Wake up, eat breakfast, go to beach, find restaurant for lunch and watch game. Perhaps change location for following game. Eat dinner.

It's rough.

But actually, I sometimes get restless. It's perhaps a little too simple for me. I've been able to get out a few times for some runs to get some energy out. The other day, I went for a fantastic morning run along the beach. My host Dani and a friend of hers and I were staying on the coast north of Recife, and the beach stretches for miles with hardly anybody on it.



We are now staying with a friend on the coast south of Recife - Porto de Galinhas. Pretty incredible... in the summer. It is not summer.



Ah well, all the same, it's a cute little beach town that draws visitors, so I found my compatriots for yesterday's USA-Portugal game. A restaurant in the town center was certainly the place to be, and man was it fun! So much USA spirit! Everybody decked out and ready to get loud.



It's odd to say, but it's the spirit I was hoping to find during my travels in the host country of the World Cup. I haven't actually come across it yet until yeserday's USA game. Odd, ey? Americans have so far proved to be far more exciting than Brazilians. That very same restaurant today was filled with Brazilians for the game against Cameroon, yet they certainly did not meet the level of the stars and stripes crowd. They were lively, sure, but there was a magnitude of difference in the level of excitement and unity. (*Note: the guy in the photo below wearing the Brazil jersey and exuberantly high-fiving - no, high-tenning - was in fact... American)

Makes me even more excited for the USA-Germany game. : ) Also makes me excited to be in Rio for the later games. Perhaps I will find a bit more energy.





We got back to the house at about 7:30pm this evening, and I felt ready for bed. I'm fighting sleep just so I can wait for a normal hour to retire. It's an exhausting life, this! That being said (in a joking manner), it actually is fairly taxing to be immersed in a new language. I am understanding more and more every day, but often, I charge into a sentence to participate in the chat, and realize I don't know how to express what I want, and I just kinna... say something really simple and not worth input, and back out again. Ha. Oh well.

We watch a crap-ton (that's a metric unit) of tv here. The TV is pretty much on all day. Granted, most of the days have been all World Cup, but I'm also getting caught up with the handful of daily novelas (soap operas) that they have here. I venture to guess this is largely why I get antsy and restless - I've been in front of the TV more in the past 2 weeks than I have in the past 2 years. But, it does play a huge role in the improvement of my grasp of the language.