Lesson learned: "help" is universal!

I know our blog posts have been a bit scarce lately, but we've been spending our days enjoying our many Brazilian adventures.

We spent last Tuesday evening at a dinner during which one of the Rotary Club members was installed as the president of a school that several of the Rotary Clubs support. I decided to make a trip to the bathroom before the dinner started. Without thinking, I closed the exterior bathroom door (there were several stalls inside). When I tried to leave the bathroom, I discovered that the exterior door wouldn't open. I pulled on the knob with all of my weight (which I think has increased by a few kilos as a result of the amazing food here), but it wouldn't budge. One of the bathroom stalls had a window that opened into the kitchen, and I even climbed on the toilet and opened the window to see if I could see anyone. I wasn't quite desperate enough at that point to stick my arm through the window to try to get someone's attention. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to say "help" in Portuguese so I resorted to pounding on the exterior door for several minutes and yelling "hello" and "saida" (which means exit) -- one of the Rotarians later told me that "help" is understood universally. I assumed that another female would need to use the restroom or my group would begin wondering where I was, and I was very thankful that someone came and opened the door for me after about 10 minutes. Leave it to me to get locked in a bathroom in a foreign country! (I also learned that night to be careful with the gestures I make...some gestures that are very innocent in America have drastically different meanings in other countries!)

We spent the weekend at the district conference which was in a small tourist town about 3 hours away. The scenery along the way was beatiful, and the hotel was like a resort. There were trails to hike, and the town was only a 10 minute walk away. It was nice to get out of the city and have some time to relax after our busy schedule. We met our new host families at the conference and rode back to São Paulo with them on Sunday afternoon in preparation for our last week in Brazil!