Pictures of cute children!

Here are some photos from the favela, mostly taken from outside our library/classroom in the "yard" the kids play in during the last 30 minutes, when they've had about 1.5 hours of English instruction and it's been more than enough:

This little girl in front is probably the cutest child I've ever seen. And the best of the 8-year olds at English. She told me her name like four times but couldn't write it yet and I have literally no idea what it is.

The man on the far right is Jefferson, who helps with the school. He doesn't speak any English but spent 15 minutes with an Ingles-Portugues dictionary painstakingly translating the menu of a lanchonete in the favela yesterday.

Each one can now count to 10 in English.

As soon as I pulled out my camera, Flora above and her friend dragged me to the other end of the yard and asked me to take about three portraits of each of them.

This is Jessica, she's a great artist.

I've been here a week now and I feel like I'm really getting the hang of it. I've learned to pronounce it "brigata" instead of "obrigata" like the native women, I can get out correct bus change swiftly, I know how to navigate my way around Gloria, I feel somewhat confident with teaching...

In about five minutes we're going to the BOTANICAL GARDENS! At about 6:00 comes what I've been waiting for: a trip to a churrascaria restaurant -- basically a meat paradise, where patrons pay a flat rate and get to take from a salad bar while waiters walk around with different cuts of meat AND YOU CAN HAVE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT.

I really don't mean to end every post talking about food. Shit. I did cave and buy some R$1 postcards (that's like 75 cents! Unnecessarily expensive!) yesterday. They're all comically ugly or obnoxious. Not intentionally either, I couldn't find any that weren't photoshopped to have blinding color contrast/in Comic Sans/full of exclamation points. They're great, though. Bye for now from Rio!!!