My host family.

After a long day learning about Brazilian culture and an overload of information about what I will be doing in my four months here, Brendolyne, my roommate, and I were picked-up at our hotel by our new parents. The mother, Marize, was very excited repeating, " As minhas filhas, as minhas filhas," as she hugged us and then our father, Mauricio, stood there smiling as he hugged his wife. I call them mother and father because they asked us to call them by those names. 10 minutes later we arrive in the house and are received by a weiner dog and Sara, a very cute dog and his type is unknown. Communication was strange, both our parents speak little english and very fast portuguese, I speak what I call portunol (mixture between spanish and portuguese) and you could say that my roommate feels dizzy whenever she is spoken or exposed to any portuguese. We could barely ask the maid for an umbrella that would serve as protection when walking through a thunderstorm on our way to the bus stop that is a block away ( the thunderstorm has been going on for 15 hours now.) But it's only our fourth day here and we are hoping for the best when it comes to our ability to learn portuguese. Other than that, our family is perfect, 3 dogs, 1 fat old black cat, mom and dad, and two sons, a thirty and a twenty-six year old. So friendly and nice that we almost couldn't believe it and it made us freak out at night, making up stories that this is what happens in horror movies; a perfect family receiving foreign students in a huge house, feeding them until they explode with delicious food and providing the most comfortable accommodations just to murder the students in the end. I almost killed my roommate when she put those thoughts in my head, we laughed about it afterwards. These people are harmless, don't you worry mom and dad, we are just in shock of how nice these people are.