Thursday, December 3, 2009

Lions and Tigers and Bears...Oh My!

Today was the last day in the Elementary school here in Brazil. Everyone was so cute! The teachers brought in a cake, and all of the fifth grades that I have worked with made little cards for me. Some of my favorite quotes from them are....
"where you pass we see flowers!" and "Mrs. Maughan you are a great helper. Because of you I am so good at maths, language, and unit!" and last but not least "Say bye for your husband for me and I hope he knows you are a lovely girl!"

It was so cute! I have a lot of mixed emotions. I am really excited to go back home and be with all of our friends and family, but it is hard for me to start closing up this chapter in our lives. There have been so many amazing people that we have met along the way, and it is sad to say goodbye to them all, realizing that probably I will never see them again. Thank heavens for technology, so we can at least keep in touch a little over the years.

Anyways, you are probably wondering what that has to do with the title of this post, and the answer is...nothing! But we did go to the zoo a little while ago, and I wanted to show some of our fun pictures!

We had a lot of fun at the zoo! We hear from the locals that normally it is really crowded. But we were lucky! The sky was threatening rain all day, so most of the people stayed home, and we stayed dry! So it worked out well, and the animals were even lively because it wasn't so hot. It was perfect! The zoo was nice, about the size of Hogle Zoo, so not huge. But I loved how many trees were all around, it was a beautiful place!

We saw some amazing tropical birds, native to Brazil and some surrounding countries...

The monkeys are always fun to watch! I love to see them jumping and swinging around, or simply grooming each other....

But I think my favorite was the smiling alligator.

In the middle of the zoo was a big pond. There were little islands on it, with different kinds of monkeys on them. It was a beautiful place!