Hi, I’m Jason’s older and wiser sister, Christy. I am a sophomore at Anderson University. He is following me there next year. I just can’t get rid of him. Anyway. So, I wanted to tell ya’ll about my trip to Brazil over Spring Break. It was March 2nd thru 11th. Here are some photos of my group which consisted of 5 girls from AU, 2 missionaries, 1 mayor, 1 Tri-s director, and myself. It was soo awesome, I can’t even begin to describe it!!! But Jason says I’ve got to try for the sake of The Revolution. So here goes! Background: After a ten hour flight from Chicago, we landed in Sao Paulo, Brazil which is on the southern coast. We had a five hour lay-over during which we got to see some of the great city of Sao Paulo. A geography fact: Brazil is a little larger than the contintental United States. We’re not talking small potatoes here. Then we flew to Belem, up in the northern state of Para on the mouth of the Amazon river, where we stayed for most of our trip. This is the sanctuary that we worked on. We helped get two rooms leveled off so that they could have concrete floors. Before too long, the church will be ready for worship services!

Here we are doing the fun part of the trip. I designated myself “Wheelbarrow girl” as we mixed and poured concrete. Katie, Kelly, and Angela shoveled sand and stones for the numerous loads.

These are some of the older kids at the church run school. We helped them make those salvation bracelets that have the black, red, white, green, and yellow beads. And I taught this one kid to hold his pencil with his tongue. I am going to be a great teacher!

This is the view from inside our Volkswagon van. That’s Maurice’s head. He and his wife are the missionaries down there for a year. They are so awesome. He did a great job driving us around. Fun fact: Brazil has the highest pedestrian death rate in the world. That means that people there drive like banshees. It’s nuts! So yeah, we were all thankful that he did such a good job of dodging the people on bicycles and the buses. The view from the windshield is of a street in Belem.

Here we are with Steve. AKA Scuba Steve. He is a missionary that was staying in the mission guest house where we stayed in Belem. Let me tell you, nobody, and I mean nobody, does a better rendition of “If I only had a brain” from The Wizard of Oz than Steve!

Thursday morning, we all got up at 3 AM, yes that’s before the crack of dawn to take a trip down the Amazon to Parrot Island. Now, I was all hyper because A) we got to take a boat on the Amazon river 2) We were going to get to see some cool jungle wild life and c) we were going to get to walk in some rainforest. Yeah I was a happy camper. So, this is a pic of all these parrots waking up and leaving the island as the sun is rising. They fly in pairs of two and mate for life. It was so loud because they were squawking and screaming the whole time. Two thumbs up!

The view from the boat of sunrise on the Amazon River.

Here we are trekking in the rainforest. It was so awesome. I felt like I was in a movie.

Then I really felt like i was in a movie because our guide found a vermiliad (sp) which was the exact type of flower that Sean Connery was looking for in the Medicine Man!!!!! I looked, but I didn’t see Sean Connery :(

This is Erykah and me. She’s one of my good friends. Yeah, that’s rainforest behind us.

This is an alternative view of our Volkswagon van. We dubbed it “Gumbi.” That’s Dondeena, Maurice’s wife in the driver’s seat. She made that face when i asked her if I could drive. Hey , I am a good driver, I promise!

There is always some down time in the Latin culture. We opted to play the great domino game - the Mexican train instead of taking a siesta. Funny faces always make better pictures.

One of our many lizard friends that vistited the guest house each night.

Here we all are at breakfast. That usually consisted of fruit, bread, and cereal. The Brazilians know how to eat! We went to a churrascuria once. They cut a different type of meat off of this spear with a sword and served it every 10 minutes. I have never eaten so much meat at one time in my life. It was unbelievable.

A view of Sao Paulo from our hotel which we stayed in courtesy of the airline after we missed our flight because they didn’t give us enough time to get to our check-in because we had 2 connections before we even landed in Sao Paulo. Vicious cycle.

We’re waiting in the Sao Paulo airport to fly home to the States. We had been at the airport for 8 hours. If you ever find yourself there, I can tell you anything you want to know. FYI: There is a great little ice cream place on the second floor past United terminal.

Destination: Cracker Barrel. After the long flight into Chicago at 5 in the am, we decided we needed breakfast once we were back home in Indy. We all pigged out. Even Dad. He and Mom picked all of us up at the airport. Fun times.

Well, that’s hardly even a scratch on the surface of what i did and saw. Let me know and I’d love to show you all the pictures in person. Final thought: Brazil is an unbelievably diverse country with people of all different races and nationalites. The people I met were loving and so nice to us. I would definitely love to go back. Later gators.

Be sure and let her know about seeing the rest of them pics. Click here to go back.

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