I have officially been in Brazil for 3 months now and the past month has been very eventful. I have continued playing with my volleyball team and I have been enjoying it a lot. We even won some games recently too! My teammates help me with my Portuguese and are willing to speak slowly for me which is kind of them and helps a lot when learning a new language. School has been going well. I still don’t understand what is going on in class all the time but I am picking up more and more each day.
The most exciting thing that I just returned from was a trip to the Amazon. I traveled with about 61 other exchange students staying here in Brazil. It was a 10-day trip in which I got to learn about the forest, see some animals, taste new foods, and participate in many fun activities. During my trip, I lived on a boat with 20 other exchange students for the majority of the days. At night we slept in hammocks which I really liked! At the end of the trip, we even got to keep the hammocks. On the first day of the trip, I was able to visit Presidente Figueiredo where we went hiking and were able to see some beautiful waterfalls and even swim in one.
Some other activities were alligator night spotting, swimming with pink dolphins, visiting an indigenous tribe, releasing baby turtles, playing a soccer game with locals (my team lost), fishing for piranhas, and canoed in small indigenous canoes (which filled up with water so we were provided with little cups to continually remove water from the boat) :) One of my favorite parts of not only exchange but of this trip was meeting new people and learning about their own cultures back home.
One of the friends that I made on this trip is from Norway. She is the girl with me in the indigenous canoe she is in some other pictures too. We became friends right away and are to see each other again before she leaves Brazil.
Now that I am home in Caxias I am back to my normal day-to-day schedule which includes school and volleyball. I am so excited for what the next month has in store. I hope to continue improving my Portuguese and learning more about this amazing country. 
