first few weeks

Hey everyone,
Sorry I've been pretty sloppy about getting what's been going on in Brazil out for people to know about. Life has been a completely insane last few weeks, but this week I'm going to start getting into a rhythm that will be similar to for the rest of the year.

I arrived in Brazil on July the second after a crazy few days of traveling that started in with a flying trip from Denver City to Abilene back to Denver City, then the next day I went to Midland and flew from there to Dallas where my good friend Richard Hooper picked me up and let me stay at his brother's place there in Dallas. In Dallas we ran into Marion Barber, one of the running backs for the Cowboys, that was pretty cool, and then we had lunch with Rolando Diaz, the artist that I work for, and I got on a plane.
I went from Dallas to Charlotte, Charlotte to Rio de Janeiro, Rio to Sao Paulo, and then got in a car with Mark and went the hour or so to Itu.
Itu is a really interesting town, it is celebrating its 400th year of being a city and is known for everything being bigger here. So after two days in Itu, I went to be a camp counselor in a bilingual camp that the church in Itu puts on. Camp was amazing and I had a blast, there were kids from 13 to 19 and we really had a good time. The next week I worked at a medical campaign in a poor area of town. This was a joint effort put on by a doctors from Brazil as well as doctors from the United States. We were able to see over a thousand people with multiple specialist doctors in areas such as dentistry, gynecology, ophthalmology, as well as general medicine and an on-site pharmacy. The first day I walked around the neighborhood and passed out pamphlets letting people know we were there, and the next few days I worked the return desk helping people who had to come back for return visits or who needed to fast overnight for a surgery I would direct them on where to go. It was incredible to be a part of the campaign and I loved seeing people getting helped in ways that that they might not have gotten otherwise. Here is a link to a video about the campaign http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktV4qqRy8vs
I didn't make the video but its really cool.
After the medical campaign Mark, Ali, and I went with the doctors from the United States to Rio de Janeiro to show them around and help them in Rio. Rio was really cool It is a beautiful city, but there are a lot of people who are hurting there.
After Rio I stopped in Sao Paulo to hang out with my friend Pedro de Marco and his sister Marilia. All in all a great trip which included getting lost in the subway system and crazy opening of my soul to the language of Portuguese.
Now I've been back in Itu for a few days and I started Brazilian Jujitsu Classes yesterday and Portuguese classes today. So things are coming along. I'm going to go with Mark to the drug rehab clinic he works at tomorrow and there are several projects that are starting to get wheels. I'll have a lot of pictures soon.
Hope everyone is good
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