Photos, Funny Accents & Pine Trees

Today the first group of teenagers got to see their photos and some of the writing began. Writing about their favorite photos. Writing biographies for the exposition.  Fun and challenging and all that good stuff. I love learning from and getting to hang out with these guys and girls (we're up to 2 girls in this particular group now!).

Here's a photo of Negão (the "artist name" that one of the kids chose for himself) comparing one of his photographs with its subject:

We had a number of new adolescents entering the workshops today and luckily enough leftover cameras so that they could participate in the project too. One of them did not know what to make of my accent. I can hardly imagine how I sound to a Brazilian ear especially as I mangle pronunciation of words and verb conjugations. I was working with the kids individually on their writing and talking about their photos so I wasn't aware of this particular kid's fascination and bemusement, but apparently he kept repeating quietly to one of the coordinators, "She talks so strange! She talks so funny!" Then he sat next to me just so he could listen to me speak. Ha. 

In the meantime I am feeling utterly swamped and in the mood to sleep for a week straight, but I have a mountain of work to get done before that can happen. (And since I've got so little time left I can't imagine I'll be letting myself sleep in too late even if I technically can). So this is my quick post while I'm boiling pinhões (singular form = pinhão) which taste kind of like chestnuts but come from a pine tree for (part of) dinner. They taste good but I have to say that the leftover shell ends up looking slightly like squished cockroaches, a thought I have to banish from my head when eating.

Then I've got to work, work, work on a paper...at least until my televnovela starts that is. I've been watching it almost religiously (or actually much more than religiously since I've never attended a place of worship between 3-6 times a week) and it's ending this week! Gotta have priorities, right? ;-)