Beach, beach, and more beach

These days I have been busy, the only time I am ever home is when it is time to sleep. The internet is limited for me, so I find other ways to connect. I have spent time at other volunteers’ places for food or company, which has been interesting to see how different everyone is living here. This weekend was all about the beach. On Saturday we all went to Itacoatiara beach for a last goodbye to my fellow American. He lives in St. Cloud Minnesota though, so I told him he has no choice but to support the wildcats this year and come to one of our games. There will be a few more goodbyes this week, but new people are arriving as well, so it is bitter sweet.

As for Saturdays little adventure… I decided that my motto “winging it” has been fully reached. I had absolutely no money left and decided I would just search for an ATM in the morning for bus money. I was already running late to meet the others and realized that there was no ATM around. Nothing was going right that morning, but I decided that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later, so I decided to walk. It was nice to walk instead of take the bus because you see everything from a different perspective. I caught the bus in the next town and when I arrived I had a piece of cake waiting for me from one of the other volunteers… he caught on to my love for desserts, or love for food, it was delicious. What I found from this walk was that it was a nice running spot, so I have committed myself to running this path along the beach. Indi and I decided that Monday is the start of our full commitment to getting into better shape. She is a sprinter on the beach back at home for surf club, so she has a workout that she has to be doing while she is here given to her by her coach. Unfortunately, food has been our first priority, but the guilt has finally kicked in and we have committed to helping each other run more. So… that night we ate as much food as we could at an Italian buffet J, it’s not Monday yet so it’s perfectly ok.

Back to Copacabana beach. I got plenty of sun and I am no longer glowing compared to the Brazilians, I am slowly blending in, yesssahhh. I haven’t had much time to sleep lately, so I used the beach for sleep time. The waves were big, so I spent a good amount of time in the water. What is nice about the beach here is that it is all business. What I mean by that is that people are always walking around with stuff to sell. When you get hungry you can pick seafood, biscuits, sandwiches, and much more. We got this ice cream type of food, in which you pick from different fruit choices, yummm. Every day I learn more about the culture differences between all of our countries and learn more about each other. I have found that we all have a secret motivation for committing ourselves to Brazil. Life had knocked us down in different ways, and we all decided to run here. I have found that a lot of us ran here to challenge ourselves and to run to everything that is out of our comfort zones. Every single one of them is good people and they have impacted me more than they know! I knew nothing about Brazil when I decided to come here, all I knew was that it was soccer country. Everyone was a bit surprised that I did not know anything about this country, but I am glad that I am able to learn about it. I found it was good that I did not know anything though, because I had no expectations coming here.