Was this a dream?

I'm a bit behind, so this post will be mainly pictures. But. These pictures hardly do the places or the people justice. Becca and I have been so blessed to meet so many wonderful people EVERYWHERE we go. People who take care of us, befriend us, watch out for us. And the last couple weeks I have a hard time believing were real because of how beautiful they were. I wish I was a better photographer, but I'm not sure anyone could capture the beauty. Ok, maybe I'm overdoing it a bit, but it was amazing!



Becs found this great hike online at Agua da Prata, this is the town close by where we spent the night. It was a fun, cute little town and...



The police were having a birthday party!! At least that's what they called it. It was free, and we got to sit in our own fancy little booth, AND a band played the Brazilian national anthem. Pretty neat.



Such a lovely hike, and it was great to get out in nature. Little did we know it was only the beginning :)



Tons of trees just covered in pink flowers.



And Ubatuba!! We drove there with Rhainer, Gustavo and Natalia - and wow, this place is incredible.





This beach was amazing, this picture captures it the best. Perfect beaches surrounded by the Atlantic forest, with islands off in the distance. After swimming in the morning we collected in the freshwater river that emptied into this little cove - biology is the best :)







Natalia's a bit covered up, but this is our group! Lucky to have such great friends!





Our second day there we spend walking through the river collecting damsel/dragonflies. (Looking for hetaerina, but we collected whatever we could). Breathtaking.











As we got close to the waterfall we had some fun boulders to climb over.



Isn't this waterfall amazing? I felt like I was at the Brazilian version of Elk River :)



Becca told me she'd buy me icecream if I went under the waterfall, couldn't turn that one down. You can't really see me, but I believe I'm behind all that water.





A big fish ate me.



After Ubatuba we headed to Serra da Canastra. Along the way we found this waterfall and had it all to ourselves all morning.



I caught this one with my bare hands!!!



We walked up the river a bit to collect. Yes papa, work and vacation :)





This is the Serra da Canastra national park - and that's a cow.



It's a great combination of the Palouse, Utah, and Switzerland. (Cows)



Another cow! They are known for their cheese and doce de leite here, and I can see why!





We spend a day touring the park with these great people - made some new friends :)













Lobo Guara!! Came so close to our truck!!





This is the spring Sao Francisco river starts at, apparently turns into one of the biggest rivers in Brazil!









Dinner with our friends :)



Had so much fun climbing around on these rocks!



Now we're back in Assis, and look at how lovely our PCR is!!!

So grateful to be here, life is good.

Pregnancy

This week I got pregnant! Well not really. :) (Zika effects pregnant women=get zika you get pregnant, zika symptoms are fever and acheyness=my cold symptoms were zika symptoms.... fever=pregnant!) If you didn't get that, sorry.

I've been rotten at updating, so here are a bunch of pictures from Friday last week, Monday this week and yesterday! We had a grand adventure planned for today to, but the car rental being closed yesterday sort of put the kabosh on all of that. So I'm updating the blog :)



Isn't this a cool picture?? It's the street right by where we live.



'Stream' on campus where we collect.



Diogo teaching the proper collecting method. And my leg.





Same stream, farther down.



This innocent looking branch actually contains a spider!! Very sneaky indeed. Blended right in.



Every now and then I stop and wonder how on Earth Heavenly Father came up with insects. I mean, there are SO man different kinds! With different muscle attachments, different wings, legs, mouthparts (or modifications of). It is mind boggling. What a neat world we live in. Filled with so many things to learn and explore right under our noses!

Monday we wandered through Sao Carlos and stopped at the observatory. Here we learned why the moon looks different from the Southern hemisphere.



Interesting how different cathedrals are here.







Cool science building.





We were so hot and tired after all of our walking (and I may have had a fever at this point... not sure when that started... ) so this acai was much needed!





Ok, yesterday the goal was to understand the busses here. And we succeeded!! Almost. Took one at the end of the day in the wrong direction... but you know, we tried.



Zoo!





I think there is a cute monkey in this picture.











These birds are native to the Cerrado here??? Isn't that crazy? What kind of place am I living in??

Also, there is a super cool wolf here that mostly eats fruit... but he was hidden so we didn't get any good pictures.

Life is good, my fever is gone and the sun is shining :)

Remember that one art class?

I've always secretly wanted to be an artist, but two things held me back; even my doodles were too ugly and uncreative to ever hope for a future in art, and I just never had time in my schedule to take an art class to find out. A year ago I had the brilliant idea to take art 101 for one of my GE's. (Many of you probably remember this...) It was pretty disastrous. I had hoped to gain at least some basic skills and somehow learn to enjoy sitting and sketching things - doesn't that just sound nice and peaceful? Wake up in the morning and sketch the sunrise before breakfast? Instead I learned that not only am I bad at drawing with or without a teacher to tell me so, I also get bored of sitting and drawing VERY quickly.

When we first met Rhainer he told us he could teach us to draw in a week. My reply, fat chance, Becs, yeah let's do it! So last week we began, and here are the results:



There's this nifty set up you can use so when you're looking through the microscope you're also seeing your hand. That's how I did this one. (The dragonfly kept drying out though...)



Copying a drawing from a book, two damselflies and one dragonfly.



Two coenagrionids I believe.



Copy of a drawing of Hetaerina.

The coolest part is that I actually enjoyed drawing these! At first it was boring, but once Rhainer complimented me it suddenly became much more engaging. Funny isn't it, how much confidence a compliment can give you, and what a difference that can make. Bugs are cool :)

I love to see the temple...

Saturday I had the amazing opportunity to visit the Campinas temple with the stake in Sao Carlos! Several times A MONTH they rent a bus and drive the whole stake up to the temple, usually staying the entire day.



Not at the temple... but I love acai! Wish we had it in the states!



When we got back from the temple we blended maracuja, creme de leite, and doce de leite in the liquidificador (trying saying that one ten times fast!). Put it in the freezer and tada! Delicious mouse :)


We were watching a movie and this HUGE grasshopper hopped onto the couch. Insects are cool.



If you look closely you will see a gigantic black bee, I couldn't resist taking a picture of it. Imagine eating honey from that beast!



This was the back side of the temple.



It was so beautiful. We did a session in Portuguese, that was good language practice for sure!



Becs and I with our new friend Junior.



The view from the top. The temple is on a hill above the rest of the city, so we had a lovely view.



This cute little guy is called mindinho in Portuguese, or little finger. If you stick your finger out he'll come right on and suck all the sweat off! Isn't that sweet of him?

I was so grateful for the opportunity to enter the House of the Lord this weekend. The temple is a beautiful, sacred place, and I take it too much for granted when I live close. Every time I go I am reminded of how much the Lord loves all His creations. I'm so lucky to get to study some of them! But the best part is, we can all enjoy God's creations just by going on a walk. What a wonderful world we have.

As meninas

In case anyone was searching for one word to refer to Becca and I by, we found it. As meninas; it doesn't matter if there are other girls in the room or not, if we just met someone for the first time or not, as meninas (the girls) always refers to Becca and I. Reminds me a bit of how Ryan and Nick are always 'the boys'. Since we're becoming the same person, having one name helps.

Good news: I've been able to go running! Don't worry, I was told it is safe to run in the neighborhood here in the morning, and I always tell Becca where I'm running and how long to wait before being worried (even if she is asleep when I leave...) so we're all good on the safe side. I think it helps me remember Portuguese better, at least that's what I keep telling myself.



Our favorite girls in Assis on our last Sunday! We'll be returning, but we're not sure when and for how long... still... mostly because Becca and I can't make up our mind. Big surprise there.



We went out to lunch and felt like pasta... bad idea. The man just kept talking to us and telling us all these different things we could put on it, when all we wanted was a simple gnocci!! Ended up with a 'free' dollar bill  - no matter how many times we told him we didn't want that deal.



This girl is ADORABLE! and no, sorry Becs, I'm not talking about you. She's also built up my confidence with babies that Vivian has smashed down a couple times :)



Went collecting on campus in Sao Carlos and saw this beautiful boa constrictor! Actually, Becs almost stepped on it. Super cool.



These plants will never get old. In the words of Dr. Johnson, if there are some plants nearby, we have some friends :)



This spot used to be a perfect habitat for Hetaerina on campus, but some engineers decided it would be better to cut down all the grass, dam up the water, and clean out the trough. Can you believe it? Engineers ruin everything.



Isn't she beautiful?? I've been spending a lot of time practicing identifying damselflies, especially Hetaerina species. (This one is Hetaerina longipes, as I'm sure you were all just dying to know.)



Tried acai for the first time with these wonderful people! So grateful to have such great mentors and friends.



Practiced the sanding skills I learned over the summer when helping build aquariums.



The first time Becs took out her ukulele Davi ran away screaming, but look at him now!



This family is wonderful, we met Junior through Matt Lipps, and they had us over for dinner last Sunday. Delicious food, great company, and, again, grateful for the amazing friendships we've made so quickly.



Since every friend Becca and I know in Provo is either engaged or started dating someone, we responded by finding some guys of our own. I forgot their names.... but meet our Brazilian boyfriends! (Angie, mine is the one on the left.)



This was a very sad evening for me.... I was not able to finish my dinner. I'm not sure what is happening to my stomach, but it is very upsetting. What we are holding up is only half of our dinner, and I couldn't even finish one. Becs finished hers. I probably should run more or something.

Well that's a little update on our lives! Our Portuguese has slowed a bit, but we are learning much more about dragonflies, their behavior and taxonomy, about chironomids, and a lot of other random things. Biology is great, you should all study it.

Laundry drama and PCR stress

Last week Becca and I were told that it is totally fine to take several showers during the day, even four showers a day is fine! We took this as a subtle hint, and decided it was time to do laundry. Monday was the chosen day, and without any help we successfully completed all of it! Success! It was raining so we hung all our clothes up in the side room instead of out in the sun. Then it kept raining, and raining, and raining, and raining..... and never stopped. Said clothes began to stink... so much for that.

Wednesday we received new primers and ran a PCR (now that I explained the process a bit I can use all the science jargon I want! ha!). Since we began working in January however, Becca and I have struggled getting PCR to work with Calopterygidae. These new primers were supposed to do the trick, but the gel we ran on Wednesday was a fail. We could barely see anything, and decided to run another gel the next morning. We put the gel in, turned on the UV light and.... nothing. Becca and I scratched our heads a bit and wondered what to do. We finally decided to try again, this time using the shortcuts we'd learned in the US, and it worked!! Finally, we'd gotten some Calopterygidae to work! Friday we ran another PCR with different primers, and it worked too! It's a miracle!



Had a girl's night Tuesday :)



Plants are amazing.



We went collecting with a couple of our lab friends on Wednesday. So beautiful!!! I love exploring here, it so different from anything I have seen before.





Bamboo!





Lovely Becca hard at work in the lab.



Look! There are definitely bars on there! The big ones are primer dimers, but if you look really closely, there are definitely faint bars everywhere we didn't have a blank :) (And if you're going cross-eyed trying to see, don't worry, I understand)



Juice from sugarcane! Not nearly as sweet as I thought it would be.



This is what chocolate comes from. I'm dying to try it, even though everyone says the fruit doesn't taste super good.

Today Becca and I are leaving Assis :( We'll be coming back though, and I'm excited to see what a new city brings!

Lots of food and some new friends.

Unesp (the University we work at) has an abundance of trees, one of which is a guava tree! I've never actually eaten a guava before, but they are delicious. 

We decided to have avocado and bread for lunch and ate it in the lab. Everyone thought it was crazy weird. Avocado's are apparently only eaten sweet here? Odd, I konw. We tried eating the other half of the avocado with sugar to see if we liked it.... not so much. Gesa made us mashed avocado with lemon and sugar though, that was good. 

Our lab friends!! Well, two of them. Lucas trained us in the lab, and we've extracted DNA with Thiago. 

Brazilian hot dogs are HUGE!! Really though, this thing had TWO hot dogs in it, and bacon, and mini fries on top, and a ton of other miscellaneous stuff in between. After four bites I was full. 

The first Mai Thai lesson is free, so we tried it! Gave us a good workout which was nice, but a little odd. 

Elena! We got to spend an afternoon swimming with her and her family. 

Simone took us out to dinner, it was sooo good! Beans and rice, of course, as well as several different kinds of meat, and this yummy vegetable salad. I had tangerine juice and it was incredible. Probably my favorite juice so far, which I was not expecting. Tastes way different from tangerines in the US. 

After church Geza taught us how to make brigadeiros! Super easy, and delicious. The plate was full once upon a time.... 

We've been working pretty hard to learn Portuguese (helped by Geza who used to teach Portuguese, and is very patient with us).  When driving to get hot dogs she taught us parallelepipido, sorry if that is horribly misspelled.