The Drug Deal and Those Stinkin' Olives!

Hey this is Tyler,

The last couple of days have been great here in Gravatai.Two days ago we exchanged our American dollars for Brazilian currency - Reais. Let me set the scene for how it went down... Two white males pull up in a VW Gol, get out with back packs on and ring the door bell. They come inside, say a couple code words and are taken to the back kitchen in which they put their goods on the table and we put ours there also; transfering the money, the deal was complete and they got back into their vehicle and the day continued...

But really we were fortunate to be able to have these two guys; they were able to transfer the money with an exact translation instead of having to pay the exchange rate that can be expensive to pay for large sums of money. They were able to do this because we were helping them out by switching their money to American currency because they will be traveling to Africa very soon and exchanging that money will alow them the same convenience they gave us.

Yesterday we had a big grill out (Churrasco) in the backyard of the Geiger's home. It was a lot of fun and a great time to get to know and have a closer relationship with the people of the community and some of the people that serve and work for the Lord here. The food was all very good, as is all food that I eat here in Brazil; the funny thing is though sometimes the things they make and eat are in no way close to the things we eat in America. For instance last night I was eating a macaroni salad, one of my more favorite things to eat with food in America. I knew it had olives in it as does most macaroni salads and I was expecting to bite through one when my tooth struck harshly on one of the pits that was inside on the olive. I could have sworn I had chipped my tooth but luckily no. This would have been the first time I ever ate an olive with a seed inside of it as America pits all their olives... Needless to say Matt and Amy had a great laugh off of me.

Overall the experiences I have taken in have been great and i have learned so much and am looking forward to coming back here to Brasil in the near future.

Hope the readers of this are having a great week and that they enjoyed it.