Feliz Natal!

‘Tis the season! This is my Christmas letter to all of you! Although it is about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and school is out for our five week summer break, things are still busy this time of year, even in Brazil! The warm weather makes it hard for me to think Christmas, but as we went to a Christmas church program last Sunday, I began to think that it was probably also warm in Bethlehem!

The Elementary School’s holiday program was called “Family Reunion.” It was about a mixed family gathering for the holidays. We have to watch the Christmas theme as all religions and nationalities are represented at the school. Anyway, Courtney and Annie had fun singing and dancing in it! Courtney was a Spanish person and Annie, an Egyptian!

Aside from the school holiday program, I have had three holiday parties the past two weeks! All three were school related, but in the evenings! To add to my chaotic schedule, Courtney and Annie also had birthday parties to attend these past couple of weeks, plus a friend’s holiday party! (Remember we don’t have a car to drive all these places! That’s partially what makes it so chaotic!) Courtney’s birthday party was the Swedish ambassador’s daughter. The party was held at her home which is the Swedish Embassy. One of the party favors was a personalized CD with the girl’s picture on it and some of her favorite songs. Annie’s party was at a location that was similar to a mini-carnival with all kinds of rides. One of the school librarian’s daughters was at party and I was talking to her. She said a party like that would cost about $2,500.00 US dollars. It’s amazing the amount of money some people spend on kids’ parties here!

Bill also turned 50 on December 10th. I wasn’t sure what to do for the “big” occasion, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a big party! So a group of us just went to the brewery here in Brasilia on the weekend. A friend took a cake which is perfectly acceptable in this country. It was fun and simplified everything for me at this time of year! We, as a family, and my co-teacher (Annie’s teacher), went out to eat on his actual birth date at a “Churrascaria,” a Brazilian BBQ. They have a big salad bar, and the waiters bring around huge skewers of all types and cuts of meats. You can also have them bring you bowls of shrimp on the side! Therefore he kind of celebrated turning 50 twice! J

I am now beginning to think Christmas at home! We put a tree up a couple weeks ago, but I didn’t have any presents under it. Annie was a little worried if she was getting anything. She was relieved, and excited, when she saw presents finally, just the other morning!

We will spend Christmas here. We will actually spend Christmas Eve with one of my embassy student’s family along with some other people. The dad celebrates Christmas and the mom Hanukkah. The dad is Cuban and is going to roast a pig leg. They will have Cuban rice and beans and several others of us will bring side dishes. On the 25th, we will get together with some of the other American teachers that have not taken off for the break and eat and play some games. The other family that arrived when we did, and have a daughter Annie’s age, will be part of the group as well as another teacher couple that are expecting a baby in January. Many travel or have family visit as we have a month off.

On the 26th, our travels will begin! We will meet up with the family that I was an exchange student with 29 years ago at their farm near the beach and spend a week with them. Then we will spend five days in Rio de Janeiro, one of the “must see” places I told Bill about before getting here. After returning from that trip, we will take advantage of our time off and fly to the Amazon and do the five day tourist thing there. It was also on my list of “must see” places! I think I could get used to this long break in the middle of the year.

I will try to write a blog between our two trips. Once again, Feliz Natal e Prospero Ano Novo!

Connie, Bill, Courtney, & Annie

Oi de novo! Hi again!

Time flies when you’re having fun! And we are having fun! I am having a harder time keeping this updated than I thought I would! (Too many things to do! J)

The main news since I wrote last is our Thanksgiving trip. Thanksgiving is not celebrated here, but being at an American School we got the Thursday and Friday off. I took off the previous three days and we flew to Salvador, a city on the coast. We visited and stayed with a family that my parents had their three children as exchange students, the first one 22 years ago. I met the children when I went to my parents’ home at Christmases. The parents, whom we stayed with, were even there one Christmas! Later my parents had the cousin and a friend of this family. My parents have been to Brazil twice to visit this family and were even witnesses at the wedding of the oldest daughter. Anyway, the cousin and one of the children and his wife were revisiting my parents in Illinois during the time I interviewed and was hired here. The cousin got married this past weekend in Salvador and they wanted us to attend!

What an experience! The wedding itself was in a beautiful, old Catholic church. Instead of bridesmaids and groomsmen, there were numerous couples that went up, yet different single and married people went up to sign the marriage certificate during the ceremony. Her grandmother carried up the rings, but they did have flower girls and one little boy. It was not a really long ceremony. The reception was incredible! It was at a hotel along the beach and had many more guests than the wedding. I heard 500 invitations were sent out. The food was spectacular-shrimp, salmon, other fish, chicken, beef, many other fancy little pastry-like things, and sweets, plus the wedding cake. The drinks were unlimited. There was a juice bar with numerous fresh fruits that I didn’t even know, that were made into alcoholic drinks or just juice. The dancing and music was lots of fun! They had some Carnival music and a miniature float to push people around on. The girls, as well as Bill and I loved it! I’m sure they could have made a huge down payment on a new home for the amount spent on the wedding, but his parents gave them a 2-bedroom apartment as a wedding gift. It never ceases to amaze me the difference between the two social-economic classes in this country.



Salvador itself was also a neat city to visit! It is over 500 years old-settled first by the Portuguese. It is also where most of the slaves settled in Brazil after slavery was illegal. So the city has lots of culture! The family picked us up and first took us to their beach home. You literally walked out their backyard, across the sidewalk and were at the beach. And what a beautiful beach! After a couple days at the beach home, we went to the apartment in Salvador. Various family members, took us all around to see the sites-a huge artesian market, the old part of town, the area most settled by the blacks with a lot of African influence, and a couple of huge, very old Catholic churches. We went up an elevator that connected the lower part of the city with the upper part on the side of a hill. A family member took us to a beach that was in conjunction with the Tamar Project to help protect the sea turtles.

Family members were in and out lots. One of the girls that had been an exchange student with mom and dad had two young girls, a little younger than Courtney and Annie. They lived just down the street and were back and forth playing constantly. A sister to the family we stayed with had a daughter a little older that was anxious to practice her English. She bonded with our girls instantly and we saw them often too. The apartment we stayed at was just up the hill from one of the beaches in the city too. It fact the internet has it listed as third best beach in Brazil. We went there four times! The girls raved at the fact that they got to go to the beach more times in a week than they had been in their entire life! I’m afraid they will expect all the future beaches they got to, to be that nice! Needless to say we had a wonderful Thanksgiving although it didn’t seem like Thanksgiving! It makes me anxious for our five week Christmas break!

At school my class had a Thanksgiving dinner. Parents brought in food. I had my class present a song, poem, and short skit. I missed the actual presentation, but my assistant was my sub. We are now practicing for our winter music program. We have two more weeks until our five week break. Some Brazilian schools are already out for their summer break, so my kids are really wild! The American School tries to semi-compensate with the Brazilian calendar. That is why we have five weeks off now and seven weeks in June and July. It is summer now, but the temperature has not varied too much since we arrived last winter. It is the rainy season now. The rain actually cools things down a little bit, but is not bad. You never know when the rain is going to hit. You just carry an umbrella all the time and after it rains, the sun comes back out.

Courtney and Annie are excited for Christmas! Annie finally talked us into getting a tree. We bought some lights and we made some red and green chains so our apartment now looks like Christmas! It’s hard for me to think Christmas when it is so warm, although stores are all decorated like in the US. Advertising hits everywhere, I guess! You even see some lights around and some street light poles are decorated.

The girls have met a couple of girls in our apartment building. They are Brazilian and speak Portuguese so that’s fun! Courtney has a pretty good Portuguese vocabulary, but Annie is more hesitant to speak unless she can do it perfectly!

We are having fun learning the public transportation. Just today, we got on a couple buses and rode them around-making a complete circuit. One even went to a neighboring town! We are also having fun trying all the new tropical fruits and new foods. The food in Salvador reminded me of flavors I ate as a kid in Africa. We can get mangos year around, but there are many trees around that are full of ripe mangos now. They are quite stringy, but have a wonderful flavor.

Ate proxima! Until next time!

Connie

Hola!

Time flies! What have we done since I last wrote? We went to see the 3rd High School Musical movie which the girls love! Good thing it is a musical, because we saw the Portuguese version. American movies are often in English and dubbed in Portuguese. It was an experience anyway! The crowd was very much into it! You’d thought we’d seen it live, by the interaction of the audience!

We also hooked up with some people from the French Embassy and went to visit a rehabilitation preserve for rescued cats in the area. A Brazilian family we had met on a previous weekend trip told us that this was a “must” to see! It was really fun and it is a one-of-a-kind thing in Brazil! We got to go right up to the cages that held the panthers and jaguars. We even got to go in the cage with the ocelots. It’s hard to believe such animals are right around here in the wild! The lady who started it felt sorry for the treatment of a panther she had seen at a zoo. The preserve is on her farm and she went through a lot of Brazilian bureaucracy to get it all set up, but it was really nice! She had some really neat parrots around too!

I survived Halloween at school! The students were very excited to say the least! Bill got to be a part of a school Halloween party for the first time since a child too! We were invited to the American Embassy to go trick-or-treating, so the girls ended up quite a bit of candy! Annie was so excited to get a Three Musketeers, and I was so excited to get a Snickers! The strangest simple little things you seem to miss!

We went to another huge market on the outskirts of Brasilia. I love going to the markets! This one had a lot of food, clothes, toys, and housing goods. Food there was definitely cheaper than here in the city, but you can only bring back so much! We went via Metro. We are getting a feel for the public transportation. The girls think it is so fun!

Some of us from the school have been a little disappointed that we are in a tropical climate and it is so difficult to find a place to swim. People do not swim in the lake here and apartment complexes do not have pools, nor are there hardly any public pools. There are private clubs around the lake, but memberships are very expensive. Most of the students I teach have pools, but I can’t invite my family over! Anyway, our headmaster talked to a club and was able to get a few cheaper memberships for those interested. I don’t know how many pursed the opportunity, but I jumped on it! We spent a day there last weekend. It was wonderful to be able to spend a hot afternoon, approximately 95 degrees, in the water. The club has about six pools, one with a huge slide. The other family that arrived when we did, and lives in the apartment next to us with a girl Annie’s age, also pursued it. So we spent the time there together! That was extra fun for the girls.

Yesterday was another Saturday school day for me. It was a professional development day, the first one. It was moved to a Saturday so that we can have a four day weekend the weekend before Thanksgiving. That Thursday is a Brazilian holiday and we get off Friday because we had this professional development day on a Saturday! Literally since the day we arrived, I have only had one school day off without kids! I am so ready for a break!

Today, my co-teacher, Annie’s teacher, invited us to go to a large national park/reserve on the border of the city. She had a Brazilian friend that drove us there. It has lots of walking trails and two huge mineral water pools. It was nice!

I think our rainy season is beginning! It is supposedly very late in arriving, but the past three or four days, we have had a daily shower, or should I say down-pour! The rains haven’t lasted long, but cool things down temporarily! It has been quite hot lately-in the mid to upper nineties with little to no Kansas breeze! The humidity is increasing also.

The girls are continuing to enjoy Brazil! Courtney thoroughly enjoys her ISS (International Social Studies) class. She tends to interact with the international kids more than the American kids. She just last night told us she wanted to spend her high school summers in Spain and France, be an exchange student, and then return to Brasilia as a teacher some day. That was the first I have ever heard her say she wanted to be a teacher, but I guess that is how she thinks she can make it back here! Annie continues to come out of her shell! Mom always said I was shy until I went to Brazil! Annie is the same way, I don’t know what it is about this country, but she is a new child! She is still best friends with the American girl that came at the same time we did and lives right across the parking lot. That has been a God send!

Both are doing well in school. Courtney has learned lots about computers and has had to do numerous projects on it as well as type quite a bit. Both seem to be learning a little more Portuguese. They had a presentation a couple weeks ago and had to sing several songs they learned in Portuguese. Their teacher teaches a lot with songs. They love it, and are constantly singing the songs! Courtney can hear the language quite well and is constantly asking me, “What’s that mean? What’s that mean?” I wish they could be immersed in a Brazilian school for about a month. Bill on the other hand is trying to learn. As they say, it is more difficult the older you are and he is experiencing the difficulty! I am thankful my Portuguese has come back to me as well as it has, and with the friendliness of the Brazilians, I get to practice it lots!

Ate proxima! Until next time! Connie

Another Brasilia update

Oi Amigos! Hello Friends!
It’s been three weeks now since I’ve updated our blog! We are on the go lots! Our typical weekday starts with me leaving the house about 7:15 to walk to school. Bill walks the girls about 7:45 as school starts at 8:00. Bill then returns home to work for Luminous Neon via internet. He usually returns to school about noonish, eats lunch there, and then begins his work as an assistant in the computer department. The kids are dismissed from school at 3:00 and then attend an after-school program until 4:15. Both are doing soccer two days a week. Annie has gymnastics two other days, and Courtney is doing Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art/dance class. On Fridays, they have nothing. Bill is studying Portuguese at the school on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4:30-5:30. I try to leave school around 5:00, but it doesn’t always happen as I am committed to keep open Mondays and Wednesdays after school for meetings. When we do get home, preparing supper takes much more time here than in the US as everything is totally prepared from scratch, plus all fresh fruits and vegetables, which are great, but also take more time. We have no microwave (way too expensive to buy here for a year only) or dishwasher! By the time the girls get their homework done, and we eat supper; it is then bath and bedtime for the girls practically.
On weekends, we are running, trying to do all that we can! The girls seem to enjoy it, but I’m afraid when we return to the US they may ask what are we going to today? Not having a car, makes many things take longer, but forces you to slow down in its own way also. Bill and I were just recently commenting that it was different not having a car, but we thought it was a good experience for a year anyhow! As well as apartment life!
Since I have last written, if you keep up with the World Cup Indoor Soccer (Futsal), games have been going on here in Brazil. We attended a couple of Saturday games, Brazil against Russia and Japan against the Solomon Islands. That was fun-especially the game with Brazil playing! Not only was the game good, but it was fun to be a part of the sold-out crowd! The Brazilians support their team quite enthusiastically! Afterwards we walked to the TV tower market (or the Hippie Fair as some locals call it) since the arena where the Futsal game was quite close by. We browsed at lots of stuff for sale and took a free ride up to the observation deck to see the city from the highest point in Brasilia, it also happens to be very close to the center of the city. We spent most of the day there, and even ate supper from the food vendors. Courtney likes the juice squeezed from the fresh sugarcane. It brings back memories of Africa to me.
We finally had our first three day weekend! October 13th was Teacher Appreciation Day and they actually give teachers the day off! We don’t have the in-service days here like in the US or Kansas. Anyway, we filled our weekend! Friday night Courtney went to a Children’s Day party! (You’ll read bout Children’s Day below.) Brazilians are always ready for a party! J
Saturday, Annie and I went to one of my new Brazilian students’ homes. It was the family that the parents went to China to watch the Olympics, so you can imagine the home! It was beautiful, and huge! The two year old son’s walk in closet was almost as big as one of bedrooms here at our apartment. They had a heated pool, sauna, tennis court, play area with the same playground equipment that is at the school, and a wine cellar. Annie had a ball exploring all the places to hide when playing hide-and-seek!
Some of you may have known that one of Courtney’s wishes was to have a Japanese student in her room and learn to eat with chopsticks properly! She does have a Japanese student in her room, but it is a boy! Anyway, her homeroom teacher is Pilipino and heard her wish. She volunteered to come over and help us cook an oriental meal and gave Courtney some chopsticks. As Courtney has both the 4th teachers for various subjects, we invited the other teacher over too. And we all ate with chopsticks! That was Saturday night.
Then, Sunday, October 12th was Children’s Day, a day set aside for kids like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. We did our first family city bus ride to a mall. (I had ridden one before with Meire, the lady I tutor.) The girls loved it and compared the ride to an amusement park ride! They weren’t far off as it was rather wild! The drivers go faster than the traffic and zoom around the hills and corners! On our venture, we discovered there was a huge Children’s Day festival downtown which we had to check out! There were lots of activities such as games, a tent of computers, huge inflatable slides, and trampoline-like things to jump on, along with many things to be purchased by parents for their children! Thank goodness we had celebrated Children’s Day at school on Friday with all the inflatable jumpy things and the girls didn’t ask to wait in the incredibly long lines to do all these things!
After attending this festival, Courtney and I went to party at another friend’s elaborate home! These parents intentionally invited 4th graders and their parents, so everyone could kind of get to know each other! It was exceptionally nice!
Monday then was Teacher Appreciation Day. We spent half of the day trying to get our internet reset-up properly—a long story! What an ordeal in a big city compounded with Brazilian bureaucracy! Anyway, that afternoon we walked a couple miles to the City Park. We then met up with Meire, the lady I tutor. Meire loves the girls! (She has no Children!) And, they love her too. She has kind of adopted them as an aunt here. We took the Metro/subway to the biggest mall in Brasilia. It had a game room for kids with arcade-type games, bumper cars, a simulated water ride, and a small roller coaster. The girls had a ball! Anyway, our three day weekend passed way too quickly!
Last week, I was busy with Parent-Teacher conferences. And one of the Portuguese teachers invited all the teachers to her home to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Day mid-week. She had paella cooked with huge prawns. I bet three of them weighed a pound! It was wonderful, but made the week a little more hectic!
This past Saturday, we tried to visit a waterfall , going part-way by bus, but found out we would not be able to take a taxi from the final bus stop as the local economy there does not support taxis. So we shifted gears and went to the local zoo. It was nice! I noticed that the African animals seemed much healthier than in the Wichita Zoo; and I think of that as a very nice zoo. I guess the climate is just more similar to their natural habitat.
Sunday was a fun day! Courtney’s Spanish friend’s mom invited the whole family over for dinner. The dad works with the Spanish Embassy. There is Carmen, Courtney’s friend, a six year old brother, and another on the way! They are such a nice family! It was so nice to be in a home, to be able to relax and visit with adults while the kids ran and played outside. Our apartment is not conducive to that! Their back yard is the one that opens up to the forest and has monkeys all around. I got to see them! It was so neat! They said parrots are a normal sight too!
As you can tell our schedule is very full! I work exceptionally hard during the week, so I don’t have to do school work on the weekends much! We have lots of special activities going on constantly at school! The 2nd grade classes are busy preparing an assembly to present next week. Annie will be in it. I am also on the Halloween committee. Halloween is not a Brazilian holiday, but the school makes a big deal of it, and the kids have learned what it is and look forward to it! The elementary students are dismissed at 11:30, after an all morning parade and party! Teachers set up Halloween “fun” booths for the classes and everyone comes back that night for a Halloween party/carnival! The high school sets up a haunted house! It will be crazy!! I’m so glad it falls on a Friday this year!
Anyway…that the latest from the Weesner’s in Brazil!
Ciao!
Connie