This past weekend everyone at home was celebrating Thanksgiving by eating copious amounts of turkey, stuffing, turnip puff, and all my other favorite foods (and I am totally jealous of everyone). It was also a holiday here in Brazil; we didn't have any turkey though. The actual holiday was on Tues Oct 12 and so most people got to have a long weekend from Friday until Tuesday! I looked it up and they were celebrating "Nossa Senhora de Aparecida" - Our Lady of Aparecida. They also celebrate "Dia das Crianças" or Children's Day - just like our Mother's or Father's day, but for kids! Anyways, Vanessa cooked us all (Hilda (Mom), Nivaldo (Dad), Yuri(brother), Beatrice (sister in-law), Tia Maria, Grandma, Tracy and I!!) a family dinner on Friday. It was an amazing feast including ribs, chicken, and quinoa with broccoli! Everything was so delicious.
On Saturday we took the opportunity to check out Vanessa's apartment in Canasvieras. Anastacia, Vanessa, Tracy and I got our stuff ready and then all piled into one car and headed out for the weekend! It's only about 40 minutes north from us but it was fun to go on a mini road trip. That night was just a relaxed night with the girls - shopping, a homecooked meal, chocolate and a girly movie ;)
We planned on waking up early the next morning to go to the beach but when Vanessa woke up at 8 it was cloudy. 9am - still cloudy. 10am - STILL cloudy and so Vanessa turned off the alarm and gave up. Next time we woke up it was sunny but still a little cold; we didn't want to waste all day inside though so we all went out for a nice walk on the beach. Here we spent a lot of time chasing after these really weird sea creatures which would ride each wave onto the sand to eat and quickly burry back as the wave returned. But if you saw their bubbles from them digging you could pick up a big chunk of sand and catch them! It's just like how on White Rock beach you can spend so long catching and playing with those little crabs waiting under the rocks. After that we decided to visit the local Alligator. She lives only a short drive away and she has been there for so long that they have officially protected her little area. It was really cool because there are only fences between her area and the foot path but she is not restricted to staying there; but she does! It wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be because she was sleeping on the other side of her water and was really just bump in the dirt. Next was lunch time (a very late lunch time) that consisted of shrimp kabobs for starters, a very large assortment of meats, along side rice and beans! So delicious, you don't even know. Then it was back to the apartment for another movie and some home-made brigadeiro (probably one of the best and easiest desserts ever). After the movie, since we didn't have dinner per-se, we went to an ice cream buffet! Oh my God, I was in heaven!!
The next morning was the same drill - wake up early to see what the weather was like; if it was nice we would go out, if not we would go back to bed for an hour. This time it was a gorgeous day!! So we all got into our bikinis and beach-wear and got ready for a day of absolutely nothing! The first beach we went to was Ingleses where we got the traditional summer-time/beach snack - corn on the cob! Other than that it was a lot of sleeping. So much sleeping in fact that everyone, save for Vanessa, got really impressive sun burns. But we didn't exactly realize just how burnt we were until much later. Two more beaches and a lunch later to be exact!
That night Anastacia Tracy and I hopped onto the bus home (because Vanessa was going to stay one more night) where I sat/layed for the next solid 24 hours because it was too painful to move.
Today I am looking almost normal. The only bit of burn that you can see is my left earlobe and my eyelids! When I showed Vanessa Kanaan my burn today she told me that she thought it was just eye shadow - don't know if that's better or worse :P On a different note my project is officially on track!! Today we weighed and measured all the turtles! We marked the ones that had lesions with a different colour so that they would be easier to spot. Only problem we ran into is that their markings are fading or peeling significantly now and so i have 8 turtles that either have the same number or no number at all. This means on Friday I need to get all of the turtles and remark the ones that have bad markings or no markings and re-weigh them. It won't be so bad - the hard part will be finding them! In any case I'm really excited that I get to actually be working on my own thing when I go there now :D
p.s. I tried to upload some pictures but it wasn't working for some reason... I might end up doing a blog later on of just some pictures and captions from the weekend :)
Much Love!
Karen
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