Yesterday was a very eventful day. After a four hour bus ride, we finally arrived to Rio do Sul. We were immediately introduced to Johnny, Marcia, and a few other members of the church/organizers of the trip. They whisked us away to an awesome lunch with some of our host families at a buffet down the street. They had amazing food. After lunch we came back to the church and exchanged our money. We then went to the super market down the street to buy snacks and boxes of coffee to take home as gifts. We quickly moved downtown and spent a couple hours shopping around. The group soon split up as some went to go to the outdoor store and others were on the hunt for soccer jerseys. On our third store, we finally found awesome soccer jerseys for a great price. Once our search was over, we retreated to the church and awaited arrival of our drivers to take us jean shopping. Driving in Rio do Sul is quite exhilarating and quite intimidating at the same time. The Jean store was very modern and we had a lot of options to choose from and many of us walked out with two pairs. Evan and Mills even bought the same jeans so they could match (lol). After jean shopping we then returned to the church again for dinner. We had many different flavors of pastels and fresh pineapple juice. While we were finishing up dinner, we were notified that we were going to a school to talk in classrooms and that the bus will be here soon. We grabbed our backpacks and loaded into the van. The ride there was filled with all of our voices belting out song lyrics as Mills played the guitar. We had a little bit of trouble getting into the school at first, but then someone came to our rescue and let's in. It was dinner time for the students so we split up into our designated groups, each group with their own translator, and started engaging with the students at their lunch tables. Brad, Mills, and Chase played music in the background as we conversed. My group had a lot of fun talking with a group of 16 year old girls about what they like to do, what they're favorite things about Brazil are, etc. Dinner time seemed rather short, but then we switched to individual classrooms. Some classes were better than others but overall it went very well. Once everyone had finished, we were all moved to the gym. A lot of the guys played soccer while others played volleyball and others sat on the bleachers and chatted. Once the designated class time was over, we returned to the van and drove back to the church. We had a short meeting addressing instructions about what was awaiting us the next day and we were told who we were staying with for host families. Around 10 pm Brazil time, we split up to go home with our host families. What a day!
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