This isn't so much an update on life as it is a story of one of my friends. Its a little lengthy, so only read it if you have time and want a good laugh at the end.
I'm not sure how much I've said about Leandro, but he did something last night that officially made him my third Brazilian brother (he's the one on the left in the picture).
Samuel and Pedro are of course the first two: Samuel is older than me, and usually acts like an older brother. Pedro is younger than me and usually heckles me like a younger brother. Leandro defies them both by being younger than me, but by acting more like an older brother than the other two put together.
To preface the story, you should know a couple things about Leandro. He is Brazilian, but looks Korean because his mother is Korean. He is fluent in Portuguese, Korean, and English - although it took me a couple weeks to realize that his English was so good because he speaks so rarely. Alice thought that he arrived a week after we did because she didn't notice him until then, but he had actually been here for two weeks before us. I think I heard him speak maybe a paragraph's worth of words in the first three weeks that I knew him.
Leandro spent a lot of time with us because, of course, he is Brazilian, and he is one of Pedro's roommates. But I really knew nothing about him, just enjoyed his silent company during breakfast or listened to his guitar playing during worship. When Samuel and Yeon Bin left for Italy, Leandro quickly took over their room saying it was the most peaceful place in Lee Abbey.
During that time, Alice decided that Leandro needed to open up a bit. So in that sweet and irresistable way of hers, she managed to worm a 10 minute conversation out of him - a complete miracle compared to our previous paltry attempts. I think something changed that day because I noticed a difference in Leandro. He talked to me (just one or two sentences) occasionally without me needing to take a pry-bar to his mouth. The kicker really came when Alice had to go to the hospital: both Pedro and Samuel were gone, and he more than stepped up to the plate to take care of her - getting her food from the kitchen, visiting her, and making sure that she had everything else she needed. Several days later when I was sick, he did the same for me, bringing me tea from the coffee bar and fetching some clothes from my room (since I was staying in Alice's room). Last week, he started calling me by Alice's pet name, Brittney Maria (pronounced "BrEE-chney Mar-EE-a.")
So, back to last night's story. The Brazilians were having a kind of goodbye party for Yeon Bin in his and Samuel's room. My roommate had come to me previously and asked me if it was okay for her to entertain another party of Koreans in our room. I told her it was no problem since I knew I'd be up late with the goodbye party anyway. But at about 12:30 I started to get really sleepy and pretty soon Leandro noticed. I didn't want to go back to my room because I knew that there would still be a lot of people there, so I was content to just stay in Yeon Bin's room for a while longer. I thought to myself that if there were still people in my room by 1:30 or 2, I'd just go sleep in Alice's room. But Leandro wasn't happy with the situation, and at 1:00 he looked at me and said, "Let's go kick the Koreans out of your room." I told him that it was really fine, I had told Lahn it was okay. "No, its 1:00. Time for them to leave." And with that he grabbed a gleeful Pedro (who really wanted to see Leandro yell at the Koreans in Korean) and left the room. Samuel and I followed about 20 seconds behind and by the time I got down to my room, the Koreans were filing out of my room with slightly disgruntled faces with Leandro overseeing their exodus like a bouncer.
Leandro earned a kiss on the cheek for that one - which he took with much more grace than he would have two weeks ago :)
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