My surprise party

Hello, everyone!

It has been a long time since I last posted, but it is only due to the fact that we have been really busy in the last few days. But, I want to give a special attention to what happened on Tuesday, May 1st.
That day, I turned sixteen years old. (Yeah, I'm STILL sixteen haha) And, Meredith Pintler had told me that we would hang out that afternoon, and it was fine for me.
In the morning, all the Brazilians and the Geology students met in the school to get in the cars that would take us to Craters of the Moon. And, guess what? Meredith was waiting for me with a Strawberry Smoothie, one of my favorite drinks. I thought it was so sweet of her to do that...
Anyway, we went to this awesome place, and got to see cooled lava, underground caves covered in ice, and a huge desert.
Well, I just loved it. And, when we got back to Ketchum, I went to the dorms, in order to take a shower. And, when I left the car, Gabriela Wunsch told me that it would be a memorable birthday, and I foolishly agreed with her. 15 minutes later, Mer picked me up and we went downtown. She drove to a really expensive golf course, and we walked through the pathes.
Then, we went to Starbucks, where we sat down for a long time and talked a lot about our own lives. I just had had a wonderful afternoon with her. After it, Mer said that we were going to her house to meet her parents, and, of course, I agreed.
When we arrived at her house, I noticed that she was pushing me inside the living room, and, suddenly, I saw colorful signs with my name on it... "SUPRIIIISE!", that is what they screamed. I was really surprised, because I had no idea they would do something. I did not expect it at all! The first thing I said: "I want to shoot somebody." I didn't know what to do...

I am extremely grateful for this. I will never forget what they did!

A great time after school

Yesterday after school, all the Brazilians kids, Connor, Timo, Perry and Glorinha (Our English teacher who arrived wednesday night from Boise) went to downtown. First, we stayed a little time in the Startbucks, after we went to a store where sells suviniers from Idaho and Sun Valley.  The bus came and dropped us off next to the dorms. We stayed there for a while until Pillar arrives and get us to David's house. However, the buses of the community school were being used, so David Homes had to come to the dorms to pick up some people to his house.
Arriving in his house, which has a pretty view of the landscape, we started talking about many interesting things. David, his wife Antonia, and Caroline - the little dog - were absolutely welcoming and kind with us. And in the most friendly way we had an amazing dinner when we could share a lot of things. We basically talked about education and cultures around the world, but mainly Brazil and United States. We discussed about the future of the education in our countries and also how we can improve our exchange program. At the end of the dinner we hugged lot and we cried as well because we realized that our journey here was near to the end.
We had a wonderful time, we are very thankful for all we did yesterday.
Later, we came back to the dorms where Fabio and Joao stayed and the hosts of Iuri, Gabi, Leticia and Diogo  picked up them. It was a terrific night.

Fabio and Iuri

Video Production Class

From all the classes I've been, this one surely was one of the most remarkable.

The Video Production class is basically where the students learn how to produce, direct and edit their own videos.
I only found out that they have such class yesterday (May 3rd) and I obviously checked it out!
Each student has a different movie project, with different styles and techniques. As their projects had already started I didn't have the opportunity of producing my own, which was pretty sad! Anyways, I loved the class and something that was really interesting is that the students were really into their projects and most of them want to study/work with movie production in the future.

 Here are some pictures of the studio!

Diogo and Joao

 Joao on his iPad

 People getting prepared to film!

    Friday, May 4.

Diogo  Gomes

Wednesday

Good Morning!
On Wednesday (yesterday), the spanish teacher from the elementary school invited us to teach them how to cook brigadeiro.  We taught the third and the fifth grade. They got really excited during the whole process...At the end, of course, we ate all brigadeiros! It was amazing (clue: use butter when cooking it).

I also went to some classes. I went to spanish, with Pillar, where we learnt about "se" and how to use it in the correct way. We also went to french I, that was pretty cool because i hadn`t done it before, but i could understand the main parts and chemistry where we are studying thermodynamics. At writing lab, the American students wrote an essay.

After school, Fabio, Amanda, Joao Gabriel, I went to downtown. There we visited a bookstore, the library, and the chocolate factory. We needed to waste some time untill the bus arrived...
 We arrived at the dorms, which it`s a really cool place, because there had been a hotel. So, all the people who stays at the dorm got prepared for our dinner at Pioneer.
The Pioneer is a very untypical restaurant. There are lots of animal heads on the wall, like in some American movies! I really like the food there, I ate a vegetarian sandwich! :D

At the end of the day, Eric dropped Diogo and me off at Jolie`s house, where we kept talking about our day for a while!

See you guys :D
Iuri Cardoso

Going to the moon and girls night!

Hello everyone!
So on tuesday, we went on a Geology field trip with the junior students and Amanda to a place called Craters of the Moon. Basically, it was a place where there used to be volcanos and lava activity so all of the rocks there came from the cooling of lava. The fun part was that we had to go inside some cooled lava tubes that now are just big caves in the middle of nowhere and we went to one called the Boy Scout cave where the rocks were covered in ice so we were slipping and falling all the time (well at least I was haha). When we got to end of the cave the whole group had to turn off our flashlights and head lamps and just stay in silence for two minutes. It was so silence and peaceful, americans really like the outdoors and hiking, exploring, etc.
The difficult part was when we had to go up a hill and it was so windy I couldn't even feel my legs and ears, I think the pictures I'm gonna post next are gonna give you guys a better visual:
 

Yesterday, after classes, Gabi and I went to Lily's house (Gabi's host sister) and had a girls night! We were so excited because we were planning this for sooo long. It was really fun, we did our nails the brazilian way and taught Lily and Isabel how to make brigadeiro.
After that, we went straight to a restaurant called Pioneer where we were supposed to meet everyone else to have a big dinner, and believe me it was big. I couldn't even finish my dish, it was just too much food haha But being the girl that I am, obviously I saved some room for dessert and I'm really glad I did, we had a very famous dessert called Mudpie. And no it was not made of mud as the name suggests, it was bitter chocolate and coffee ice cream. SO GOOD!

Lots of hugs,
Leticia

Saturday (:

Hello everybody!

Now it's time to talk about Saturday, which was a really demanding, but unforgettable day!

The school bus picked me up at 9:30 and we headed right to Stanley, where we would do snowshoeing. It was so cold when we arrived there! However, as we started walking on the snow wearing special shoes and using poles to firm our arms, it got really warm! Some of us even took off their jackets.

Climbing the mountain was a bit difficult to us, because we weren't used to it. I particularly had some trouble because of the steep ascent, which made my boots slipped out the snowshoes. Luckily, our American friends were there to help me.

Coming down from the top of the mountain was so rewarding! We make a kind of a picnic on the ground covered by snow.

In the afternoon, we walked about one mile to know Red Fish Lake, which is a park with camping sites. Pilar told us about the river, that received this name from the Indians, and also about the camping activities provided by the Community School. Americans are really into camping and it seems to be an enriching experience, in which you acquire self-awareness, autonomy and respect by the nature around you. For me, that is very similar to what I experienced that day: I could feel a peaceful atmosphere coming from the mountain, but at the same same it was so humbling. And I conclude that is more than essential to see how small we are in this world: as a drop of water in a snow mountain.

Red Fish Lake

To brilliantly end this post, there's a video recorded by Pilar, the CS's (and now our) dear Spanish teacher! Thank you, Pilar!

biiiiig Brazilian hugs!

Gabi 20

Soccer Game

After the field trip to the Craters Of The Moon, yesterday, on Tuesday, we came back and wait the other americans students arrive to the match. The history teacher Eduardo and me were representing the brazilians in the game. The other guys unfortunately couldn't come. So at the total we are 10 players and two goalkeepers, me and Ken - the chinese kid who is joying the residential hall. Was a short game because we had to went to the dorms to get ready for what would later the Joao's surprise party. The teams were decided by the t-shirts colors, the colorful t-shirts were one team, and the other team was of the white t-shirts, which me and Eduardo were playing. We were losing in the first minutes, but we won by 4-1 at the end.
That was a awesome opportunity to know the american soccer and the others guys who played well and were so friendly with guys. We had a lot of fun!

(Unfortunately again, we forgot to take any picture :/)

Fabio Velasco