July, July

To my lovely readers,

Today marks the beginning of July, and in a few more days, I will have already passed the halfway point of my journey. The entire month of June has been spent here in Sao Paulo State, making friends and learning about telemedicine. I have produced a presentation with a paper on the way, and soon enough we will be heading off to the Amazon for the main project.

In this time, my Portuguese has advanced quite rapidly. I began unable to mutter much else besides "I don't speak Portuguese" and "Do you speak English?" Now, I can understand most of the things that are said to me, as long as the speaker talks slow enough. I am confident in my day to day conversational skills, while I encounter a little more difficulty when trying to express complicated ideas or use very specific or technical terms. I think that in another 6 weeks' time, my Portuguese will be even better. Hopefully I will be able to continue studying Portuguese, and perhaps I will be fluent enough when a telemedicine conference rolls around here in Brazil.

I do certainly long for home and for school from time to time. I miss my family, my friends, food, Duke's campus, and some of the luxuries of life in the USA. I do consider myself quite fortunate, however, to be equipped with internet both at work and at home, so I am never too far out of touch with the people I care about. I suppose this post represents my reflections on my time here so far. I've enjoyed these (almost) 6 weeks immensely, though I hope the next 6 weeks are even better. Plans include our trip to the Amazon, a weekend excursion to Rio de Janeiro, and hopefully some more time in Sao Paulo.

The end of summer draws ever nearer, and I hope it is treating you all well. To those of you that are heading off abroad soon, I wish you safe travels and all the best. Skype me some time.

All the best,
Rollin