Life On the Other Side: (Steven)

Well, we're wrapping up our time here at The Nepo Boys Home. It's hard figuring out what to write about. We've had so many fun, challenging experiences here. It's mostly with fond memories that I will look back at this place. Another thing that makes figuring out what to write about challenging is the fact that I haven't posted for 2 1/2 weeks... I suppose this doesn't come as a surprise to anybody who kept up with the first blog I had.
I guess I'll start with talking about goiaba/guava. Guava is the fruit of the guava, tree species of Psidium guajava , family Myrtaceae , originally from the American tropics. Occurs primarily in Brasil and the Antilles.

   Now I'm sure the question you're all asking is, what does a piece of fruit have to do with a boys home? Well, at this time of the year it was a fairly large part of the experience. Whether it was Jackson coming up and asking, "Later lets you me go peck guava?", (A phrase Josh taught him) which usually consisted of running anywhere between a 1/4 to a 1/2 mile down the road to find a tree that had some fruit on it. Or the goiaba war that broke out while swimming at a river nearby when some of the boys swam across the river to get to a tree that was 'loaded' with fruit. After devouring some of the fruit themselves, they started throwing it across the river to all on the other side and that very quickly turned into a battle. To top it off, one of our favorite snacks was Doce de Goiaba with Queijo de Minas. I delicious refreshing little snack for the afternoon.
   There's not really much more to say about the stuff and I'm sure you're all tired of reading about it, so I'll move on. The past two Sundays we spent with the families of Leah the cleaning lady and her daughter Alisandra the cook. The first Sunday we went with them, we first went to Leah and her husband's house and enjoyed some Fanta de Laranja, some Guarana and some cake. We then walked to the house Rafial, another one of the cooks and met her family. After sitting there for about 30 minutes trying to have conversation, we said good by and walked around town meeting some people and having a look at Alisandra's new house that's under construction. After that we went to Alisandra's house; met her husband and had dinner before going to a play that her daughter was in. That whole day played a large role in getting to experience the Brasilian culture. The following Sunday we went with them to a river nearby to swim and fish.
   Another challenging thing was going to an english school in town to participate in the classes. The class was taught by the lady that gave my brother portuguese lessons while he was here. She asked us to come and talked to her students on four or five different occasions so they would get a chance to hear some americans talking.
   On Monday night we had dinner with the home's Master Gardner Joao Lincoln and his wife, the home's Master Cook Mirtes. It was really great first of all because Mirtes in an incredible cook so we had an amazing meal and secondly because she's also amazing at figuring out what we're trying to say in portuguese and also amazing at communicating to us in portuguese in a way that we can figure out what she's saying. We basically got to have a conversation with them in portuguese which was really encouraging in the language learning process.
   Another thing we got to do last week was hike up the mountain with Jackson to a large rock on top of it where we can get an incredible view of the town and the surrounding area. We took a bottle of Fanta de Laranja up with us and consumed it in 10 minutes!