Well..

I haven't done too much this week, so I debated writing this post or not, but I will be gone for the next week and a half and then my life really gets moving, so I figured I'd fill you all in now. This was one of our first full weeks of classes. Every morning I get up at 6:30 or 6:45, (yes..you are reading the right blog, Michelle Palm has been doing this) and take the bus to school for my three hour Portuguese class. Then we break for lunch and either have the afternoon free or have an afternoon lecture. Either way, I usually eat lunch somewhere around school and stay for at least part of the afternoon to use the internet or hang out with friends. Then, I take the bus home with a friend, which conveniently drops us off just a block from Cairu, our favorite ice cream shop, and we generally stop for ice cream. Then I walk the couple of blocks to my house, take a shower cause I'm sweaty as all hell and do homework until dinner. It is a pretty relaxed schedule.
  This weekend we went out for drinks at this really pretty restaurant that had a deck on the river and then made our way to a building that houses a bunch of restaurants and gift shops and such right on the water. They also have a micro-brewery, where we tried some very interesting/good beers. The most interesting was made with a fruit called Bacuri. It tasted more like a strange tea than it did beer. An experience. Also this weekend my Portuguese class presented information on American Universities to my professor's class of Brazilians learning English. That was pretty cool. It was interesting to see that they were just as nervous to speak to us in English as we were to speak in Portuguese. But they were impressed by how far we had come in the short two months we've been here. Most of them have been studying for upwards of ten years! Today I finally went out on a run, which was difficult because all the parks were crowded with vendors and people and it was super hot, even early, but it was nice. I even walked up the nine flights of stairs to my apartment afterwards! (Which was a mistake..ouch!)
  Tomorrow we are leaving for the South of Pará (aka, the state we live in). We're getting in a couple vans and driving hours and hours to see the "dark side" or not so pleasant environmental things that are happening in Brazil. Tuesday we will be going to one of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world. I'm planning on doing my ISP (independent study project) on this dam site and a couple others, but I will talk about that in a bit. Wednesday we are on a ranch, learning about everything they do there, such as grazing cattle and growing crops. Then we see a site where a MST group was massacred. MST stands for the Landless Workers' Movement, or really in Portuguese, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra. I don't know a whole lot about them, but we are doing a homestay at a different location with them. (A MST site that is very secure and actually now owns the land, don't worry). The next day we are doing something that I can't quite remember, but then we are driving home on Wednesday, ALL day. Not as bad as the drive from MN to CO, but we'll still have 8 hours in the vans.
  After this trip, we have a couple days and then we start our ISPs! It is a little frightening, since I'm not quite sure on all the details of my project, but I think I'll work it out this week as I learn more information. My current plan is to study the government's policy surrounding the displacement of people, especially from the hydroelectric dams. 90% of Brazil's power comes from hydroelectric dams, so I'm interested to see where the rights of people, especially Amerindians and Indigenous, come in to play. I'm not sure where I'll be living during this time, but probably in Belém for at least part of the time. I'd like to go tour two of the dams in the state and talk to the people in the land that will be displaced if proposed dams go through ideally, which means trips around the state. How fun!

I think that is all for now. I don't have any cool pictures to post, even if I was able to post them! I'll be gone this Monday, the 25th, and will return to Belém on the 3rd of November. It is so strange that we keep going on trips and returning to a new month! I can't believe it is already almost November! Where has the time gone?!