Photoblog

Here are a few pictures of friends at church, and of my Portuguese class today...I made "cheese bread" with my teacher. Very Brazilian, and very tasty.

Melting

Today is HOT here in Londrina. My goodness. It's only about 90 degrees, says the thermometer, but there's no breeze, which is really just a recipe for baked Christine, if you ask me. It's a bit unpleasant at the moment.

Well, it seems I have discovered the cheap world of Brazilian comfort. That is, I got my nails and my toenails painted on Friday. In the US this could easily cost me $40...I paid the equivalent of about $6 for both. I couldn't believe it. In a way I could tell why it was cheaper, because it wasn't an actual "manicure and pedicure" where they moisturize, exfoliate, etc, just painting, and I had never had my toenails painted before and thought I was going to run out of the store. Since I broke my pinky toe when I was 10 and the doctor pulled on it to see if it was broken, I can't stant people touching my toes. And this woman was filing away, I swear, on my skin and she didn't realize it. Not the most gentle touch. But she was funny, and no actual harm was done. Lesson learned. It felt great to treat myself to a little something, especially knowing it wasn't even much of a "treat."

The weekend has been pretty relaxing. Friday night some people came over to play games. Gwen usually leaves an open invitation on Friday nights, so sometimes people come, sometimes they don't. This weekend was definitely heavier on the "lots of people in one small apartment" side. It was fun. Two of the pastors and one of their wives, another couple from the church, and 2 other American missionaries who used to work with OMS and are now with another organization here in Londrina. It was a fun time, playing Dutch Blitz with that many people, that's for sure.

I get a lot of people asking me, "so, how is your Portuguese?" I don't really know how to answer that question, so I will try to offer a few examples...I've had multiple people tell me that I have great pronunciation and that after a few more months here I will be speaking almost without an accent. Of course I have a lot more to learn until then, but that's definitely an encouragement. Also, the other day I saw a commercial that I have seen countless times, but was never able to understand it. It seemed like the people's mouths didn't even match up with what they were saying, and it barely sounded like Portuguese to me. The other day I was passing by the TV and saw that commercial, and realized "wait, this is making sense to me..." So I stopped and watched the commerical, and understood every word. How that works, I don't know, but it really has been not too much shy of a miracle, how much I'm learning and understanding. Especially understanding. I'm starting to gain a little more respect in that people try and have conversations with me, instead of just smiling in my general direction every once in a while. On Friday night, Gwen made ice cream, which she often does, and someone made a joke about how I must be starving, living with her. Then Pastor Bianco said "oh no, she's already gained 5 kilos since she arrived in Brazil." Playing along, I just said "cuidado, pastor" because that's clearly not true, and everyone seemed shocked, like it was "baby's first words" or something. They got a good laugh out of it, and Vanda told me today that I'm speaking very well. She said I said that "certinho"...meaning, like totally correctly. I also think that my good pronounciation fools people into thinking that I know more than I actually do. So there is a dangerous side to all of the ego boosts. But we'll just take things one step at a time, shall we?

This afternoon I was really feeling "saudade" for Taylor. I heard the song "Unwritten" and, though cheesy, it reminded me of a time in the car with friends, flying down Devil's Backbone on our way to Wal-Mart or something. Funny how those days seem so much more romanticized now, when then I probably would have been able to give you a litany of things I'd rather be doing...the top of the list being "living in Brazil." So I can't complain, that's for sure. But still, I had a little moment walking down the sidewalks of Rua Espirito Santo, my skin melting away in the heat (and yet somehow not tanning...come on, I need some more melonin here...)

Antsy

Now that I know I'm only going to be at WEBB for 1 more week, I'm starting to get impatient. What am I going to do when I'm no longer there for 20 hours a week, not to mention all the hours I spend on the bus every day? I have no idea.

A semi-answer may have come yesterday afternoon when I ran into 2 friends on the bus. One was Adriana, who I see sometimes on the bus in the mornings when she is going to work and I'm going to WEBB. But the other was Marcli, who I met at camp a month and a half ago, and have only seen once since then. Our schedules are basically totally opposite and we were never able to find a time to get together. She cuts hair and I wanted her to cut mine, but we couldn't even find a time for her to do that, let alone just spend some time hanging out. She gave me her new phone number, and I definitely think that was providential, because not only had I sort of forgotten about her, but I also would have had no way of getting in touch with her if I had not run into her on the bus. She doesn't even take that bus, she just got on with Adriana so she could talk with her more, and she was going to ride it through its whole route and get off again at the terminal. Crazy, hilarious, and very convenient for little Christine.

So maybe I'll have more time next month to get to know people, to practice my Portuguese. I now have two "friends" who know a little English, enough to help me with my Portuguese if I get stuck, which I very often do (as evidenced by the story at the end of my last post.) I'm sure Gwen will be coming up with more things for me to do as well, and at this point I feel like I will just be happy having a routine and having something to do. We'll see if I still agree in a couple weeks. I would appreciate your prayers for that transition, because I am not looking forward to having so much more time and not feeling very useful if I can't fill it. I am praying that I can find some sort of real responsibility, something that I can work on every day and sort of handle on my own instead of having to ask Gwen every time I have a free moment, "is there anything I can do?" I think that would be better for both of our sanity, haha. But we'll see what happens.

One week from today I'm getting on a bus, at 10pm, to go to Assis Chateabriand. Friday November 2nd is a holiday in Brazil, and Thursdays before holidays can often turn into holidays as well, as is my case. So I will spend the long weekend at Lar with Joaquim and then we're going to Cascavel on Monday morning to get that visa of mine renewed. Keep praying for that, that there are no surprises or problems at the last minute. And then, Lord-willing, I will be free and clear to stay in Brazil until February. So great! I'm really looking forward to getting out of Londrina for a weekend, having a break from everything, and just getting some fresh air. It's been 2 months that I've been here and everything is great, but everybody needs a change of scenery and a change of pace sometimes. Mine seems to be perfectly timed, and also can't come soon enough!

Butter my door.

For most people in occupational ministry, weekends are not days of rest. For me, I'm not sure when my "day" of rest is, but I can assure you that I do get a compilation of 24 hours to kick back every week. Often, Sundays are quite peaceful until the evenings, but for this reason they are also often chosen for events at church. This Sunday was the "Happy Day" at my church. Yes, happy day, in English, and I have no idea why. Last Friday, the 12th, was Children's Day in Brazil and the church was originally going to celebrate by throwing a party for the local kids last weekend, but this Sunday was a better day. So, because they lacked other parties to go to due to the fact that the actual holiday was a week and 1/2 ago, over 200 local kids came to my church yesterday afternoon, and it was craaaazy.

I found myself remembering the mind of a child. Remembering myself when cotton candy was the coolest thing ever and my parents never let me have any. Remembering when the ball pit at McDonald's was unbelievable fun (though alwasy slightly painful, and let's be honest...smelly.) Puppets are always hysterical (and yesterday I was laughing out loud at one as well, so some things never change. Man that little Pati was a trip) and ideally, face paint should be permanent and cover as much skin as possible. With these things in mind, yesterday was so cool for those kids. The church really went all-out, in a way that in the US would have been banned, due to waivers the parents would have had to sign to let their kids on a very rickety trampoline and a slightly deflating climbing wall. They had 2 trampolines, one inside just for little kids, and one outside. They had cotton candy, tons of ice cream, popcorn, hot dogs, all for free. What?? That's an AWESOME party. The kids were just running wild basically, covered in chocolate cake and wet from the rain that kept coming and going. It was totally crazy, but so cool.


Needless to say, however, spending one day decorating for that, and then another 8 hours the next day monitoring small children as they tried to jump off a small slide (I actually caught one girl mid-flight...sheesh) the weekend felt like it was sucked up into a vortex of "Happy Day" and I'm sad to report that I will never be able to listen to that song again.

I'm trying to make the most of my last week and 1/2 of Portuguese lessons...and my Portuguese is really just laughable. I can talk, but I make a fool of myself every .02 seconds. Last night someone asked me, "you don't have gates in the houses in the US, right?" and I said no...then I went on to say that we had wooden doors too...but instead I said that we had doors made out of butter. BUTTER DOORS. Can you imagine?? I was wondering why the girls looked confused. Finally I found some wood and demonstrated, and one calmly said, "wood?" Yes. Wood. Yeesh.
Humbling.

Sowing...

Apparently I'm very bad at updating lately...whoops. My apologies.

Let's see...life is pretty good. I'm really enjoying teaching at WEBB and am finding myself saddened to think that I only have 3 more classes to give before their real teacher gets back from England. I love my class, they're all so sweet. Studying is going well for me too, though I will have to cut back on my classes a LOT in November. I might only be able to take a couple hours a week of grammar. Such a big bummer because I really enjoy learning at this pace and in this amount, and now I can't imagine how much harder I'll have to work on my own time. But oh well.

The story behind that is a confusion between WEBB and OMS. They raised their prices for lessons by R$15/hour, and I was only told to raise $16 a day by OMS, so basically both people were wrong and I didn't raise enough money. I've talked some with the directors of the school about finding a way to maybe make some trades because they want me to stick around just to be a nice American accent basically. I don't mind that they use me if I can get some classes out of it, so I think we're going to work something out for November. Not sure how it will fit yet, but I'm glad that I will at least still be involved with WEBB. I was dreading losing those 20 hours a week that I'm there, because it is the only thing I have here that I really feel is worthwhile, and I love feeling independent, taking the bus and just taking care of myself for a few hours every day. I feel like I'm accomplishing something when I am studying Portuguese and teaching English. If I'm not there, I'm just going to church and having very simple and seemingly pointless conversations. I guess I will acquire some different responsibilities in the month of November, because I will have much more free time.

Last night was a really hard night for me because I just reached a point of such exhaustion about being in such a different country and culture. At first it was hard to not be able to understand or speak, because you feel totally alone. Then it was hard to be able to understand but say nothing. Now it's hard to be able to understand and say simple things that make me seem like a 5 year old. Knowing that no one actually knows me at all, and there is no way for them to get to know me because I can't express myself in the way that I want to is incredibly hard and really quite tiring. Gwen's car has been in the shop for a week, so last night we had to wait at church to get a ride home. After the prayer service they practiced for their Christmas cantata (starting at 10pm...can you imagine that happening in the US? Never, ha.) Then after the practice, which was only about 30 minutes, they had a snack of cheese bread and coffee. By the time we left it was 11:15pm. And the service was over at 9:30, but I needed to wait because there was no way for me to get home if I can't walk by myself after dark. I'm not involved in the cantata because I won't be in Londrina for Christmas, so I was wandering around for that whole time and it just became too much. Normally, I would find someone and talk with them a little bit, just to interact with people and have fun. But last night I couldn't bring myself to have one more silly chat. I am so ridiculously relational that all I want to do is have some deep, personal conversation with someone, anyone. I'm not too shy to strike up a conversation with someone and guide it to deeper waters. But I was unable. I completely lack the ability to do that in Portuguese, and it basically feels like someone has cut off my arms and legs or something.

The bright spot in this is that it could be much worse. I have been encouraged by my teachers telling me that I am learning Portuguese very well and very quickly. Language acquisition is something that simply takes time, and I'm blessed that for me it takes less time. Just slightly less. Also, I had a little chat with a woman at the bus stop yesterday, and after a minute or two, when I told her I was "studying Portuguese at that school on the corner," she looked at me with confusion and said, "you're not Brazilian?" Ha. No, no I am not. But thank you, that made my day.

Every bit of exhaustion that I was feeling last night basically centered around being so far from home, in such a strange situation. At this point, I'm working hard to understand lots of things, and I have to learn much more than just the language. It's tiring. But, though it is hard now, this is an investment. Settling into any new place is difficult and at time depressing. But in the end, it always works out. I hope. Ha.

Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to my family coming here. To have a taste of my life in the US in Brazil will be a dream come true!!

v-i-c-t-o-r-y!!

Let me never ever forget that God is good! It looks like I will definitely be able to renew my visa to stay until February. Not through February, but until...and that's amazing.

I was talking with Gwen a few days ago about a possible trip to Assis Chateaubriand in early November, and she came up with a brilliant idea. She suggested that I just try and get my visa renewed while I'm there, because apparently they know of OMS too well here in Londrina. She was explaining that they don't like to renew a tourist visa for someone they know is doing more than touring. And since Gwen would be with me, and they know she works with OMS, they would be less likely to grant it for me. So I presented this idea to Joaquim, and he thought about some possibilities, a time and a place we could go, etc. I felt better about the idea that I could really say I was touring, my family wanted to visit, I was going to spend Christmas with friends, and I knew I would be able to avoid questions like what I've been doing with Gwen so far.

Then yesterday afternoon I talked with Joaquim and he said "Well, I talked to Milton at the Policia Federal today." Umm, who is Milton? Apparently Milton used to live in Assis, but now lives in Cascavel, the closest city with a Federal Police (where I need to go) and Joaquim explained my situation to him, and he said he would gladly sign for my visa renewal. So we're going in on November 5th, he gave Joaquim 3 different numbers to reach him so he could definitely be there to sign for me, and voila...my renewal will be granted for another 90 days.

HELLO, this is such an answer to prayer! I'm amazed at the wonderful turn of events and can clearly see God's hand in it. I would never have thought to try in Cascavel...I would never have thought to call ahead and get a definite answer. I've heard many times that in such beaurocracy cases, it really pays to know someone but I thought I didn't know someone. As it turns out, Milton is my new best friend. God has some great ideas, that's for sure, and it is all going to be great.

So, the Allen family will be traveling to Brazil for Christmas, and we are going to have a marvelous time in the incredible heat...bring your bathing suits. And a snowball.

Água de coco

Today has, in a word, been awesome. The only hindrance at the moment is that I feel a little homesick because it's currently sort of dark and rainy, which only makes me want to be cozy at home. So I'm trying to be cozy here. It has been semi-successful.

I woke up this morning nice and late, took my time getting ready to go meet up with some youth from church. I had talked with a friend, Mariele, on Friday about getting together this weekend, so we made plans last night to go to the park today and maybe walk around the lake a little, just get out and do something. Last night after the youth service, Mariele announced to the whole world that we were meeting at ISBL at 2pm to go to Lake Igapó...and so we did.

It was nice, about 10 people showed up, but it was so hot. When I was leaving my apartment this afternoon it was almost 100 degrees and the last thing I wanted to do was be outside, mid-day, walking or playing soccer or something. Blah. But I went, bought some water on the way, and it was a nice afternoon. We walked to a big park here in town, and we just hung out. Some people played soccer, we played a little volleyball, swang on the swings...I had a near-disaster on a teeter-totter with no handles. Those things are dangerous, especially when someone else jumps on the other side. We just goofed off, and eventually people started to get hot and tired. So, what would you do in that situation? Naturally, you would walk up the hill to the little vendor selling coconut water. Yes, it's true, for about $1.25 you can have your own coconut and a straw. Just ask the guy with the machete, and he would chop off the bottom, so you could hold it or set it down, then chop off the other side and spear the top, and some water would squirt out. He then hands it to you, and, drink away. It was kind of hilarious for me when I really thought about what I was doing. So refreshing though. I didn't drink the whole thing, but it was delicious on such a hot day.

After that, I was sitting on a blanket with Flávia and Nice and it started to rain a little. It had looked like it was going to, but it does so rarely here that no one really was concerned. Well, it rained...and rained...and rained. The girls and I ran to a giant cement tube for cover, and we brought our snacks and continued our conversation about favorite movies, but then the wind was blowing the rain, and eventual hail, into our cement shelter, so we decided to just accept our fate. Well, after roasting earlier in the afternoon, we were shivering, and I had pieces of hail in my hair. It was hilarious. The three of us headed back and I arrived home totally soaked. There is nothing better than putting on dry clothes and making some coffee after such an event. It just started storming again, and is now about 70 degrees. Thank the LORD.

Though slightly unorthodox, "um domingo bem diferente," it was a fun day, always a pleasure to get to know people better and speak more and more Portuguese...and now I'm going to take a shower and make myself presentable for church in an hour and a half. What a day...

COMMENT!!!!!! : )

Back to normal...

After a strange and crazy 72 hours of an allergic reaction, I'm glad to say that whatever it is/was isn't bothering me anymore. I guess I just ate something weird Saturday afternoon, and I have no idea what it could be, but I probably won't go to that buffet again. It's a shame, because it really was delicious.

I had to miss my first English class at WEBB yesterday, which really was frustrating. But tomorrow morning I'll be there, bright and early. October will be much busier for me, that's for sure. Even in the busyness, when I take a step back and look at what I'm actually doing here, sometimes I'm not exactly sure. But My Utmost for His Highest had some interesting things to say about that today. Oswald Chambers was talking about the importance of knowing Jesus, and how nothing we do matters at all if we don't know Him.

"We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him. When you are brought face to face with a difficult situations and nothing happens externally, you can still know that freedom and release will be given because of your continued concentration on Jesus Christ. Your duty in service and ministry is to see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself."

I can say that my foremost concentration hasn't been on Jesus Christ. I am easily getting bogged down by all the church services and events and things to DO that I don't spend enough time at home, just focusing on spending time with the Lord. The problem with that is that if I did just take more time to spend in my own private devotions, everything that I do would be so much more fruitful. It's hard to learn these priorities when you're actually experiencing them. I have known them intellectually for a long time, but to know them in practice is something very different. Interesting things to think about...

Despite my hives, the weekend was very nice. It was pretty busy, especially Saturday because Joaquim arrived here at 6:30am and we were busy all day until the prayer vigil at church ended at 1:30am. That was a long day, and then Sunday morning I woke up very very itchy. But all in all, life here in Brazil is still great. Please continue to keep me in prayer as at the end of this month I'm going to be renewing my visa. I really have a peace about either outcome, though I wish terribly that I could just get it renewed and stay, I'm not totally hopeless if I need to go home in November. Because then I'll just come back. : ) God knows what He is doing, and either way, I trust Him. I was encouraged yesterday and on Monday by my own testimonies about what God has done in my life. I forget sometimes how miraculously He led me here to Londrina, and how He placed the call on my life to serve Him in another country. He's not kidding about all of that, so He will make it possible. Amen!

Comedy or Tragedy?

UPDATE
Well the doctor gave me some allegra, and told me to buy new detergent and just pay attention to things. Basically he just said "it's easy to treat, but hard to diagnose." Wonderful. So, I bought some detergent for babies. Yes, baby laundry detergent. The lady at the checkout register was joking about it and then Celia was seizing the opportunity as well. At least some laughter was had at my expense. I must admit, my life felt like a bad comedy yesterday. Joaquim and I walked to a nice park, we were sitting on a bench talking, and then half of my upper lip decides to explode. What is THAT? I don't know, but I haven't had any more hives since this morning, and it all seems to be coming under control.

As for now, I'm off to Portuguese lessons. The fun never stops...
--


I'm afraid I'm not here for a very substantial update, but I wanted to ask for all of your prayers...I've been getting terrible hives for the last 48 hours or so, and this morning when I woke up, whatever this allergic reaction is had caused my lips to swell up like balloons. While this is hilarious, it's also rather serious. I was supposed to teach my first English class at WEBB this morning, but I really didn't feel comfortable going out by myself in case something else should happen, heaven forbid. Unfortunately I had to cancel that, which really is terrible, but I just really need to see a doctor asap, basically. So as soon as they open, Gwen is going to give them a call, and we'll see what we can do. I also took 2 benadryl, which I'm pretty sure is 1 more than the recommended dose, so now I'm off to take a nap...

I'll write more after the doctor's visit...at the moment, I wouldn't care what they told me was wrong with me, as long as I can KNOW.