From a Facebook friend's post.
Bom Dia (pronounced Boa djia and means good morning, literally good day)
So, so interesting here. The people, the sites, the food, the signage......
The bathroom sink faucets don't have anything but "cold" water. There's an on/off valve of one configuration or another (none like anything I've seen in the States) but no temp control. The water is tepid. This is the one from the bathroom I use at the Campos'. Do NOT drink tap water.
Forgive the bad focus of this pic; my phone's camera sometimes doesn't focus on the object I want to capture. But you get the idea. This is the shower head. There's an on/off valve below it that is just a round chrome cylinder you turn counterclockwise to turn the water on. Do not touch it with your bare hands or you'll get a shock. Use a dry washcloth. Nothing to kill you, just enough to make you jump. That's because the shower head has a built-in electric water heater. Note the electrical cord plugged into the wall above the shower head. You turn that rod that points down to increase or decrease the temperature of the water while the other rod that points backward horizontally controls the angle of the shower head. I think. I haven't touched it for fear of getting electrocuted.
Have I mentioned that the fruit here is OUTSTANDING. Pineapple as sweet as candy, fresh guava juice that is wonderful, kiwi, watermelon.....
Michelle and her mother gave me a ride to the beach this morning so I could run what works out to be about 2.5 miles. Every 400 meters they have an aluminum exercise station where I do pull ups and pushups. Today it was sunny and humid at 7 a.m. but it felt good to work off some of the great food I've eaten. Then they took me to breakfast at a place that is pure genius. It's not fancy, just great food in a buffet style. For b'fast they had everything from sliced fruit (I loaded up), omelets, pastries, meat, fish, rice, sweet potatoes..... The buffet row was about 20' long. You get whatever you want and take it to the cash register where you put your plate on a scale and they charge you by the kilo.
I was surprised how good a tuna fish omelet tasted.
They eat a lot of meat in Brazil. Of all kinds at all meals, including goat at certain restaurants. I asked during one of the meetings and most of them had eaten goat.
A generalization: Brazilians are not generally tall. Not short, but any male near 6' is unusually tall. I'm guessing the average for adult males is about 5' 8". Women are shorter but many (most?) of the younger women wear open-toed sandals that have a wedge sole that looks tricky for walking. They seem to manage just fine.
Yesterday was tricky. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evening were to be a series of classes on church leadership designed for pastors and elders from the four affiliated churches here in Recife. Good or bad, my classes on dispensationalism went over so well that about 25 lay people wanted to come to these classes, too. We didn't learn that until mid-morning yesterday and Joe was a bit nonplussed. I holed up in my bedroom and reworked some of my material so that it was less specific to elders and more just a general audience. There was no way around it - last night's session was about church leaders and their selection, roles, qualifications, etc. So at the end I felt bad for the lay people, like they were probably bored. I told them tonight will shift and they'll get more teaching that will be transferrable to the work setting or.....
I'm learning more words and phrases each day. I learned that the letter written รง is pronounced as an S. I can come pretty close to reading sentences out loud just by doing it phonetically and knowing that some vowel combinations are very nasal. And the people have been very gracious and amused by my halting efforts to speak what few words and phrases I "know."
In Portuguese as in Spanish the adjective goes after its noun, not before.
Joe is at the dentist this morning and then this afternoon he's going to show me some of Recife beyond the neighborhood known as Boa Viagem (good trip) where they live and where the church is.
I think I'm going to crash for about 30 minutes before the mid-day (big) meal. I'm using up a lot of energy doing my teaching and am pretty tired all day long.
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