Street Fights and Acai: Brazil is still okay in our books

I know, it's been a few weeks. There was a series of unfortunate events that, for a brief while, tainted my desire to glorify Brazil in blog form. What type of unfortunate events, you ask? Well, sparing the gory details, let's just say me and Simone were victim to an unprovoked street fight with some teenage mutant ninja hippies one evening, and Simone's head came into forceful contact with a wooden bat. I may have thrown all of my "peacebuilding" knowledge out the window to engage in (former students of mine-block your ears) verbally assaulting some military police officers who did nothing but stand by and laugh at us. This event kind of spiraled out of control in the subsequent days and for a week or so, we all feared for our lives. Luckily everything is now A "OK" and we're no longer under threat of impending assassination. Phewf! Close one. Don't you hate when that happens? Despite this experience, we continue to enjoy our time in Itacare, although we're thinking of leaving a few weeks early to spend some time with my former BYU-Hawaii roommates who lives in Rio de Janeiro, where Rivers served his mission. Rivs has been keeping himself occupied by learning how to cultivate the local agricultural gifts that Brazil holds. Here's some cool photos of him working with Arte Na Mata's fazenderos (or ranchers) to process Acai. What was once such an elusive and wildly exotic food now grows in our back yard. Harp and I help Rivs harvest the berries by holding out a big tarp as Rivs monkeys his way up the palm trees to remove the acai-filled branches. Then he soaks the berries overnight and mushes them with a mortar and pestle the next day to make the yummy purple pulp we turn into smoothies and Acai bowls. Yum.

Harper continues to find strange insects and wild beasts, but still enjoys the occasional domesticated animal. Yeah, that green thing in her hand is a giant grasshopper.