beauties & the beasts...

I went to Brasília to visit 2 girls I was good friends with in high school. They’re Brazilian sisters whose parents work with ALEM, which is like Wycliffe. They grew up around missionaries and going to American schools, so they speak really good English. :) It was sooooo fun to see them again, after 4 years, and hang out for 6 days (May 26-June 1). A lot of the time we stayed around the house and ALEM property (which, by the way, is right by Lula’s (the president’s) ranch), talking, watching movies, walking around, etc.

Here’s a picture of the main mission building, with classrooms, library, offices, etc. They offer missions courses here.

This is the girls’ house – the front half of this duplex. AKA their “egg” (b/c it's small) or “kit-net” (né, garotas?!)… that’s pronounced “kitchenette” in Portuguese, which is what they call bachelor suites now. Hahaha. :D The next one shows the inside of it.

One day we planned to go swimming at this pool which was from a mineral water spring, so a natural pool or lake, except when we got there it was closed because the people who ran it were on strike!!!! Grrr. Good thing it wasn’t too far from their house. I had already put on a bunch of sunblock on, so we stayed outside for like an hour to at least use it for something! Hehe. This is us goofing off with cheetos… you have no idea how hard it is to do that without cracking up! Especially when you’re looking at each other and trying to take a pic!

Here’s the girls, L & M. :)

This is L with their dog Kiwi – a tiny Doberman mixed with some
thing…

I must say he’s quite spoiled, and though he barked lots at me at first, after 1 or 2 days he was used to me and nicer. Except he likes to lick like craaaazy, and I don’t really dig that. :p See, here’s proof! (enlarge to see where his tongue is!)

The Esther you’ve never seen… hehe. We were having a girls night here too. :)

We also went to a couple of malls, and to the Brasília Zoo. That was fun. It’s a lot different than the zoos in Belém – way bigger and more spread out. One side of it was right by the highway, but otherwise it was on the edge of town so they had room, I guess. You can even drive around inside it, so we parked, looked at stuff in that area, drove further down, walked some more, etc. That was nice because we got pretty tired of walking! We even had a cute picnic lunch there. :)

The elephants were super cool – they came right over to us! We were just separated by a little fence and a big ditch. :)

Hmmm, I won’t be gettin’ near that guy!

M did get near this one though –we thought it should be safe enough. ;0)

2 typical Brazilian birds – toucan & blue macaw (remember that headdress? yeah…)

Awww, what cute puddytats… jaguars and tiger sleeping. I’m excited for heaven (or the new earth) when these guys will be tame and we’ll be able to play with them, pet them, ride them, etc! Won’t that rock?!