This place is becoming "home"

May 20, 2013

Yesterday was another great day here in Boa Vista! I practiced Portuguese with Allison and just lounged around. It feels so good to only be worrying about the here & now. So, SO good. This morning, however, Allison and I went on a light walk. And by "light walk" I mean this: We woke up at night time. As in, it was still dark. Basically, I think I was the rooster's alarm clock this morning. We ate breakfast (cake, lol woot!) and drank our delicious magic coffee, and put on all our gear. Life is all about gear, you guys. So, this was the situation: We hadn't been tracking the monkeys all weekend, so we had no idea where they would be waking up. Not only that- but today we were tracking the OTHER group of monkeys. So, we picked up three guides (Sons and friends of Maria's) and hit the old dusty trail. Never ending* trail. So we started the day off with a brisk 2km speed walk trip up a trail winding around this vast forest we are living in. But for real, I had trouble with this walk :-(, Y'all know I'm not so good at activity+breathing. But we ended up on top of a beautiful cliff. But guess what- no monkeys. We had split up into three groups.. And none of us found a single trace of those fury baby human cats. So we jumped off the cliff and walked around the world some more. Those men were looking all in the ground for little paw prints. They found none. I DEFINITELY found none, lol. But they DID find some freshly eaten fruits and palm stalks. So that means we would KEEP WALKING. I was very sweaty and tired. It's been four hours. No monkeys. Eventually, the boys deduced that the monkeys were on land that we were allowed on... So we would need to stop trying. We walked another 2km bad home. Oh well. Plus I got sun burnt. Blahhhh. I played soccer again today. Lol my foot got a lil bloody, so I quit. I hope they like me. I feel better that I can understand a little more Portuguese. Marcio and I teamed up for the car game tonight. And we did well. That was fun. Well, I really need to sleep... Gotta be up in 7 hours. *sigh*