Another update

Hola!
Two weeks have passed since I last wrote and we’ve been here almost two months! Yesterday was another one of school work Saturdays! Those make for such long weeks! I’m SO ready for a three day week-end! I keep telling myself that I will enjoy the time off at Christmas! Yesterday was the school book fair and it was a BIG deal! Scholastic sends books down here for such a thing. More than people from our school attended as it is fairly difficult to get books in English down here-let alone for kids. Anyway, I worked as a cashier.
After the book fair, Bill, Courtney, Annie, and I went out for lunch (a brunch buffet) at a pastry shop! We had seen it at one of our neighboring “commercials.” It was a great way to try many of the sweet and salty pastries (little chicken, cheese, ham and cheese pies,etc.) It was also a great way to get way too many calories, but it was SO good!
We then walked quite a ways to a “commercial” that was known for electrical stores. Our night light bulbs had burn out and we needed new ones. You can’t just buy those kind of light bulbs anywhere! It was quite a long walk. We were all tired after that! We rented a movie and relaxed at home. Most US movies are in English and then dubbed in Portuguese, or VCR machines allow you to choose the language you want to hear the movies in.
Today, we were invited to a Canadian family’s home for a BBQ and to swim. They are a family that was hired by the school last year. They have three children and were not happy in an apartment provided by the school. It was very nice and fun! I actually have their daughter in my room!
School continues to keep me exceptionally busy during the week. I am often making worksheets at home after I get the girls to bed. Our workbooks are still caught up in customs some where. Last week, we celebrated Peace Day. This week we had another Character Counts assembly-teaching values. We also went the musical theatre here and had a really neat play/musical presentation of Edvard Gerig-from Norway. It was all in Portuguese which I could understand and I think the English-speaking kids got most of it! It was done in a comical way and was fun!
Last week-end, we rented our first car and drove to a quaint, small town close to here called Pirenopolis. It is a common place for people from the city to get away to for the week-end. Needless to say, as we left after school, the first of the rains started and it got dark earlier. The roads here are not marked. I thought Portugal was bad! They were just poorly marked! These literally are not marked! We had Google mapped it on the computer, but when you see no road signs and you are on the outskirts of a huge city, a map is worthless! Anyway, I was afraid we would get out in the middle of nowhere-literally, and not have a clue where we were. So…I asked someone (who probably doesn’t drive-takes busses everywhere-because many of the poor cannot afford a car) if we were on the correct road. They sent us a different direction! I think we were on the correct road to start with, but our two hour trip took us over four hours in the dark! Thank goodness at the Pousada ( bed & breakfast) where stayed, we met a really nice couple from Brasilia at breakfast, with a son 11 years old who is studying English. And as I have said in previous blogs, many Brazilians are incredibly friendly! So we spent a good part of Saturday with them sight-seeing. We went to another waterfall with a sandy beach with them too. We spent Sunday with them hiking in a nature preserve and ate lunch with them. We then followed them back to Brasilia! Thank goodness for that! Even with them having been to this town before, they still took a wrong turn on the way back and had to turn around! The town itself was nice. It reminded me of the quaint villages in Portugal, but the rain put a little damper on things too. I’m glad we got to see it, but our next trip out of town might be made by bus. Driving here is stressful-even being a passenger, trying to help guide the driver here, is stressful! I will say we saw two big red parrots flying in the wild on our return home! It was amazing to see! They seemed so out of place! The couple said they saw a toucan on the way there. We are definitely in another part of the world where you see US zoo birds in the wild!
Rainy season is arriving! It has not rained every day, but several. I had heard and thought the rains would make it hot and humid, and it probably will yet. But so far, the rains have just cooled things down. I have even felt chilly a couple of times! The rains have been refreshing though! The air was so dry!
Aside from us here in Brazil, my parents are moving to McPherson, Kansas this upcoming weekend. For those of you who don’t know--that is 30 miles from where we are/were in Hutchinson. They were going to move a couple of weeks ago, but my mom had a dizzy spell and even went in the hospital. Tests reveal nothing and this is supposedly quite common, although new to her and us! She is still dizzy, but anxious to move. My sister was in Illinois helping them pack at the time, which I am thankful! My brothers, one of my sister-in –laws, and friends, will be able to help them actually move. I feel bad that I’m missing out on it all, although Mom thinks she might still have some stuff for me to help with next summer. When we have talked to Bill’s dad on the phone, he is quite forgetful, yet he seems to have some understanding that we are a ways away! He has seemed to know who I am the phone too!

I guess this is it for this blog entry! Ciao!
Connie

Update September 16th

Greetings from Brasilia!

What a busy/fun weekend! Yesterday morning, we went to a market (Feria dos Importadores )with Meire, the lady I started tutoring English to, and her husband, Marçio. Her husband works for the Brazilian government and speaks good English. She is trying to learn it in case they get stationed somewhere overseas. She is also studying Spanish. Anyway, the market had all kinds of things-food, plants, electronics, clothes, linens, fishing gear, and probably anything else you could think of. We then went by their apartment! It was fun to be around a Brazilian couple. They had fun with the girls and the girls enjoyed them likewise!

Saturday we carpooled to a waterfall with several people from the school. It was about 30 minutes out of town. It was nice to get out of the city. We had to hike down to the waterfall. One of the guys that has been at the school for four years invited people to celebrate his birthday with him and wife by going to this waterfall. But… part of the adventure of the trip was repelling down the waterfall! And, oh what fun!! He knew someone that did this professionally and the guy set it all up for us for a small fee! We practiced on a tiny cliff before doing it down the actual waterfall. It really wasn’t scary, but loads of fun! The girls and some others did not repel, but I did it twice! They played in the water.

Last Sunday was Brazil’s Independence Day. We went to the parade and air show held to help celebrate the day along with thousands of other people! They literally block off the streets with a fence or I’m sure the parade would not be able to pass by! The parade consisted of many military people from various states, the Brazilian Navy, Marines, bands, soccer teams, and various other organizations. Even the Brazilian Olympic winning volleyball team was in it!

The week before last was a long one! I had a nasty cold. Annie had a bad bout with her asthma and we had to give her several nights of treatments. Courtney had some kind of allergic reaction to something and her face swelled up. They said Courtney’s reaction could have been to the sun. We were in the sun watching the Independence Day parade. We are that much closer to the equator and the sun is intense! We took the both of the girls to an allergist down here. They say all this can be attributed to the dryness too. All I know it was a long week and we are glad that we are all better now!

It has not really rained since March and I have had lots of kids out of school with various ailments. The rainy season is supposed to start here this month, but last year waited until November. It will be hard to believe it can go from so dry to 100% humidity! The temperature doesn’t vary too much, but they say the summer (rainy season here) seems hotter because of the humidity. It has been a little warmer though. The temperature has been in the 90’s and it doesn’t cool down quite as much at night as it did! We don’t have air conditioning and had to break down and buy a couple of fans!

School has been busy too! We are constantly celebrating something! (Brazilians are always ready to have a reason to celebrate!) We have our Character Counts (teaching values and citizenship) assemblies once a month! Plus we had a Brazilian author and musician visit on different days. We also did an Independence Day program which every class had to have a part in! I had to do mid-term progress reports last week. There’s never a dull moment!

The girls continue to thank God in their prayers for the opportunity to be down here for a year. It is fun to see them try everything! Annie picked up some fruit-like pod thing in our apartment garden last week and had me ask our apartment security guard what it was. When he said it was edible, she was so excited! She carried it up to our apartment and threw it on our apartment marble floors until it finally cracked. (I wonder what the neighbors below us thought! It wasn’t quiet!) Bill having not been out with us when we found it, wanted to throw it away. (It didn’t look too appetizing!) But she told him, “Daddy, in Brazil you have to try everything!” She has also been carrying in little, green, hard mangos that have fallen off of trees! We also have a collection of rocks in our apartment already too. Quartz is common here amidst the red dirt.

All for now!
Connie

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