AMAZING that’s only the word I can use to describe today’s experience. After our Portuguese class in the morning Wagner Belo informed us that we were going to take a trip to the city, but there’s catch we had to communicate in only Portuguese. Each of us had a task to buy different items; a snack, medicine, a lottery ticket, and a pencil. Seems simple huh? NO, we had to put our skill sets to the test keep in mind we only learned Portuguese yesterday! After completing the job Wagner rewarded us with some well deserved ICE CREAM. When we finished the ice cream we noticed a group of young boys playing soccer and some of the girls wanted to join. Shalanda, Cyrstal, and Rebecca took off their shoes so that they could run more comfortably. It was so nice to be able to interact with the citizens of the area in that way. These kids played soccer like pros! At the end of the game the boys were teaching us how to kick the ball like they do. Trying to talk to them was so hard because they talked so fast, however we did our best. Shalanda, Nikki, Els, and Brandi used their Portuguese-English dictionary  to show the boys how we were learning the language. Having this conversation with them we learned how new words in Portuguese and in return the learned new words in English. We made new friends today in Brazil. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow has in store.

Rebecca Castro