Hey, this is Anya again. I want to tell you about the most amazing Saturday I've had thus far. As I told you some of our students are adults.  I think it is really cool because adults don’t usually have easy access to learning like kids do. The kids here learn English in school, but it is a recent development and a lot of the adults here now want to improve their English skills but don’t have the opportunity. 

Some of our students (Hugo, Ana and Henrique) told us that because we were being so kind to them by volunteering our time to teach the English course, they wanted to pay us back by taking us on a tour around the island.  IT WAS SO FUN! They showed up at 9:15 to pick us up for a full day tour of Terceira.  He had a big van from work that fit 9 people so off we went.  He started by driving along the coast; showing us picturesque views of Goat Island, and some of his favorite unexplored caves.  We went to Praia, Serra do Cume, Algar do Carvão, Furnas, Lagoa das Patas, the Biscoitos Beaches and the Wine Museum.  I can’t do the beauty of these places justice with words so I will just post pictures of them below.  What I want to try to explain is how kind they were to us.  Hugo knows a lot about the different types of plants, animals and land formations so he was constantly explaining all of it to us as scientifically as he could in English.  Ana is so sweet. She let us borrow rain jackets for Algar do Carvão, let us use her nice camera all day to take pictures, offered us water all the time and was just great company for the trip.  Henrique is cool too.  He enjoyed being the DJ for the car ride and played us tons of cool Portuguese music; it definitely livened up the van. 

I will tell you about three of my favorite moments from the day:

1) We were walking on the trail around the Furnas, admiring the steam that was billowing out of the holes in the fenced area.  It was clearly forbidden to go into that area and all of the sudden Hugo jumps the fence and starts walking toward the steam.  We were laughing because we were literally standing right next to a sign that said do not climb over the fence and sort of worried that some sort of park ranger would come out and yell at him.  We turn to Ana and she goes “The funny thing is, he put up that sign.” We figured well if he was the one to put up the “don’t jump over the fence” sign and he says it’s okay to jump the fence well then, it’s okay to jump the fence.

2) I jumped from a rock platform into 20 feet of cold, Atlantic water.  Another favorite part of the day was when I jumped for the first time; there is that thrilling feeling, a moment of uncertainty before you drop into ocean and it is absolutely exhilarating.

3) As we were driving away from the caves toward the wine museum we ran into a herd of cows crossing the road.  The roads are rather narrow so it is rather difficult for cows and a giant van to fit on the road at the same time. The cows start walking toward the van and passing us in a semi-single file line. Unfortunately they weren’t as thin as they thought they were and one of them ran right into the side of Hugo’s van.  We waited for the herd to finish passing then he got out to check the damage.  The farmer was coming up in a tractor behind the cows so Hugo said something to him as we passed, trying to explain to him how the cow bumped his van.  The farmer started to explain but before he could Hugo goes “ehh it’s no problem.” And that was that. We were joking that in America it would be “I’m going to sue your cow.” In England it would be “I’m sorry” “No, I’m sorry.” “No, I’m sorry”… but in the Azores it’s just “No problem.” LOL

After our day of tourism they dropped us back at our dorm so we could change and we met them and a group of 12 other students in the town square then walked to dinner. It was really great, Hugo organized the whole dinner and everyone chipped in to cover our meal.  We eat pretty cheap here most of the time so this was really a treat.  Not only was the food amazing but the people were too.  It was fun to hang out with everyone outside of the classroom and it was really touching to know that they all liked us enough and appreciated what we were doing enough to pay for our dinner and spend their Saturday night hanging out with their "teachers."  Most amazing feeling ever J!  After dinner we went down to the beach with them and listened to a Brazilian band while drinking caipirinhas.

This is our last week of teaching. It has really been a very rewarding experience.  I will post a more comprehensive reflection later this week when it is over.  I think I'm definitely going to miss it though, especially the students.  I was certainly scared going into the program.  I was afraid that we would fail and not teach them anything, but after talking with some of the students this weekend I know that they are really grateful for the program and have enjoyed the class a lot.