Touched down in Saõ Paulo, and there´s a little different feel to Brasil, but hasn´t really hit me that I´m in another country yet. We have a few different rules here. One is that you only get 45 minutes for email. not super exciting. The other one is that we are allowed to go out into a little area of SP on P-day! I´m really excited to explore the area. The food here is so much better then the food at the Provo MTC, that's probably because they only have to cook for about 250 people instead of 2700. Also, they have places for you to study outside surrounded by palm trees and exotic plants. I feel like I´m at a resort, with a strict schedual and a lot of studying.
The flight here was super long. Some surprising things happened. First off one of the elders saw his girlfriend from back home, crazy coincidence. their flight left from the terminal next to ours. Secondly, I somehow got the comfort class for the 10 hour leg of the flight along with two other missionaries. I am so thankful for the extra leg room. Lastly, I ended up sitting next to a Mormon woman that spoke both Portuguese and English, and had a niece serving in Belo Horizonte. Also, each of the seats had a touch screen so you could view a map of the world and your flight. It was cool and I tried to find the places where all the missionaries I know are serving. It also had games. There was one for learning languages and I did the entire one for Portuguese in like 20 minutes. Then, I played Sudoku and mahjong. I felt like I shouldn´t watch a movie, but then the person in front of me was watching the Book of Life with subtitles and I now know every thing that happens in that movie except how the voices sound.
There is a lot more immersion in the language here, but not total syl. The zone is trying to do a zone wide English fast on Monday though. I can already tell that I´m going to learn the language so much faster and better here.
We still have a very similar district, same companion and we only lost one of our old roommates. We now have two new Brasilian roommates that don´t speak any English. It has been interesting and we have had a lot of really slow, long and simple conversations. I think it is one of the ways they are trying to help us improve our Portuguese.
My companions favorite time is snack time. At 9 p.m. they come around to all the classrooms and hand out juice boxes and Brasilian candy. It´s pretty good. The fruit is so good here. On the first night they made pizza, it wasn´t at all like the ones we have at home, but it was really good. One of my favorites was the dessert pizza. It had chocolate, icing and super sweet bananas. And every breakfast they have fresh homemade bread rolls.
We were able to go to the Campinas temple today. It´s about 1.5 hours away, so I was able to get some studying in along with seeing the city and some sleep. The city is huge!!!! and filled with sky scrapers as far as the eye can see. The view from our room is amazing. It is especially beautiful at sunset. We are 5 stories up and there are two more above us. I have never done so many stairs in my life. And I´ve only been here three days.
The track here makes me laugh a little. I don´t think it can be more than 100 meters. I end up spending most of the time playing volleyball, because there are no Frisbees and we are not allowed to play soccer. They say it's because the Brasillians take it too seriously and things can get violent and people get hurt.
Elder Quain
P.S. I am writing this on a Portuguese key board, so it has all the accent marks on it and a few keys switched around.
Elders Nelson-Karren-Santos-Hollingshauos-Quain
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