I saw a monkey!

This past Sunday was a retreat for SDA pastors and their families living in the Brasilia area or Federal District. Brasilia is similar to Washington D.C. in the sense that it doesn’t belong to any of the other states but it still is not a state but rather a Federal District. The history of Brasilia is quite interesting. Probably I will devote one of my blogs to tell more about Brasilia and the sights.

Anyways, since I am living with the President of the Brasilia Conference, I got to go. The retreat was held at a recreation center on the outskirts of Brasilia. The center had tennis, basketball and volleyball courts along with a football field, a swimming pool, a lake and several hiking trails. For most of the day, it was overcast but

it was still a good day for outdoor activities.

Most mornings, I start my day with some form of exercise so I decided to do my exercise at the recreational park rather than at the house. Gilza, the president's wife, also likes to exercise in the morning, so she joined me. We decided to walk up this hill and then jog down several times. On our way up the hill, we noticed some small monkeys in the trees along the side of the trail. The thing about these monkeys was that they did not seem to be afraid of us at all. We went closer to the fence on the side of the trail and they just sat in the trees staring at us. I was so excited because I had never seen a wild animal outside of the zoo before. I didn’t expect to see anything picture worthy as we were exercising so I hadn’t brought my camera with me.

When we descended the hill the first time, I decided to go and get my camera in the hope of seeing the monkeys again when we climbed the hill again. When we got to the spot where we had originally seen them, the monkeys were still there. It seemed like they were waiting for us to return. This time I was able to see several of them with different colors. They came even closer to us. First, they were just in the tree near the fence, this time they were sitting on the fence. It was like they we waiting for us to come back. I was so glad I went for my camera.

Later we asked the guard at the entrance about the monkeys and he told us that people usually feed them so they were probably expecting us to give them food. He said that when a person has food the monkeys usually come even closer and sometimes would take the food out the person's hand. I wish had known that then, because it would have been a cool picture. Probably next time I’ll be able to feed them!