I suppose I am entirely missing the point of blogging if I dont vent at least once. So here it goes,
As I said, in Cadec, a school for kids through the ages of 7 to 12, about 40 kids attend in the morning and 40 kids attend in the afternoon. Most of them are a dream, some or not. But it is not the kids that get to me, it is the fact that for the last week or so that I have been here, I have seen nothing constructive done academically with these kids. Granted, they don~t start official school until a week from now(nobody does anything here until after Carnival) but why not plan something for the kids who are here all day? The facility has a bunch of volunteers who administer but it is usually, me, Caleb and another girl who play with the kids. As of right now, this is my job. To play games....tag, picoalta(kinda cool, u run from the person whose it and jump on top of something as base), hand games, we tell stories....its more like camp then school right now. But the kids sometimes look as if theyre dying with boredom until we come to play with them. They should be studying!!! And on top of this, they only have four hours of school, and they wonder why they have so many kids running around in the streets.

A friend of mine here whose in highschool said she was guna skip school this week cuz she doesnt want to go. There is no repercussion for this, her parents are cool with it and shes just not guna go....crazy to me. School is only four hours and she prolly wont be doing anything with those four hours.

Admittedly, it is difficult to study in paradise. You live across the street from the beach, all your friends, crab stands, street parties and carnival. But the biggest difficulty is the heat. It is very hard to read in the heat as it almost always puts u to sleep. I am coming to value New York City winters by being here.

I am also coming to value more things about myself...things like my race, where I come from, who I am..I was never really proud to be american but here they lover everything american, every time they beg me to translate a beyonce song i say u know we do have some other artists over here. Also, my hair. I thought I would be annoyed at the fact that I cant get it done bc its too humid to have it straightened, but it has become my mane. People adore my hair and they wont let me straighten it. I feel that I love it more than I ever have and I feel more beautiful than before...most ppl here think im braisilera until i start to talk. They thing Im from Bahia, where the majority of the african population is from here. The blacker u are, the more beautiful u are considered. In Brazil, there is much appreciation of the brazillian roots, and even the lightest skin people are proud to have african blood in their veins. How different brazil is from america, every woman wants an african man. Black is Beautiful..

Anyhow, I got off track but I suppose my head was in a bunch of different places. My initial romanticization of the place has subsided, now I must decide the direction of this love affair and whether we can work out together....TTFN,
Beijos,
-Nicole(Or Nicoli as they call me here)