Per Cominciare...Oh wait, wrong language. Mierda.

Saturday, June 7

I couldn’t ask for a prettier view/temperature right now. I’m in the patio/backyard of the house where I’m staying, and though the weather is warm (too warm for the jeans I had to wear today because I needed to look nice jaja), it’s very breezy and I LOVE the wind.

Natal is the main city of Rio Grande do Norte, a region of northeast Brasil, basically the easternmost tip (the easternmost city being João Pessoa, where the Bulldogs in Brasil are). I legit thought Natal was going to be somewhere in carajoland (butt-effin-Egypt for you gringos lol), but it’s actually a city! We even went to a huge mall yesterday to look for a bank that would let Shanah take out reais (Brasilian currency, pronounced more like heh-ah-ees) and I was impressed. The food has been amazing so far, so amazing that Shanah and I are frantically on the lookout for either Capoeira lessons or Samba lessons or something else that will burn thousands of calories jaja.

Now that I’ve actually visited the place where we’ll be working and met our co-workers, I think I can better explain the whole reason why I’m here (which, as most of you know, was fairly vague before this). There’s a Center called "CreSer" (word play on to grow and to be/human being) with a longer subname that basically lays out its focus on educational studies for children with developmental disorders, the main one being Autism. This entire project was started by a woman named Eliana, whose son Breno has Asperger’s Syndrome but was not diagnosed until his 20’s. She’s fought hard (and still fighting) for more focus and attention paid to Autism in Brasil, since there is not information out there for doctors to properly diagnose patients and for parents to properly treat their children. Though there are places where they will take care of Autistic children, they’re basically just watching them, not helping them in any way. That’s where the Center comes in. They have a team of specialized teachers that each concentrate on a specific child, and the whole program is ridiculously organized and well-thought out. They cater directly to the needs of every child and develop activities to help with motor skills, recognition of objects, and communication, while they also provide physical stimulation through massages and things like that. And one of the coolest parts of this (you would really like this, Nico) is that all the materials they use in their instruction, from boards to containers to games, are made using stuff that would normally go in the trash, like cardboard, poker chips (make great counters), bottles and shoeboxes (containers), etc.

Me and Shanah (if you hadn’t picked up by now, she and I are the two Yalies doing the program right now—and she just graduated) basically will be helping to do some organizational stuff before our main program, a summer camp in the Center, starts in July (I think jaja). We’ll also be working on getting attention for the program, since this is the first of its kind in Natal—and here is where the Yale name comes in handy!

Most of you by now will be like, "Does Allie even know Portuguese??" And the answer is…no jaja. I WISH. Yes, it’s very similar to Spanish and Italian, but that only means I can read it well, not necessarily that I can understand the spoken language. There’s one lady at the Center (by the way, they’re all in their 20s and one in her 30s so they’re taking us clubbing jaja) who speaks a little more slowly for me than everyone else does, so I can understand 90% of what she says, but not everyone is like that jaja. Getting myself understood is more the problem, I find, because no matter how much Spanish and Portuguese are similar, they don’t understand me. And forget English for the most part jaja. Luckily, Shanah came to Brasil last year and knows Portuguese very well, so she is my lifesaver.

I don’t want to make this too long or no one will read it =( but I have to say that I missed my first flight ever!! I’ve been close to it a few times, but this was the first time. Our flight was JFK--São Paolo—Natal , but our flight out of JFK was delayed by two hours due to fog, so by the time we got to Sao Paolo, went through Customs, got our luggage, made the line to check our luggage back in (stupidity), and got to the desk, our flight had left like 40 minutes before that. So they paid for our hotel, dinner (at one in the morning) and breakfast, and put us on a 11:25 am flight for the next day. It wasn’t too bad, except we were EXHAUSTED (we had gotten to the airport in ny at like 6 in the morning) and everything took FOREVER so that we were going to bed at like 2:30 am. And then we got to Natal the next day =)

Other than that, the only other thing of note is that tonight we’re going to some party, something because of Festa Junina (I botched the spelling, sorry), a month-long celebration of June. Don’t get too excited, it starts at 7 pm lol.

Okay loves, I’m off to go do something else, but I hope all of you are having amazing times wherever you may be, which I hope to hear about! Can’t wait to see you guys in August (or December for Matt A!)!

LOOOOOOOOOOVE! =D


-Allie(or as my host family says, Eli)


PS They have a dog, Benji (not like Genji jaja, more like Ben-jzhee if you can imagine that sound lol) who is the CUTEST thing in the world. Pictures to come =)

PPS I'm sorry if the buttons are in Portuguese or something. Before you complain, imagine me trying to create this darn blog with an entirely Portuguese (i.e. slightly unintelligible to me) website! =)