We're Still Here

Announcements/ What’s Been Going On

We have so much to tell you all about. Sorry it’s late.

I know that we have not been uploading this newsletter lately, but we have an excuse, or more like excusES.

First off, we are in school now that only speaks Portuguese and it takes a lot of time with doing homework (having to translate everything), so I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the newsletter. Don’t worry, all of us have passing grades (A’s B’s and C’s).

I (Caleb) have braces now. I have the bottom ones now, and in one month I am going to get the top ones. The dentist says I’ll have to have them for around 2 years.

Naomi has glasses. She had a really bad migraine one day after school and she had to go the hospital. Turns out, it was because she needed glasses and she was straining her eyes too much at school. At the eye doctor, when he put some glasses on her, the first words out of her mouth were, “Oh Wowwwwwww!”

and Joanna … went to the hospital to get chest x-rays because my parents thought she may have pneumonia. But she didn’t. Now all three of us have visited the hospital here.

If you ever have to go a hospital in Brazil, they will try to hook you up to an IV, even if you don’t need one.

I quit soccer because I have just not had time to go to soccer practice because of homework. So we decided to quit and now we are looking for either handball or ping-pong (hopefully handball).

We also started doing English lessons in our church (English Club) on Sunday mornings. We are teaching people how to speak English and hoping that they might stay after to join us in service. So far a couple people have stayed, and came back the next week.

We are on winter break for two weeks. If it wasn’t for this winter beak you might not be getting a newsletter. And yes, winter in July is weird.

My mom cooked chili and brought it to church. They had never eaten it before and they loved it.

Pastor Rocky and Ingrid visited us from Curitiba. This was their first time in Joinville. They came to our church, and we took them to our favorite restaurants and to the Mirante.

While hiking up the Mirante, we found some small monkeys on a bridge to one of the viewpoints. They were somehow cute and ugly at the same time, you can find the word for it yourself by watching the short. We also fed them and after a little bit, more monkeys started showing up, even a baby monkey.

So, now you’re all caught up and hopefully understand why this newsletter is 3 months late.

Culture

Brazilians have a funny saying, “That's worse than farting at the table in front of visitors!” (Don’t ask me how I found out about that).

Vocabulary & Phrases

In this newsletter, we will teach you how to say some household objects.

• House - Casa

• Plant - Planta (Plahn-ta)

• Chair - Cadeira (Ka-day-ra) *slightly roll the r

• Table - Mesa (Meh-za)

• Painting - Pintura (Peen-chu-ra) *slightly roll the r

• Fruit - Frutas (Fru-tas)

• Window - Janela (Sha-nela) *the “sha” pronunciation is a mix between “ja” and “sha”

Interesting Facts

No words in Portuguese end with the letter “w”.

Top 3 Moments

There were so many moments in the past 3 months that we had to split them up between us all. Just because it’s not in one person’s list doesn’t mean they didn’t want to.

Fred:

1. Finding a bunch of sand dollars at São Francisco beach with Naomi and Jojo.

2. Exploring several more beaches in São Francisco.

3. Hanging out with our friends from Curitiba (Pastor Rocky and Ingrid).

Rachel:

1. Discovering São Francisco beach. It is like Hilton Head, just with less people and better waves.

2. Mother-Son soccer practice (for Mother’s Day). All the moms did soccer drills with their sons.

3. Mother-daughter picnic at school with Jojo. All the students (pre-k to 3rd grade) sang a Mother’s Day song to them.

Caleb:

1. Parque Malwee - We were able to rent self powered go karts that you had to peddle. They were very hard to peddle. We raced around the lake.

2. Rock climbing at Sao Francisco beach.

3. My birthday party! (Because the last time we sent this out was 3 days before my birthday). We celebrated at our apartment with 4 of my friends. It was amazing and so much fun!

Naomi:

1. Gymnastics family day - my mom did gymnastics with her (and my dad went with Jojo).

2. Getting glasses.

3. Feeding the little monkeys at O Mirante.

Jojo:

1. Her birthday! (Remember, she was born the same day as me, Caleb) People from church and a couple girls in our apartment building came to the party.

2. Going to a big playground with her school friends for a play-date.

3. Playing with her friends at school.

See ya next month!