Ryan & The Englishmans Curse

So first up we had our first camp. It was really nice, the kids (16 of them aged between 8-15) were very well behaved and had a great time, seemed to smile most of the time. And this is not suprising as coming out to New Destiny is like coming to a luxury hotel for them. It was sweet to see kids from such poor backgrounds (they all live in the local slum, most with absent parents, alcohlism and drug gangs surrounding them) trying their best to live a different life. They made their beds each day, didn´t drop litter and got to eat 4 meals a day! The most touching part of it was Ryan, the smallest boy there who wore a warm checkered coat all weekend, even in the hot sunshine. This is because it was part of his smartest outfit and he wanted to look good. All the kids had brought their best clothes (and you unfortunatly couldn´t really tell), it happened that Ryans was a warm winter coat. But he sweated it out during the day and in the evenings when it gets cold he was laughing on the otherside of his face (- well actually, it was the same laugh, just at a differnet time of day).

Can you spot Ryan enjoying the sunshine?

Eating his popcorn treat.

P.S Ryan, is very hard to pronounce out here as they dont say ´R´s like we do, they say ´H´ instead. It took a few days to realise that Hafa, Henan and Homeo were actually Rafael, Renan and Romeau. Ironically they cant say ´H´sometimes also and call Hugo, Ugo etc. I think they make it up as they go along.

So now that the kids have left again (Sunday night) we have had two days off, which we are spending lying by the swimming pool sunbathing, much to the curiosity of the Brazilians, most of whom seem to hate the sun and try to stay indoors all day. Its nice and warm during the day and in the sun, but in the shade or at night we are even cold in Jeans and a hoddie.

On Sunday night, another stray dog arrived at the farm. She is very sweet and follows us around everywhere. We are trying hard to pretend that we dont know her and that we are ignoring her but she makes it kind of obvious as if i try to read she puts her head inbetween my face and the book, or if i try to cut my toenails she tries to eat the sissors. Xss has named her Primara (as she is our first pet dog), however the farm already has lots of dogs so she will probably have to go. Don´t tell the staff here but we have been secretly feeding her, tee-hee.

It seems that it is only the English that these dogs plague, as all the black dogs are following us around a lot and it is hard to get away from them. I am wondering if it is a curse on us. Luckily they are mostly nice, but sometimes they get all excited and jump up and try to get us to stroke them. They got one of my only two jumpers muddy, so i´m less excited than them now when they do this. I wonder if by the time we leave Brazil there will be a pied piper trail of dogs following us to the airport. We have honestly made friends with more black dogs than we have Brazilians so far, do Brazilians not like being stroked under the chin and given bits of cracker?

Sorry for the delay on photo´s, it is hard to upload them. But now we know how to make films, perhaps we will be boring you with them soon too.