Oh wow! there is a whole lot I could write... it would be easier if I was using a keyboard that wasn’t Portuguese though.... We started our placement yesterday. I am at a community center named Coutos. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I work with a women’s group making handicrafts that they sell. Yesterday we got to help work on a rug. We will also so be teaching them English but since tomorrow is a holiday (Independence day) normal classes were not held. On Monday/Wednesday/Friday we work with children ages’ 8-12 teaching English and Computers. The partner I work with like’s kids quite a bit so she teaches English and I help teach computers. Today most of the kids had taken the day off so I spent 4 hours working with the computer teacher and one of his friends. They were so excited to hear that I could use Photoshop that one of them went home and got his desktop computer to bring back so that I could show them some things in Photoshop. It was so funny because they tell us not to even walk down the street with a camera in our bags... this guy was waking around with a computer in is arms! Another thing they did that was a bit different is that they would save entire websites to their computer... I don’t think they are able to connect to the Internet very often (there is no internet at the school) so whenever they find a site they like, they save it.... The school isn’t particularly nice. I think they have one light bulb but it is burnt out. The desks aren’t very nice. The computers are pretty old – running Win 98 and Office 97… but it seems to work somewhat for them. I saw the school some other volunteers are working… I think it is enough to say that it is in a pretty rough neighborhood – I’m pretty glad I’m not the one working there…
Here are some pictures of the house I am living at I thought is was pretty ghetto until I saw the real ghetto. My house here is practically a palace comparatively.


My Bed





Down the street

Up the street


The favela across the highway...