On June 1st I have the Honor of accompanying 20 WWII veterans on a journey of remembrance to the Beaches of Normandy France. We are going to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the LONGEST DAY - D-Day - June 6, 1944.
My role on this adventure is to capture the moments of our journey with images and video that I hope will help the veterans, their families and anyone that will see my images remember not only the sites we will see, but also the importance of that day 70 years ago.

On my way to Washington - then Germany!! Looks like a great itinerary - we are going to lots of places. I hope to update the blog daily with great stories and great images

 My teaching partner - Noah - catching a nap on the beach. Wish I could do that!

 Walking to the beach - still perplexed at the condition of the buildings and roads - Joselia (our host teacher) seemed to think it was just the norm. Never could get an answer to why things were so uncared for.

Made it to the coast - SOMEHOW - guess God was watching over us - This was an interesting experience. On the way to the coast I noticed so many unfinished buildings and many, many examples of what we would consider poverty. Literally mud brick huts w/thatched palm roofs - but satellite dishes outside each! When we got to the coast - building after building were dilapidated and unfinished. Felt as if I was on the set of Mad Max - post apocalypse film.   The beach was nice and not very crowded. I walked for an hour down the beach enjoying the moment and still happy I was in one piece :).

Saturday June 16th - We set off on a harrowing journey to the coast of Piaui - I have lots of pics to add to this post. The harrowing part of the day was the driver!! I kid you not - he drove an average of 90-100mph the entire time!!!! I had visions of carnage, but somehow we made it. When we did slow down (because in Brazil the government puts massive speed bumps on the road as you approach any town or village - thank God!!!) I took lots of images from the window of the death mobile. Scenes from a car!!!

Finally catching up on My BLOG - our week in Terezina was so crazy and days were so long I had little time or motivation to stay on top of the blogging.

Friday June 15th was my birthday eve and that night my new Brazilian friends - Super mario and Cristian - I have two new friends for life!!!

We started early again today - Noah (my colleague here in Teresina) and I presented to two classes today.  Awesome kids. They were all English I students and I felt like I was in a scene out of Good morning Vietnam. More classes today and then off to a festival called the June Festival (will write the Portuguese name later) - apparently lots of dancing and you know I can dance!!! LOL - will post pics of that later - just hope my dancing won't cause an international incident. Having an awesome time!!

Wow - where do i start? Missed posting yesterday but what a great day again in Brazil. We spent the morning at Marista private Catholic school where the students were amazing. I wish our students could speak a foreign language as fluently and with the confidence of the students at this school. They came right up and started talking - asking great questions and never missed a beat. After a great lunch on the lago we went to a foreign language school (I'll go back later and add all the names of the schools) again the students were so fluent and just wanted to talk and learn about us and America.
Made to our host city today and we went right to work (but not after a great lunch of local cuisine) we talked and interacted with seven classes. Wow - we were pretty worn out, but in a great way. The student's ages ranged from 15 to 45 and they were genuinely interested in learning to speak English. They asked so many questions and we laughed and learned from each other for about 4 hours. After all that fun went we out for another amazing meal - I'll post pics

Long day tomorrow and then off to the shore -