I have become excellent at maximizing the use of my food stipend for this excursion we are on. It is pretty excellent. We have a breakfast buffet at this pousada and I enjoy waking up at seven and stretching out my stomach before I head down. I proceed to sit at the table for two hours and eat fruit and fruit salad and bread and cheese and fruit and bread and juice and oatmeal and cornbread and cornbread and oatmeal and hot chocolate and juice and fruit and french toast and cornbread at a steady pace until they start taking it away. An excellent way to minimize spending on lunch. I don't think the hotel owner likes me very much.

I am leaving tomorrow at seven in the morning on a bus headed south to Porto Seguro where I will start the independent project phase of the program. I already really like the city of Ilheus and don't particularly want to leave yet but I'm really excited at the same time. I have heard from countless Brazilians that people who go to Porto Seguro never come back. I intend to come back, especially because it is only getting hotter here and it is supposed to be 95 by eight in the morning starting in a couple weeks but who knows. The baby whale birthing season is going on there right now so I might decide I have better things to do than take classes next semester (like swim with the whales.)

It is weird to me that the project phase of this adventure is here because that means a little over a month before the end of the program. In a lot of ways it feels like I have been here forever but at the same time it just keeps speeding by.

Oh and the mosquitos in Ilheus tend to ignore me in favor of the other girls but the tiny biting ants have taken a liking to my flavor. They are even ruder than mosquitos because they are so small you can't feel them or hear them until you feel them bite. And then their death doesn't matter because thay already had a feast.