So I’m sitting here on the deck of our apartment here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, enjoying the evening’s tropical breezes and listening to the very first game of Seattle Mariners baseball. Life, sometimes, is very, very good.

Various people have expressed curiosity about what our day-to-day life is like here. So, I’ll be keeping this post updated as the day goes on (assuming my various Internet connections cooperate) with a running commentary on my day.

6:00 AM: Waking up and taking a shower. This task in complicated a bit by the fact that we have to light the gas-fired hot water heater and wait for it to heat up before doing so. For the first week and a half we were here, we didn’t have hot water at all, though, so it’s a small price to pay.

6:50 AM: Leaving for school. We live about 1.25 miles away from school, so it’s something of a hike. But I like hiking, so it’s really not too bad. It’s certainly keeping us in good shape.

7:10 AM: Arriving at school. We have devotions at 7:30, but in the meatime I have a chance to catch up on a few things from yesterday, and post this update.

7:30 AM: Staff devotions. Lorraine is leading them today, and she does a fine job. We also get the news that our director and his wife will be back before the end of the month! This is great news that I’ll share more about later.

8:00 AM: First class of the day–chemistry, with 11th grade. This is a great group of kids, but chemistry is not my favorite subject. And right now we’re studying electron configurations, which is closer to quantum phsyics than it is to biology (and thus to my basae of knowledge). Fortunately, the physics teacher here is great, and has helped me out.

8:47 AM: 6th grade Bible, now–I do this in the room next door. We’re going through the book of Acts, and right now are in Chapter 7–the speech & stoning of Stephen. This also allows us a nice review of the Old Testament, since the speech is basically a “greatest hits” version thereof.

9:26 AM: The 6th graders and I move back to the science lab for General Science. We’re studying the chapter on plate tectonics, and today, we read the section on the three kinds of plate boundaries. Admittedly, this is a little outside the realm of biology, too, but it’s a little simpler concept than electron configuration.

10:15 AM: We have break now, and I’m able to catch up on this, and do some grading of papers, too.

10:35 AM: In Biology, we reviewed DNA replication, transcription, translation and the various stuff that goes along with it. This is in some ways my favorite class of the day, partly because it’s small and well behaved, and partly because I’m actually using my expensive liberal arts education directly. So that’s cool.

11:26 AM: Life science, 7th grade, is also a good class that I get to put my hard-earned knowledge to work in. We’re talking about animal behavior this week, and today we discussed the different types thereof. For some reason, 13-year-olds find it hilarious that almost all animal behavior is geared towards making babies. Go figure.

12:15 PM: Lunch, finally. They serve us lunch here, served by a Brazilian company, so it’s all Brazilian food. This means black beans & rice are always available, which is awesome, there’s always plenty of meat, which is awesome, and the salads are mediocre, which is not. Today, there was various bits of fried chicken, which was tasty, and fruit salad for the first time. Also tasty. As were the ever present rice & beans.

12:50 PM: 6th period is prep period for me. There’s a class of 9th graders taking physical science in here during this time, but today they’re taking a test, and thus are less noisy. So that’s nice. I did some grading, and looked around online for some videos to use for my general science class.

1:41 PM: 7th period is 8th Grade earth science. This is not, alas, the most exciting class, at the moment. We’re studying the formation and ages of rock layers, currently. Considering this is easily my least attentive class, and the subject matter is so very… shall we say, less than thrilling? It can be a challenge. Once we finish the current unit, though, we’ll be moving into SPACE. And that’s awesome, because everybody loves SPACE. Or at least they should. At any rate, it will be easier to teach about something I’m actually interested in.

2:26 PM: The last period of the day is again a prep period–but this time, without another class in here. On thursdays, I teach a journalism class to those same 8th graders. We’re focusing on photojournalism, because that is what they are most interested in.

3:10 PM: School is over! But now I hang out here for a while, getting some stuff done. I also have study hall in my room today, though there was only one student here for that. It’s pretty much just free babysitting for the parents, though. On the upside, I was able to help a student with chemistry, so that’s always nice. Also–more grading. I do a lot of that.

4:40 PM: And now it’s time to head home–another 1.25 mile walk (or 2 km, if you’re in Brazil… which, I guess, I am).

4:50 PM: It turned out that we got a ride home, which was nice, because it was hot. Of course, upon returning to our abode, we learned that our spotty (but free!) Internet access was not working, so you missed out on all the exciting events of after school. Perhaps another day.

But we finally saw Cristo Redentor, the universal symbol of Rio de Janeiro. You can’t see it at all from our part of Rio, and every time we’ve left, we’ve gone away from it, rather than towards it. But today, we visited Flamengo, one of the three main beaches in Rio, and the least touristy, from what we saw.

We got there via the Rio bus system, which was… an experience. Imagine a New York cabbie driving a bus without changing his style at all, and you’ve got a picture of it. But it’s cheap! And pretty clean, too.

One of the things we did at the beach was buy “coco gelado,” chilled young coconut that you first drink and then eat. The above picture is not a picture of us at Flamengo - we neglected to get pictures of that. Instead, this is us drinking generally inferior but twice as expensive coco gelado at the beach here in Barra de Tijuca.

After spending some time at the beach, we walked from Flamengo to the beach at Botafogo. Along the way we got an eyeful of Rio’s other most recognizable landmark, Sugarloaf, which you can see behind Lorraine above, and me below.

As we neared Botafogo, we got a nice view of Corcovado, the peak upon which Cristo Redentor stands. You can barely make out the statue in this photo, but you can make it out.

But I don’t get a nifty little sticker. More’s the pity.

Lorraine and I mailed in our ballots for the Washington State Presidential Primary. It was kind of an odd situation–our ballots were sent to us online, and we printed them out, along with an oath asserting that we waived our right to a secret ballot, and that we are who we say we are. Then we voted, signed, and mailed them off to the US of A.

Now, there’s a chance these ballots won’t arrive in time (they need to arrive within 10 days of the primary, which is on the 19th), and as a matter of fact, our votes won’t really matter in the long run, as John McCain–who we voted for–is pretty clearly going to be the Republican nominee. But it turns out that it’s really pretty cheap to mail simple envelopes to the states, so there’s no big loss, and we did our civic duty. (If I had really wanted to make my vote count, I could have voted in the Democratic primary, but that would have involved lying about my party preference… and I don’t think I could have brought myself to do so, even without the lying).

Anyway, it feels good take part in American democracy, even while I’m far away.

A few years ago, I spent the month of January in Amsterdam. While I was there, I had the opportunity to watch the Super Bowl, but I passed it up. Afterwards, I felt terrible about it–I was an American, so why exactly was I spurning that most American of traditions, just because I was in another country? After that, I promised myself that, regardless of where in the I was on any Super Bowl Sunday in the future, I would watch the game, or perish in the attempt. Well, not perish, exactly.

So, last night, after holding a little pre-game soirée at our apartment, I joined several of my coworkers, and some visiting teachers from the NICS school in Brasilia, at T.G.I.Friday’s at the New York City Center (Appropriately, we were almost all rooting for the Giants) and watched probably the biggest Superbowl upset in history. Certainly it was the most exciting Super Bowl I’ve ever seen.

The game didn’t get over until after 1 AM here in Rio, but thankfully we’re in the middle of Carnaval here, and so have these next three days off.

And now there’s only 9 days and 18 hours until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training. Good times