day 8: how do you spell it?

18-7-09 day 8

Nana’s 80th birthday is today, which made today kind of hard. I wish I was there with everyone. She had to of course cry on the phone when I called this afternoon....not good on my end either : (.

Avô explained to me today that spelling is not something people in Brazil are accostomed to doing in their head, at school, or even in helping them pronounce a word. They just don’t do it. He said it’s because Portuguese is phonetic. There are no tricks like in english. Funny, huh?

A few more people showed up late last night, and amongst them was our marathon superstar. I guess she’s won the Palm Beach one in her age group with a time of 3:28. I ran into here just before my own run this morning. She ran a 36, but said that she was just warming up and was pretty stiff from her travels. I guess she’s been keeping up a 7 mi pace lately, so she plans on breaking her record this year. Uggh....rough competition. I guess it’s around 4.7 mi (at a 7 mi mile pace that’s 32:53). : / (note: over the course of the last week or so, she’s actually become a pretty good friend of mine, which has been nice)