The Augustana basketball teams are in Brazil this week and are blogging on the trip. Mark Roth is blogging for the men’s team and you can catch their blog posts on the D3hoops.com Daily Dose. Chaney Tambling is blogging for the women’s team.

Wednesday in Jundaia started out with a trip to the supermarket that was an eye opening experience for all of us. With no one there to translate we had to struggle through the checkout without Portuguese being spoken (at least by us).

After our trip we visited Scola Divinito Salvador School. A small private Christian school, we learned that they were famous for their women’s basketball program. We had a practice with their middle school aged girls and it was a huge success. The girls and coaches loved our ability to teach new things. After passing out t-shirts we went to leave and were swarmed for pictures and questions. Before Brandon Motzel knew it he had 15 new Facebook friend requests.

It was an incredible feeling to connect with these people. Basketball is truly an international language. We then drove two hours to Rio Claro and were met by men. We played a physical game and lost by one in overtime. We didn’t get the job done. No excuses we must get tougher.