Hello All!


So, since i last wrote...last weekish i think? my life has been goooood. I´m now all settled in with my new family in my new town, Caetanópolis. The town itself is really really REALLY small, only 40000 people, which in brazil is teeny, but the advantage of this is that everyone wants to meet me and knows who i am, so i´ve already made friends fairly easily. Another advantage to Caetanópolis is that my host family is really great. As opposed to most peoples host families, who are forced to host exchange students because they have a child studying abroad, my host family just wanted to have an exchange student, so they are really excited about me living here, which in turn makes me want to get along with them and try harder and all that jazz.



PLUS my famiy has children that actually live at home, a son Lucas who´s twenty-three, and two daughters, Viviene who´s my age and Mariana, who´s thirteen. That´s nice for two reasons: i already have friends that live in my house, and i can just attach myself to their friends. My brother has this group of friends, who call themselves Trash (which is pretty dumb) but they´re a nice group of people, or at least i enjoy their company, so it doesn´t matter. And, i´m pretty sure they´re the only group of hipsters in the entire country of brazil, which is really nice, because overall, brazilians sort of come up short with music and movies, but they don´t. It´s pretty sweet.

And, yet one more advantage about Caetanópolis is that i get to work here! As i am very very poor, that is very very nice, and extremely helpful. I´m going to be teaching some English classes here, and i´m both excited and slightly nervous for it.

The other simultaneously exciting and nerve-wracking thing that´s happening soon here is carnaval, which starts friday. I´ll be doing it here in Caetanopolis, which i was sort of dissappointed about before i actually got here, but now i figure i might as well make the best i posibly can from it. Ít promises to be interesting at least. Although drunken brazilian men are the bane of my existence here, and there are going to heaps of them there, so glllll. (potentially) We´ll see.

Anyhow, just so you guys know, i´m happy and jazzed and doing really well. And i hope the same for all of you!
lots of beijãos e abraçãos tambem
mary