On the road again... or, letting out your inner Brazilian

The title says it all... I am traveling with another group. I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, my body has been saying "enough already!" for a while now--in the form of a raging sinus infection last week and generalized exhaustion right now. However, this group is (like every group, I must admit) totally worth it. It consists of 26 Latin Americans-- pastors and their spouses. And if you have any doubts that theologians like to let it all hang out, you should be a fly on my wall. :-) Most of the group are Brazilians, and at the risk of propagating cultural stereotypes, Brazilians ROCK. For example, we missed our train connection yesterday due to the train we were on experiencing unspecified technical difficulties and delivering us to the track 10 minutes late. Instead of getting all uptight about having to wait half an hour (with Alps of luggage) for the next train to leave the station, the leader pulled out his accordion and spontaneous line-dancing broke out. (Think conga, not Achy Breaky Heart). There was one German woman sitting in the car with us as we conga'ed our way up the steps and back down the other side, and at first she was shooting us disapproving looks born of years of practice... but we melted her heart of stone and by the end she was laughing and clapping. It did my heart good, let me tell you. I am slowly starving for spontaneous FUN around here. I like to be a little odd and unexpected once in a while. ;-)

On another note, we are the tower of Babel. No common language here, although Spanish and Portuguese overlap quite a bit. Several of the group speak German (none of them speak English), so we get by with translations and digging out all of our grade-school language lessons. The bus is filled with conversations in Portuguese, Spanish, German, or combinations of the above, with a few English words throw in for good measure. I am loving it. My incredibly rusty high-school Spanish is serving me well as far as listening is concerned, and my speaking ability is getting discernably better--I am almost back up to "precocious two-year-old" level. OK, gotta run, my time is up at this lovely smoke-filled Internet Cafe....