On Tuesday we headed to the garden even though it was raining a bit. Tom and I did not want to sit home another day so took a chance on the weather and it worked out. We were not able to paint but we were able to weed, plant, and start some future plans. Because I am fundraising for the garden Tom and I wanted to talk with them and come up with a couple ideas of things we could build. Some ideas that went around were a fence, stairs in the hillside to get up and down, tool box, or a shed. After hand signals and my Portuguese dictionary we were able to decide that they wanted a shed. Tom being an expert building was able to map up a blue print of the building and write down all materials needed. We then picked a location it would go and started measuring and clearing the area. Everyone was very excited and I finally felt like we figured everything out. The next day Tom and I showed up and saw a couple men talking to Ricardo at the top of the garden. They were in some nice close and seemed important. As soon as they left Ricardo walked down and immediately told us we cannot build a shed. Apparently they do not own the land and the people that do (I am guessing the guys at the top of the hill) said no. He then went on to say the fence would be too much money and the tool box would get broken in to. I started to feel very discouraged again and didn't know where to go from there. The rest of the day consisted of Tom and I painting in silence thinking about what our next move was going to be. There are a bunch of other ideas in our heads but how to communicate they was going to be a problem. So on Thursday we decided to go talk to Vivi form Iko Poran and ask her to come to our sight and be a translator for the day. This way we could actually have a full conversation with details and a direction at the end. She agreed and tomorrow she will visit in the morning to help us out. I am looking forward to the conversation and have not given up hope on our ideas just yet. When not at work this week the rest of my time consisted of hanging out with the new volunteers that arrived last week and getting to know everyone in the house. There is defiantly a lot more going on when you are in a house with 24 other people. There were adventures to the acui place to show people the best snack here and I was happy to hear that some people have gone every day this week since I have shown them :) On Friday I added another day of work on to go paint at a day care in the favela that we work in. When we got there to no surprise they had none of the materials that we needed but since Tom and I had been painting at the garden we knew a little bit about the hardware store nearby and were able to get the job done on our own which was nice. Saturday we were invited to another project where the volunteers arranged a party for the favela to raise awareness about different issues like dengue and trash. It was a fun time and I enjoy getting to see different projects and areas of the city. Last night I had the chance to see Les Misérables in a small Theater in Santa Teresa. You could tell it was an old building that they refurbished into a one room 75 seat movie theater. Since most of the movies they watch come from the United States they are used to receiving the reals in English with Portuguese subtitles. That gave me the chance to see an awesome movie, in an awesome theater all in English! As we were walking home I ran into some of the volunteers that were going out so I ended up following them down to Lapa to go enjoy a Samba bar for a couple hours. Today is Sunday and I am ready to start a new week and see what is in store for me! Hope you are all doing well.
