the church is the same everywhere...

Today has been a great day. Church was good, but I found it REALLY tiring to try and understand what everyone was saying. There´s even a YSA sunday school class here. I was really surprised about that. The building here is really really nice. It reminds me of the building in Seixal that my family and I went to in Portugal. It has two floors and NO air conditioning. Celia was telling me and Farina that the building gets unbearably hot during the Summer. I´m so glad that I came during the Winter. Seriously, it is so nice outside. We walked to church and it was perfect outside. Right now it´s a bit chilly, but the sun´s set so it´s totally fine with me.
My house sits on a piece of land that has three houses on it. Irma Maria´s is in the middle, and her son´s is in the front and her daughter´s (Celia) is in the back. There is no grass anywhere, and the trees come out of the crazy sidewalks and break up the cement. The sidewalks are all slanty, which made it very difficult to walk to church today. I´m just grateful that I was able to walk to church and that there are sidewalks. Everything here is gated. Every house, business, everything. The Augusto families that we live by have to unlock the gate manually before they can drive in or out. I´m sure that it must be very frustrating to do that by yourself all of the time.
The family here is SO nice. Irma Maria takes care of us and makes all of our meals, which are excellent. It´s hard to live in a culture where the amount you eat is indicative of how much you like the food. I´ve never eaten so much in my life, but all of it is SOOO good. Irma Maria is from Portugal and is so hard to understand. She speaks really fast and doesn´t know English, so I´m going to improve a lot when I´m home with her. The whole family is wonderful. I´m very blessed. The son Deigo was playing Guitar Hero last night. It was so hard to concentrate on what Celia was saying with Queen in the background.
Earlier today when I was in my room reading, Celia´s niece, Irma Maria´s granddaughter, Nicolle, came into my room because no one was at her house. She is HILARIOUS. Seriously. She´s the only girl in her family, even on her mom´s whole side. She is like a little princess. She wrote me a note with hearts on it and then we proceeded to play MASH. According to that game, my life is going to be...interesting. I did her life and she´s going to be rich and a personal trainer. She stayed in my room for about two hours. I feel like a have a little sister. It´s fun for me to pretend that I´m 11 again.
I´m understanding a lot more now and I´m excited to feel more comfortable with the language. Tomorrow we begin our classes and hopefully I´ll be able to see more of the city. Oh I crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn yesterday! Yay!