, but I’m exhausted and will probably go to bed soon. Besides, there’s only hot water in the showers from 5am-7am – so I have to get up early!

Love, Laura

The Last Day

Wow . . . I can't believe the week is over. Today was awesome - I went on the canopy tour again, we finished the massage class (I am now certified in Myoskeletal Alignment Level 2), and we had a drum circle around the fire pit. It was a great day. A lot of people are flying out tomorrow at 7:00am, but my flight isn't until 2:30pm - so I'll get to lounge around a little bit in the morning and absorb my last day in Costa Rica. I have a feeling that this will be a regular travel spot for me. :)

Salsa!

What a workout! I particularly like the Cumbia beats (with the deep drums & bass).

Busy, Busy, Busy

Even though yesterday was my day off from class, I still felt busy. I scheduled a couple of energywork sessions, so I was constantly watching the clock. But I did get some pool time in and lounged around a bit with the few others that skipped the day trips. And of course, we had a massive thunderstorm right when I was about to go on the computer. The day went by so fast and now today we have a very long day of class - 7 hours. After class, we go to dinner and then salsa dancing!
I'll try to go on the computer tomorrow, but we're having a lot of good-bye events/parties. We'll be taking group photos, exchanging emails/facebook info, etc. . . . not to mention a canopy tour in the morning and class in the afternoon! There's just so much to do everyday, it's hard to find time to update my blog.

I'll be downloading photos from everyone in the class and posting them later. :)

Pictures

Since the only thing we did today was attend class, I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures. The canopy tour CD got delivered today!






This last one is for Mom - it's called a 'Rainbow Bark' tree (for obvious reasons). That is the actual color of the bark - pretty cool, huh? It looks like something Mom should have in the backyard. :)

Canopy Tour

Before I came here, I had every minute of free time planned with activities. I thought it would be a good idea to make to the most out of this vacation and do as many activities as possible. But sometimes, you just have to go with the flow and listen to your intuition.

Today was the first time I went on a zip line through the canopy of the cloud forest. I LOVED IT. I wish I could fly in the treetops everyday. It came so naturally to me - the group I was with started joking around that I become a zip line tour guide. ;) Maybe someday . . .
I had signed up to go on a waterfall hike on Friday, but I think I might go back to the cloud forest again. There's just nothing like it. Unfortunately, I don't have the canopy tour pictures right now. Our guides took phenomenal pictures and will send us a CD on Friday.

Also, I've decided to skip the day trips on Wednesday. I was only interested in one of them - the beach - and I heard it wasn't that great. With the afternoon thunderstorms and having to get up at 5:30am to catch the bus for the trip, I'm just not feeling it. Plus I'm starting to feel burned out between traveling, all of the orientation sessions yesterday, the myoskeletal class, and the ridiculously loud birds at dawn. So instead, I will lounge around the hot tub, do some meditation, and get some bodywork done on Wednesday. The perfect way to renew my energy.

No pictures today -the canopy tour pictures will be later and the rest of the day was spent in class.

4:30am . . . freakin' roosters man.

Pura Vida is like pseudo-camping. I'm staying in a tentalow (although there are suites here too). The bathroom facilities are pretty good - there's hot water and everything! :) But because this is a private resort, the Costa Rican culture is somewhat lacking. Everyone here speaks English and we're not really interacting with the local people. I've got some day trips planned, but they're tourist destinations. Nevertheless, this place is gorgeous and the food is AMAZING! I feel like my body is completely detoxing by only eating fresh fruit and food baked from scratch. Not to mention all of the bodywork and energywork offered here.

Today we had class all day . . . and we only learned myoskeletal alignment for the neck muscles. There's just so much going on in that area of the body and so many muscles to work on. And it felt really good, since my neck was still sore from the airplane. This is such a cool technique - it's like massage + physical therapy + chiropractic work (but not cracking bones). If anyone is interested in a session, let me know!

Did I mention it's the beginning of the rainy season? Everyday a thunderstorm rolls in around 1:00pm - today it knocked out the power. We gave each other massage in the dark with lightning, thunder, and pouring rain in the background. I liked it. :)

Back in Costa Rica.

I'm back in Costa Rica and it feels like I was here yesterday. The rolling hills, the small towns, the mountain roads, the afternoon thunderstorms . . . :) The weather was clear when I arrived, but by the time I got my things settled and started wandering around Pura Vida, in rolled the fog and the thunderstorm. There wasn't time to take sunny pictures today - maybe tomorrow.

So I thought this massage workshop was going to be a moderate size (30 people?) - there turned out to be 68 therapists from all around the world (mostly the US, but also Germany, Scotland, Canada, Cayman Islands, and Australia!). It's such a huge group! We had a short introduction today by Eric Dalton, the teacher. I'm so excited to learn this technique! Eric is extremely knowledgeable about anatomy and physiology, and he knows which muscles/tendons/ligaments to work just by looking at your posture and movements. It's incredible.

I'll write more tomorrow. I've been up since 2:40am and I'm tired. Goodnight.