Interesting Ending to a Week

4 August 2017
21:13 EST

The ending to this week was actually quite fun. On Thursday, I woke up and ended up cleaning the entire house in about an hour and a half. Though I will say I didn't "clean," I more tidied up the house. Just before noon my friend Carissa came over and hung out, then about a half hour later my friend Gavin came over and we hung out playing games and stuff for about 5 hours. Then that night Gavin came over and hung out with Vanessa for a short bit while they were trying to collect everything they needed to go camping this weekend, and so I made Kool-Aid.
OH! I should clarify, I know a Gavin and then there is my sister's fiance Gavin. The first one I was talking about is my friend, then later Vanessa's Gavin came over. He really likes strawberry Kool-Aid so I made him some.
Then today, Friday, I got to start the day off calm, then just after lunch I cleaned up a bit so that the house wouldn't be a mess. The main reason I cleaned was because my nieces and nephew are going to spend the night. They're actually here right now, we're watching AFV, aka America's Funniest Videos. The oldest is Aubrey, then Shaun, and finally Rebecca. (From left to right as well.)

My dad made his "famous" chocolate chip cookies. They are well known throughout our family as well as friend's families. Since he did, we got to have some nice fresh ones. They were very delicious!

Random Start

3 August 2017
18:17 EST

Sadly didn't do much these past few days. On Monday, everyone went to work and so I was left home alone. I really just ended up lazzying around the house, not really knowing what to do. It's strange coming from a vacation, having plans to do stuff and then getting home and thinking, "What now?" Also, that night once my mom got home we started to work on gathering some of the documents we have to be sent to one of the Rotarians in my hosting district.
Rotarians, for those who don't know, are the people who work in the organization who is sponsoring me. They will be the people who work with me throughout my trip, as well as right now before it begins. Also, my hosting district is the district that I will be living in, and my sponsoring district is the district I'm coming from. Right now, I am in District 6540, which takes up the upper third of Indiana. District 4660, which is my hosting district, I believe it actually comprises of most of the Brazillian state of Rio Grade Do Sul.
On Tuesday night, my sister's friend came over and spent the night here. My mom also took me to Taco Bell, the place I used to work at, to pick up my check as well as order some food. Just before I left I found out we were going to be getting a new limited time burrito and so I wanted to try it. I won't lie, it was pretty good. Also, I starting playing a new game that my sister's fiance bought and is keeping at our house that night. It's very fun!
Lastly on Wednesday, I continued to play this game for most of the day I will admit, and that night I went to our church youth group and got to have pizza there!

-----Some things I forgot to mention about my families Florida trip.
While there we got to go to Sea World! (Yes, I did mention this but not this detail.) If I remember right it was the first time since I was maybe 5 years old that I have been to Sea World.

P.S. I meant to upload this yesterday... got distracted... However I remembered!
P.S.S. If I succeed at when I would like to upload this blogs, and by if I mean "When," they will be uploaded on Monday, cataloging what happened during the weekend. One on Wednesday, cataloging Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And finally one later on Friday cataloging Thursday and that Friday!

Lazy Weekend

31 July 2017
08:42 EST

I departure is coming very close. However, I am still waiting for my visa to come back, and the plans for my plane and all that can't be set until my visa arrives.

Beyond that, since we arrived home on Friday, my sister actually went to an anime convention in Fort Wayne, which is about 2 hours away. She left that night with some friends who were all going to the same convention and stayed the night with my aunt and uncle who live close to Fort Wayne. They spent the whole day Saturday there and came back that night.
While they were doing that, I got to enjoy sleeping until 10:00 (10am). It doesn't seem like that out of the normal but the whole time we were on vacation the latest I got to sleep in was 08:00 (8am). Then I got to have a half lazy day. I had to write all the logs for that vacation as well as mow the lawn. The whole time we were gone no one had mowed it.
I should explain this to anyone who knows that we own two cats, there was someone here taking care of them but we weren't going to ask him to mow the lawn. The person who cat and house-sat was my sister fiancee Gavin.
Also, our two cats are Boomer who is 7 years old now, and Luna who is almost 6 months old.

On Sunday I was able to go to church for the first time in about 2 months or so. I had been working almost every weekend unless I requested it off and every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. However, I was asking for more hours so that I would manage to gain the amount I needed for the payment for this trip. It was still really nice to not have to go to work at 08:00 (8am).
Our church has three adult services in the mornings, high schoolers are encouraged to go to at least one of these services. At the same time we have about 5 different children's classes going on around the building. Each class has its own age group up until 5th grade, around ages 10 and 11. Once kids go into 6th grade they go into the teen services.
These used to be combines, 6th grade, Jr High and High School all together, but now it is 6th grade and Jr High in the mornings while the adult services are going on. Meaning there are 3 services as well. This means that High School has to have a service at some other time. And so, High School has service during the night, at 18:30-20:00 (6:30-8pm). There is also a kind of service time on Wednesday nights at the same time where the whole youth group can come, Jr High and High School.
Going on, I was able to sit around during the day and hang out with my sister and Gavin and then went to the night service. Once I came home I hung out with them for a while longer and then went to bed!

Vacation Log 3

29 July 2017
15:20 EST

One thing I haven't mentioned was that we somehow managed to have a beach side room. It made the view from our balcony beautiful!

This was the view from our balcony one night. You can see the pool and the lazy river as well as the beach. It was an amazing site, it was dark but not everyone had left yet and so the light had been left on around the pool, making a beautiful effect.
We also had an East-ish facing window, I managed to gathered the willpower to get up at 06:30 and try to watch the sun rise, however it was really cloudy out and it blocked the sun.

Also, I just remembered something very hilarious that I found in one of the stores we went to. It was a tank top with some very funny text on it.

I don't know why I found it so funny, but I did and still do. Also throughout the trip I found out who exactly my three host families will be and who all lives in those families. And so I was able to figure out presents for most of the members of each family. I won't say what those are however, because it's a secret!

Vacation Log 2

29 July 2017
15:03 EST

Throughout the week we did a bunch of different things, all tourist sorta stuff. My mom, sister and I got our nails done, why? Because we can! Along with going to the beach and to the pool, which conveniently our resort was beach-front with both an indoor and outdoor pool. There were tons of stores and restaurants nearby that we got to go to and they were all within walking distance, or at least most of them were. One of the first nights we went to Apple Bees for dinner, that however, wasn't within walking distance.

On Tuesday, we got to go to Sea World. We had planned on leaving at 08:00 and then about half and hour after leaving we realized that we had forgotten the tickets to Sea World... Great success! And so we headed back grabbed them and were finally on the road and hour after we left originally. We got there around 11:00, had lunch and went around to see the sea life. We spent the day there and got home around 20:00 (8pm), went over to Coldstones, and got ice cream, and then went to bed!

Vacation Log 1

29 July 2017
9:56 EST

So the past week I was on a vacation that my family has planned so that we could go out for a vacation before I leave. We left last Friday and came back yesterday, Friday as well. Before we left I told them that there would be no large scale Rotary talk, we succeeded-ish.
We took a plane from South Bend to Orlando. It was about a 2-hour flight, and then we stayed in a hotel that night. The next morning we headed to Daytona Beach. It was an hour and a half drive to our resort and on the way we stopped by a flea market and got to get a few things for our trip!
We went around the area of our resort and got a good lay of the land as well as my sister, my mom and I all got henna tattoos! If you don't know what a henna is, it's a temporary tattoo that stays longer than the little stick on ones.

This picture was taken while my dad was checking us in to our resort. We couldn't check in until 16:00 (4pm), and so we got the henna's to pass the time. Otherwise we probably would've gotten them later. Also, by the time we got there it was about 15 after 4 and there were tons of people all trying to check in!

Arrival Date!

1 July 2017
19:22 EST

I have been told what general days I will arrive in Brazil. It will be between August 1st to August 19th. A lot of the paperwork I have been getting the past week talks about what I need to have finished for me to be able to leave, and some of it talks about when I should arrive. It also notes that it would be best for me to arrive on a Saturday as it would be easier to pick me up since not many people work on Saturdays, as well as then I would have a day to settle in before they go back to work.
With this, if I were to get there on one of the preferred days it would be on the 5th, 12th, or 19th. Wish me luck with all the paperwork, and the next meeting in two weeks! I'll be meeting people from all over the region, including Canada!!