I Almost Stepped on a Boa Constrictor

It was huge. Here we were, innocently walking along on this nice path covered with dead leaves and things in the Atlantic forest-y zone of the University when I noticed something that was basically right under my foot (OK, it may have been 3-5 feet away, but in the moment, it was really dramatic). We were wearing boots, so it wasn't too dangerous, but I don't think I've ever seen a snake that big in the wild. I get a little jumpy in situations like this so I may have also been incredibly jumpy the rest of the day and especially that evening when I lifted up a chair and found a cockroach. Fortunately Sam smashed it for me. I was trying to think of some foods that are specifically Utahn and came up with funeral potatoes. Our friends here got a kick out of the fact that these potatoes I love are called funeral potatoes, so now I will make funeral potatoes for the cockroach that died.

 Things have changed a bit in the past two weeks. We are now living in Sao Carlos, which is about twice the size of Assis. The temperature is a little less hot here and we don't have as many of Ricardo's relative here to hang out but we're making friends:)

This is my friend Bernardo from Assis. he did this awesome trick with popping a balloon with a toothpick and a clothespin. We had a lot of fun together and he showed me this cool iphone game about teaching penguins to fly. It was awesome.

Before we left, these awesome girls from the church invited us over for a girls night of popcorn, chocolate, hottidoggis (Brazilian hot dogs) and Age of Adeleine. They're so fun and we miss them.

One day these guys who work at the lab with Algae invited us to go collect algae with them. I've never done anything like that before so it was interesting to see what places are best for collecting algae. Also, apparently if you smell the algae, you can tell if it has cyanobacteria or not because it has a distinct smell.

This is the cacao we saw at the supermarket. It looks really pretty and I would love to try and make my own chocolate, but apparently the process is a little bit hard.

Our PCR finally worked! This means our dragonflies have DNA. 

Every day we walked to campus, we passed these shops where they sold calda do cana (sugar cane juice). We finally tried some right before we left Assis, and it turns out it was pretty good. I discovered that sugar cane actually has a distinct flavor, not just sweet. There are a lot of plantations with sugar cane growing.

Our friend Thiago made us "Tapioca". It's pretty intense. It's just this powder that you heat up and it magically forms these tortilla/crepe like things. He's vegetarian so he made us Tapioca with soy protein meat stuff. It was really tasty.

Ricardo loves Kendo. I admitted that I didn't understand exactly what it was, so he gave me a demonstration. I'm not sure I totally get the picture, but I understand that it involves a lot of hitting people in the head:)

We finally met our professor Rhainer right before we left Assis. He took us to a place where we could see the cerrado (fascinating Brazilian savanna-type landscape), and we practiced asking questions and I saw this really cool fly.

There's also this fly called "mendinha", because it follows your finger around and sucks the sweat off of it. I will bring them back to America and market them as a skin cleanser:)

This is a cocoon of some kind of butterfly. Butterflies here are something else.

It was hard to say goodbye to our friends in Assis, but hopefully we will come back before we leave.

We ate at the food court at the mall at this delicious Italian place. It was tricky because they wanted us to customize our order of gnocchi, but we mostly just wanted food without talking too much in Portuguese. Apparently what we ordered came with these nice dollar bills... Yay for useless American money!

This is the trench we were walking along when I saw the snake. A guy was mowing down all the grass and destroying the habitat of the native damselflies and making the water all mucky so we were pretty upset.

This is a cool parasitic tree we saw. It's crazy to me how cruel and fierce nature can be here and even though there is so much life, it's a fight. It doesn't come easy for any of the plants. 

 Here's a damselfly that we caught. This is the genus we are looking for down here, Hetaerina or Ruby-spot damselflies.

ACAI! I like. 

This is Rhainer and his wife and kids and one of the post-docs Gustavo who work in the lab.

Gustavo wanted to build aquariums to research fish so we helped him sand and assemble them. 

After church on Sunday, Junior (who was a mission companion of one of our friends from Provo) and his family invited us for lunch. We had delicious goiaba juice and goiaba pudding for dessert. Fruit here is so good... At church, the people knew immediately we were Americans before we even said anything. I don't understand why cause I'm not THE whitest person there. But apparently my blue eyes are a giveaway. Or the way we walk.

I thought I got a fungus on the back of my hand, but it turns out that it was probably just a lemon burn. Who knew if you spill lemon juice on your skin it can stain? 

Junior took us to get lanches, these HUGE hamburgers with multiple patties and lots of lettuce. Eu gosto!

Anyway, life is good. I feel blessed that we haven't been sick and that the people around us are so good to us and we are even learning a bit of Portuguese. Obrigada Pai Celestial.