Another Update

Hi Again!

This is my second blog entry. We have been here slightly over a month now. It seems like we’ve been here numerous months with all that we have done and all that has gone on!

School continues to keep us all busy! Since I last wrote, Bill has started helping out some with technology at school. He is working on an hourly basis-about 15 hours a week! His work for Luminous Neon (in the US) has picked up some too. This past weekend, we had the school Open House on Saturday from 9:00-1:00. For Brazilian law, the school calendar has to have 200 days, so we have several working Saturdays. It made a long week for me, but Bill got to go as a parent; and Courtney’s class taught the parents lessons.

I mentioned in the last blog the nationalities of my students. I mentioned how several of them were Brazilian. I also mentioned how Craig, my headmaster, made all the workers of the school feel equal despite the social class stigma here. He has made it a policy that anyone who works at the school for a year may have a child go to the school tuition free. That is an incredible benefit, let alone for those who work as custodians in this culture! Oh, by the way tuition is about US $30,000.00 a year. But on the other hand I want to share with you the wealth of some of my students. I have the Iraqian ambassador’s son. Also, one of my student’s parents just returned from spending a week in China at the Olympics although they knew no one participating in them-just a little trip! The kids stayed with a nanny of course! And then I have a student who flew to Sao Paulo (a city about 1000 km away) last weekend just to see Disney on Ice!

To help us cope with the demands of Brazilian housekeeping, we have hired a maid one day a week. It is definitely a help as we are line drying our clothes for the most part, and stuff needs ironed. (They say the dryers get really hot and shrink stuff.) Also our marble tile floors need lots of maintenance with cleaning. A really big perk of having a maid is that she cooks for us-Brazilian food at that! We always have her cook enough so that we can have leftovers. We are enjoying all the fruits-mangos, guavas, papayas, pineapple, passion fruits, and custard apples. Even bananas, strawberries and watermelon taste better than in the US.

Courtney and Annie continue to be troopers at walking places and trying new things! They are having fun doing it too! Although Annie loves to eat, she has been more hesitant than Courtney to try new foods, but that is changing. They are fitting in beautifully at school, and Annie’s shyness is disappearing also! There is an upcoming school talent show and both want to participate. They have each had a friend spend the night already, one each of the past two weekends. They are having fun learning Portuguese in school and are constantly asking me, “Can you understand this, Mommy?”

Last weekend, we went to one of the two English speaking churches in Brasilia. It was an International Baptist church with a wide variety of international people for sure. The minister is the husband to one of the Brazilian teachers at my school. He is American. The service was contemporary with praise music-guitars and the whole bit! It was very nice. In fact, we were invited to the minister and his wife’s home for supper this evening. That was very nice also.

We have been exploring more of the commercial districts close by which is lots of fun! We ate at a wonderful restaurant near us yesterday. It had a pasta bar and pizza buffet. You choose the type of pasta you want, they cook it, and you pick the ingredients you want in a red or white sauce. Then they prepare it right in front of you. They also brought around many different oven-baked pizzas. We liked the dessert ones-strawberry with chocolate and banana with cinnamon. Both had a little cheese with them. Different, but good! A soccer game happened to be on TV as we were there eating so the crowd was quite loud! (Brazilians eat and breathe soccer!) As the weather is nice, most restaurants have outdoor eating areas! We love that too!

We also went to an outdoor artesian market yesterday. It is open every weekend in the center of downtown. We got a few things to help add color to our bare, stark, white walls. We took our first Metro (subway) ride to get us partway there. The Metro is new in Brasilia and is still constructing stops.

The other night at the grocery store, I was having a difficult time trying to find something. I asked a lady close by and she helped me. She had overheard us talking English and asked if I knew someone that could teach conversational English. She gave me her name and phone number. I decided I would do that and we have our first lesson tomorrow night. I am looking forward to it. I think that should be a lot of fun! Plus it will be fun to get to know a “native.” She could teach me a lot about the city too.

I guess this is all for this entry.

Ciao,
Connie