An Eventful Evening

Wednesday was Parent Teacher Conferences at school.  I think they went pretty well.  One parents even gave me a box of chocolates!!

Wednesday evening I went to Restoration Ministries, where Karin, Marianne, and their group went when they came down in August.  I had some interesting experiences I thought I'd share.  First, the traffic was horrible.  It took us 3 hours to get there.  I saw a man laying dead on the road from a motorcycle accident.  I hear this is frequent (daily), but I have never seen the dead person just laying before.  On the way home I saw another motorcycle accident, but the person was already in the ambulance.  I made sure to look away so I didn't see what was going on inside the vehicle.  The other man who was there was picking up pieces from his taillight.  Motorcycles here go in between the lanes of traffic (which are much narrower than in the U.S.) and they dodge in and out of traffic because, well, sitting for 3 hours isn't that much fun! Its really dangerous, but people get so sick of the traffic.  If you don't have money for a helicopter you might try a motorcycle. 

We also drove through the second largest favela here in Sao Paulo.  Favela's are the very poor neighborhoods/areas (shantytown).  This one has over 100,000 people living in it with schools, medical services etc. These are the areas where organized crime and drugs rule the streets.  Don't get lost in one!

Something else I found interesting that night was at one point (maybe 2.5 hours into the drive) I saw 8 green lights facing us at one intersection.  However, we were sitting completely still.  Oh joy!

When I got to the ministry center the director dropped me off in a room.  We were obviously late quite late and this class was already in session.  There was a teacher in the front and she asked me to share a little about myself.  I determined that it must be an English class, and the teacher had me help with the instruction.  It was fun for me to practice some Portuguese verbs I had been working on while helping them with some English words.  I think they would win the prize if there was a competition!

On the way home we stopped for "dinner" at this roadside stand for a Pastel (10:45 PM -people here eat dinner late!!).  A pastel is a thin piece of fried dough with a filling.  Mine had a little hamburg and cheese (carne e quejo).  I was shown a bowl in a tree right next to this roadstand that evidently is used to practice VooDoo!  

All in all it was a good cultural experience for me.