My Brazilian Adventure: A weekend in Rio das Pedras!

What a wonderful get away from Sao Paulo with some great ladies! I traveled to Daniele and Deyze's mom and dad's house to stay with them for the weekend along with Leticia.

The girls with their funny dad!

Their parents used to live in Sao Paulo in the small house that Dani and Deyze live in now, but over about 7 years they built up their dream home on a little piece of land (by land I mean lot, here they don't really have yards or "land" unless they farm...). Their home was beautiful with lots of bedrooms and showers, more room than we needed to have a wonderful weekend!

Me with Nilton and Fatima

Dani with her mom and dad

Thanks for hosting us!!

Here is what our travel schedule was to get to Rio das Pedras: (disclaimer: we are on Brazil time, so these times may have actually varied...)

12:30p--Leave from church on City Bus #1

1:10p--Take Metro #1

1:25p--Take Metro #2

2:30p--Take Travel Bus and a good nap

5:00p--Arrive in Piracicaba and take City Bus #2

5:35p--Arrive in Rio das Pedras

5:45p--Cram into car

6:05p--Arrive at the beautiful house!

Being out of Sao Paulo was wonderful. I kinda got a little bit of fresh air, and saw more green over the weekend than I have the whole time I have been here! Around their home was acres upon acres of sugarcane fields! So much green, blue, white and yellow!!

So beautiful and GREEN!

The view from the back of the house.

Look at those clouds!!

This is a Passion fruit vine growing around the house!

Pretty flowers at the park!

I held an Orange and Black butterfly.

So pretty!

Friday night, Dani and I stayed up really late watching "Where the Wild Things Are From", laughing, talking, beating each other up. I think we finally fell asleep around 4am. Was pretty awesome (:

Saturday we all woke up late, had some coffee, took showers, danced, sang, ate food, hung out in the sun. Then in the afternoon when their dad got home we went for a drive to pick their mom up from work which is a grocery store. The town is pretty small and I think most people have never seen an American in their life... lots of staring was occurring...
Dani's mom wanted to introduce them (well us) to her coworkers so we went inside to meet the people she works with and basically the whole town. Felt like I was back in Molalla with all the people they knew and small chit-chat that was going on between the aisles.

We went to a park to pick up some water (they have an underground spring that continuously runs and people bring their big jugs to get their drinking water from here.)

But it is also a big park for playing soccer, having picnics, walking/jogging, a couple play structures, etc. Was a beautiful afternoon there! We even saw some people trying to play American football!!!

This was around 5pm. So nice out!

Beautiful Deyze!

We stopped and grabbed some yummy ice cream (its been hot down here this past week or so!) YUMMY!

Mine!

Saturday night we went bowling! But we didn't leave until after 11... everybody does stuff sooooo late here! I was tired, and really could have stayed home to just hang out, but I am glad we still went. The bowling ally was pretty busy when we got there, so we had to wait a little over an hour before we could actually play. To burn time we shot some pool... I got the first ball I shot at in... NBD (no big deal)... but after that it was kinda downhill for Deyze and I. haha

Pretty sisters!

Double thumbs up for how awesome we are!

Loucas!

Bowling was fun! Leticia went to throw her ball and ended up throwing her whole body!!! Was soooo stinkin' funny. Thankfully, she didn't actually get hurt, but every person around us was laughing just as hard as we were at her.

I almost bowled over 100... Got a 96. So. Close.

Made it home around 3:15... but in the morning we didn't get to sleep in. Dani's mom came to wake us up so we could eat a quick breakfast and head to Rio da Piracicaba (Piracicaba River). Was beautiful there! The water was so fast and strong, not really a river you would go swimming in. And not one you would take a boat in either. But it was big and so cool to see God's Unique Creations around the world.

We took lots of pictures there (:

So cool looking!

City in the back!

Funny girls!

"We are gunna jump now! Who is going to stop us??"

My pretty friend (:

My other pretty friend (:

The story of the city made out of small colored rocks on the wall.
I wasn't able to get a pic of all of it.

Cameras... in the wild??

So fast and so powerful!

Unique tree!

Crazy cool tree! Looks like 20+ smaller trees made one!

Not sure if you can see this, but up top is Dani's mom and dad making their own heart <3 CUTE

Pretty palms... don't see those in Oregon!

As we walked around the river we found this cool old car show and kinda like a fair going on. We had one of those pictures done where the guy draws you with exaggerated facial features, all cartoon like. Wasn't very accurate though... he gave me a really big forehead! (no photo of the picture, sorry! later...)