fazenda Santa Maria

4-8-09

Today, I'm feeling like things are looking up with this whole experience. First of all, Laura was cracking me up. She was repeating a whole bunch of stuff that I’ve taught her up until now and she won two points for our reward-for-good-English game we’ve started. As soon as she gets ten points, we are going to take a trip to the mall-just the two of us. : ) She’s been singing the ‘push ‘em back, push ‘em back….WAY back!’ song in the shower, the ‘everybody clean up song’ and absolutely loves the ‘this little piggy’ bed time ritual we do. She’s saying ‘my name is Laura. I am 4 (finally!)’. Olivia was really good with me today too. I don’t know if it's because I’m becoming more familiar to them now that I’ve been around for well over a few weeks, or if it was that I was given a little more one-on-one time with them, I don’t know.

Helena is still at the farm and Laura didn’t have any friends over today, so she was all mine. We typed on the computer, practiced our abc’s, spoke with Allison on skype (and she showed us Pikes Peak!), and we practiced her name on the keyboard. It was fun. We even danced a little to MTV jams and she played with my hair. If it was like this all the time, I would love it here. Laura won two points today. One for saying she would ‘like some water, please’. (side note: she says please after almost everything in English, which is hilarious and which works better than the puppy dog look on me…haha) The other point she earned was for her blurting out, “that was me!” after she farted in the shower. Haha…I taught her that. It’s way too easy to have fun with this. (by the way, she’s quite a gaseous little girl, so I’m glad she’s got that one down).

I’m drinking some sort of Smirnoff Ice drink knockoff at the moment and its just delicious. I’m drinking alone, yes, but it completed my meal I made myself that I'm eating under the stars an jabuchicaba trees. We’re only a short half hour drive outside the city at this other farm, and it’s actually quite pretty out here. Sugar cane crops for miles. I’m planning on watching O Rei Leão (Lion King) tonight in portuguese, and I’m pretty excited.

Fast forward 2 hrs: That monkey cracks me up….and I love that movie.