5.9-Families are families everywhere!

First off...I apologize about the orientation of the pics on this post...my computer and/or the program are just NOT tolerating my formatting requests.

This is M'Randa posting after a long day of eating...luckily I am a professional! Today was Mother's Day, so each of us spent the day celebrating with our families. This is my story. (Insert Law & Order sound here)

Fabio picked me up around 11 this morning to go to a bakery and pick up some pies and then pick up the rest of his family. We went to a neighboring town, Aruja (ah-roo-jah), to his sister's house. We were some of the first there, but were soon followed by the rest of the family and some neighbors. There were about 35 people there and thank goodness there was not a name quiz at the end!

I was amazed and comforted by the fact that families are families everywhere! In fact, they were the Brazilian equivalent of my family...cooking, talking, eating, watching futbol on tv, kids playing with the dogs, grandmas yelling at the kids for being too rough on the furniture...you know, the usual. But this was, in fact, the most cultural Mother's Day! A day in Brazil with my Brazilian/Japanese family, speaking Portuguese, English, and a little Spanish, and eating Spanish-style food (pallea and drinking homemade sangria). What a GREAT experience!

We head out for UNESP tomorrow morning...Emi is picking me up at 5:40am, so I am headed to bed! Happy Mother's Day to all those wonderful moms out there!