world cup kit

Tuesday was a big party for us. Brazil played Ghana (the team that put the US team out) and won 3-0. We grilled hamburgers over at the ITP house (the students here with the exchange program). Simon and Braden were all decked out in their Ronaldinho jerseys and Brazil hats. We've consistently had around 30 or so students watch the games with us. Tuesday was fun because they hung around most of the day and watched the second game as well (Spain vs. France). We cooked bananas on the grill later and ate them with condensed milk and cinnamon-sugar.

two new videos

I've posted two new videos on my .Mac site. One is of Lucy crawling. The other is of the boys in the yard and Lucy eating grass. Notice Streed running with the big boys.

braden's 6th

Braden turned 6 on Tuesday. We went out to the restaurant of his choice - Joe and Leo's... a burger/sports bar like place. There was a World Cup game on and the boys got balloons. The didn't touch their food though (don't be fooled by the picture). I guess the two cupcakes did them in before we left.

"emu"sed

This past Saturday we (and the Crooms) took the kids to Zooparque, a zoo about an hour from Barão Geraldo. We saw lots and lots of monkeys and birds. The tigers were sleeping and the hippos were too far away to get the full effect of their size. We saw 5 rhinos from close up. They were impressive.

tied

O.k. so, yesterday during the US game I was the one who cheered the longest before realizing that the Beasley goal was called back. I hope many of you got a chance to see the national team play. It was the best game so far of the World Cup. They played the second half with only 9 men (against 10) and still managed to come close to scoring a second goal (the first was an own-goal by Italy). Keller, the goalie, also performed well enough to undo all my criticism of him from the first game.

Today is Brasil vs. Australia.

we'll know tomorrow

Tuesday afternoon we packed into the ITP house to watch Brazil and Croatia play to kick off the World Cup for all the fanatics here. Brazil won the game 1-0 on a goal by Kaká (pictured with Cafu here). There were probably 50 watching with us... a can of green and yellow sardines.

Maybe more exciting then the game was the drama that took place leading up to it. The team brought a projector down for the games so we set up to find a VCR to convert the signal to the projector. Chip and I walked to at least 5 stores in downtown Campinas before finding anyone that had a compatible VCR. We drove back to Barão Geraldo and discovered we were missing an RCA cord. Twice we drove to my house but both of my cords didn't work. After purchasing one we hooked everything up and it still didn't work. ...house almost full and still no game and it was almost 4 p.m.

The deal was we were trying to pick it up on "open tv". We don't have cable (mistake). We got a signal on channel 70 but it was just audio and it came in and out. A few guys got on the roof and tried turning the antenna to no avail. We called up two friends to see if they could help. So they came over and told us we had the wrong cable hooked up. We went through this whole ordeal to hook up the other one... finally got it hooked up, 15 minutes til gametime... still nothing! Switched back to the other cable but took the head off and it worked! Then Simon walks up and cuts the VCR off! Oh no!

I turned it back on and everything was fine. All 50 cheered throughout the game. Brazil won! And we hope to repeat the whole thing on Sunday minus the lead-in dramatics.

The US national team plays tomorrow versus Italy as well. The US team lost their first game versus the Czech Republic 3-0. So tomorrow is a must-win for them if they hope to move on to the next round.

investigative retreat

We arrived back Sunday night around 4 a.m. from the investigative retreat. The bus ride was... well, it was 11 hours long on the way down. The bus driver predicted 5 and a half and I predicted 8, but no, it was 11. Then on the way back we left after lunch, went and toured Ouro Preto, then ate at the mall in Belo Horizonte, and then left for Campinas. We left Belo at 8 p.m.

The first night of the retreat we watched the movie, The Island, and basically introduced the weekend by saying that we want to understand what moves us... we don't want to live unexamined lives. We spent the rest of the weekend talking about that idea and discussing what part investigating the life of Jesus should play in that.

This is a picture of part of my discussion group (l to r): Jason, South Alabama student and ITP (International Training Project) team member, Marcel, André, and Mateus (social science students at Unicamp), Wandson (my friend from Belo Horizonte participating on the ITP), and Paula (also social science).

8-hour bus ride

Tommorow morning at 6 a.m. we are all loading up on a bus for the investigative retreat. We'll meet up with the groups in Belo Horizonte at Centro Dom Bosco for a weekend of discussion, "lectures" and probably a lot of soccer. We are going to center the theme around the World Cup since it kicks off tomorrow. Unfortunately we'll miss the opening ceremony, and neither the US team nor Brazil play this weekend.

Today is our last day on campus. I pray that today we can see most of the students before the long weekend and that many would decide to go with us even though there's not much time before we leave. 7 students have already signed up to go. Pray that we could that this trip would mean a lot for our friendship with them and would help us to understand the culture more here, but more than anything that while at the retreat that we could all understand better where we are at in our faith.

some barão

Amy took several pictures of our house and the kids during our first few days in Barão Geraldo. Be sure to check them out! We also wanted to introduce Streed. Streed is almost two and is living with us here in Barão with his mommy and daddy (Chip and Shelley).

be careful what you ask for

Let's just say that the party was a little bit more than I expected. About 45 people more than I expected (I thought maybe 20). About 3 more hours than I expected... 1 a.m. instead of 10 p.m. A lot more headnods than I expected... when I talked about that as a group we wanted to grow in our faith and talk about our faith, the response seemed really positive from the Brazilian students. After the party... that's right, after, half of the American students went to a festa junina and the other half went to a party on the campus. They had fun but the festa wasn't as traditional as normal. I think it was more just a name for the party, a reason to get together.

Today we went to a churrasco with the freshmen chemical engineering students. It was great to meet some more of the students and to "re-see" some we already knew. One interesting thing they did that I had never seen before and which was so "student-ish" was that they bought a lot of french bread. Everytime some meat was ready... sausage, beef, chicken, etc... you just took your bread up to the grill and they served it in your bread. Pretty cool.

meet the americanos

Tonight we've invited over all our new friends we've made at Unicamp to meet the whole group of Americans that are here for the winter. We're doing our best for it to be a good party. We bought little flags today that are traditionally used at the Festa Juninas in Brazil. And we are making a lot of American sweets and some fancy little sandwiches. Our plan is to parade everyone up front to hear their name and where they are from and then tell the Brazilians about why they are here (and why I'm here). We also hope to invite them to the retreat we are having next week. Please remember us today and ask that tonight the house would be full of God's love.