Olá! Eu vou tentar escrever isso em português, então pessoas que não falam português não podem ler. Que pena para eles. (Or english speaking folks can scroll down to the bottom). Agora eu preciso escrever uma coisa. Eu fui para praia!!! E também para Beto Carrero World, que é bem legal. Agora eu conheço as praias do Brasil (só da Santa Caternia, na verdade, mas tudo bem) e eu posso dizer que esse país é o mais lindo do mundo. Quero dizer, olha só:

(os fotos não são muito bons, descupla)

Areia perfeita, água quentinha, sol quente mas não quente demais, tudo que eu poderia querer. Eu estou feliz. Quando eu falo assim parece que eu não gosto de Frederio Westphalen, só da praia, mas isso não é verdade. É só que eu senti tanto saudades da praia e a mar. Nadar e tomar banho do sol e fazer castelos de areia (eu não estou velha demais para isso, né? Foi só um...) são as melhores coisas do mundo.  

Também fui para Beto Carrero World, que eu gostei muito. Eu nunca fui numa montanha-russa antes, então eu tinha medo, mas foi tudo bem. Eu acho que eu só fiz porque eu não parei para pensar até que fosse tarde demais. (eu não tenho um foto que eu gostei muito disso, então tem que ser mais fotos do praia) 

(Olha que fofinhos!!!!)

A outra coisa que aconteceu foi que eu descobri quando eu vou embora. Dia 6 de Junho, que é só 10 semanas e 2 dias de hoje. Eu não sei como eu me sinto sobre isso. Num lado eu estou ansioso para ver minha familia e amigas e meu país que eu amo tanto, mas no outro lado eu não quero ir embora. Só 10 semanas e meu intercambio vai acabar para sempre. Já fis 8 meses da minha vida aqui, e será difícil deixar todo isso para trás. Eu quero aproveitar cada momento que eu ainda tenho. Bjs, Sophia.

And for the english speaking people, here's a link to google translate. I was going to write some stuff in english but i decided I have other things to do. I have a weeks worth of school to catch up with after all. See you all in a few months!!

Apparently when you have a blog you're supposed to update it every now and then. Like write about what I've been doing recently or something. The problem is I honestly don't remember what I've been doing. Holidays have a tendency to just all blur into one homogenous lump of not much really. The weather doesn't help on that- yay for the hottest summer in 90 years- 35-40 degrees most days (that's what it was last i heard anyway). Maybe I'm just pathetic, but i have zero interest in stirring from in front of the air conditioning btween 10am and 5pm, by which time it's sometimes almost bareable. The last week or so has been better- this one time I actually wore a cardigan.

My holidays have really been much like holidays anywhere. Reading a lot, going to the pool most days, watching random movies, that kind of thing. I joined a gym last week, which is a pretty radical move on my part, and so far I'm enjoying. I joined a zumba class, which is among the silliest looking things I've done in a while, but it is fun, so whatever.

And now a week later... I currently have a 5 day weekend for carnaval, after only 4 days of school- a nice way to ease back into the year. Carnaval in my teeny tiny town is not an incredibly exciting affair. There was this party that I was going to go to but then things got complicated, as they sometimes do, so that didn't end up happening. It's still nice to have a relaxing weekend, and I'm at the grandparents' house at the moment, which makes a nice change from living in an apartment.

What do people even want to know about? Blogging makes me self-concious. Look, have some photos. Now I don't have to write anything, right?

Well, I'm back. It's been a while since I blogged (no suprises there) but I'm not apologising because I've done that enough times. (I wrote that sentence nearly a week ago and only now returned to it. I'm not so good at this blogging thing.) I spent christmas and new years this (well really last) year with friends of my host parents in Rio Verde, Goias, which is more or less right in the middle of Brazil. We drove around 20 hours (over 2 days) to get there- to me an incredibly long way, yet we still hadn't crossed even half of Brazil. I think in New Zealand we have no concept of scale. Or perhaps it's that Brazilians don't realise quite how far everything is. In New Zealand you drive 2 hours and chances are you're in the sea; in Europe you drive 2 hours and end up in another country. Here in Brazil you drive 2 hours and you haven't actually gone anywhere. That aside, the drive actually wasn't so bad- the scenery was incredible (yeah, this photo doesn't really say incredible, but I promise that it actually was and I just didn't take photos of everything)

 The first few days there were pretty much spent just relaxing, exploring the city a bit, sleeping in, that kind of thing. The big christmas dinner was on christmas eve (I appear to not have taken any photos on christmas day itself)

 Sooooo much food. Very very good food. Panetonne! Why don't we eat panetonne in New Zealand?  It's amazing. Like cake and bread at the same time. Christmas day was spent at home, with some presents in the morning, churrasco for lunch (I think, i don't perfectly remember...) and the afternoon was spent drinking beer and chatting.

 The day after christmas we visited a place with pools. Yep, super duper descriptive there. But it was great. They had one of those bars that you don't have to leave the pool for. Yet again my descriptive muscle fails me. You know, like in the movies. Only the movies don't show the bit where you fall off the seat into the water. Repeatedly.

World Cup stadium in Goiania. The World cup possibly deserves a blog post of it's own, people don't seem to be all that optimistic about it...

On New Years (still at the same place, but with more people) I was introduced to a bunch of different traditions. I feel like New Years is more important here than Christmas. Maybe just more different. Apparently it's good luck to wear white on new years, which i didn't actually know beforehand, that just happened the dress i'd packed. Does that make it extra lucky. Also lucky is eating seven spoonfuls of lentils and seven different kinds of fruit. You're allowed to just take a bite of each fruit, but after a large dinner at 10pm (I don't think i'll ever get used to eating this late- i used to be in bed at 10pm!) the lentils and fruit were a bit more than i really wanted to be eating. But hey, it's good luck, you gotta do what you gotta do. Also the lentils tasted good.

That's about me for now. Since getting back I've been doing almost nothing at all. It's getting a bit dull, to be honest, but I guess that's just life. Looking forward too seeing all you New Zealand folks THIS YEAR!