Sunday 30 June 2013

Não Estamos Sós

Day 32 - 30 de Junho: Manaus

Woke up this Sunday morning, got dressed, and with a quick bite on the go, my family and I were off to the church. As it turned out, today ended up to be a day full of church activity. We started off in their hall for a quick bible study, although I wasn't completely awake yet so my Portuguese translating ability was at zero. However, I woke up pretty fast once everyone gathered in the main church for Sunday service. The intense air-con here really does the trick (like jumping into a cold swimming pool). The pastor did a big talk at this one, and I definitely noticed improvement in my understanding since the past week. I could understand a lot of the words and many sentences. I've noticed as well that preachers end up saying the same thing many times, which makes it easier to grasp. Soon though, I discovered the main reason why I was asked to come along to this one. Every day of the music workshop, we'd have choir practice to sing two songs: Não estamos sòs and Preparação. Turns out, we were going to sing these songs for the audience. I'm glad there were so many people up there with me - takes off the pressure of having to sound good. We had an amazing soloist accompany us though. She was one of the teachers at the workshop and had an incredible voice! In the end, we did very well. After the service, I even received a certificate of completion of this music workshop! Before leaving, we talked to an english speaker from Kansas who moved here with his large family and learned Portuguese. He spoke the language well and people understood him, but the portuguese just didn't seem to belong with this american accent. Anyway, he was going to drop by the house later on to visit more and exchange reais for american dollars with Jeffson. Next, we walked into a classroom here, where they did a quick Sunday school lesson. This guy spoke really fast, so all I could really understand were the bible verses in front of me - though with them, I was able to piece together the message pretty well.  On the way home, we picked up "fast food" for lunch. It was hard to call it fast food though, being flame grilled chicken that they were grilling on the street. Definitely a tier above McDs quality. We had lunch, then soon after, I had a nice long nap. It wasn't much longer after I woke up that the americans showed up. I talked to them more about my trip and why I was here. They thought it was neat and wished me all the best. In the evening, we went back to the church for another service - this family really goes all out church here. I kind of like it though, since it's some of the best portuguese comprehension practice I get all week. Their music is also really good too! Afterwards, we set up for their traditional evening meal which follows every evening service. I ate and talked to a guy from Argentina/Costa Rica that could speak very good english. It was his dream to travel to Canada, so I told him all about it. He has friends in Vancouver and Montreal and has even street viewed some of the places I talked about. Another really nice guy - you get that feeling from almost everyone here in Manaus.  We finished off the night by watching some tv - the sports highlights from the victorious fifa game today (on brazilian espn). We also watched Brazilian "minute to win it", hosted by a guy who I'm calling "Brazilian Bob Barker", since i've seen him in a few game shows already down here and somewhat reminds me of him. Anyway, tomorrow we'll be taking some people to the jungle, but just his staff will do this tour. Jeffson and I will just drop them off, then we go to another big family birthday party which I guess can double as my Canada Day celebrations! 

Some of my music today

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