I survived!!! 5 days and 4 nights with 70 eighth graders! On the airplane, in the hotel, on and off the bus, through countless parks and activities....what a week...
Where do I even begin to talk about what an exciting and exhausting weekend it was?

The first picture here is of me and one of my favorite students--Juni. She is both my advisee and my student in English class. She and her family have just moved to Rio from Norway. She is so sweet and many of my students, her classmates, say we are like mother and daughter. I chalk it up to the fact that we are both lighthaired, fair complected and attempting to learn this language.
This next landscape shot was taken while on a train ride through the edge of the Iguacu National forest. We spent 3 hours on the train, traveling over 125 year old bridges and taking in the lush and beautiful landscape.

The last shot is of the building at the botanical gardens in Curitiba. It reminded me of the St. Paul Conservatory at Como Park. Although the flowers were all outside on the lawns and most of the greenery inside was strictly tree/bush plants with very little flowering plants. The building is beautiful though. Mr. Luiz, the science teacher on my team is in the foreground with another of our students--Bia.

We teachers were all pretty tired when we returned to Rio at 8 p.m. Friday night. I was grateful to have survived. I miss Sierra and Joe while I was gone, although neither of them seemed to even notice my absence. (j/k)