Brazil Bound

Last week, the whole family went down to visit Brazil. It was David's 9th week in Brazil and our first!
Luckily I had seen enough photos and videos so that it felt familiar, in a way. We arrived first thing in the morning in Sao Paulo, Brazil along with a few other Honeywell employees that were coming down to meet with Embraer. We met with the Honeywell driver from Sao Jose dos Campos and he drove us an hour and a half to town.
My first impression when I walked out of the airport was Hawaii. It felt very tropical and there were amazing flowers everywhere. Although we just drove out of Sao Paulo, you can tell it is a gigantic city. The most interesting thing along the way is that there were people walking, biking all along the freeway, not to mention the people darting across it from one side to the other. There is even a little 'people holder' in the median so people don't get squished.
Sao Jose is a much smaller town with a maze of one way roads that you have to navigate to get around. David did pretty well after spending a lot of time there so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. It was interesting that we had to drive around one whole square block to get to the hotel.
The hotel was a 2 bedroom flat that had an air conditioner in both bedrooms upstairs but not downstairs. It was really hot on Sunday and we went to the 19th floor to swim. Even with 45 sunblock the sun was so strong that in 20 min. I had visible tan lines. It is slightly like AZ in the fact that the sun is super strong and hot when you're in it but in the shade it is much cooler, although still humid.
On Monday we started the house hunting tour. First we went to the neighborhood that has 3 houses that we liked. It also has great security and beautiful houses. There is a full-on castle in there and a house that looks like a big top that we started balling the Mickey Mouse house. People have told David it is one of the nicest neighborhoods. The first house we looked at was one that was our very top choice from the beginning although it would have been nice if they cleaned it up a little before we came over. It is a great house and perfect for our family but a few days before our trip we found another house that was for rent and fell in love with it from the photos alone. That was the 2nd house we looked at that we now call Casa Azul. It is big, blue and amazing. It has a ton of room for guests (hint, hint). We went to a few other houses but we narrowed it down to these 2 very quickly and we now are starting the contract/lease for the blue house.
The next day we visited the 2 international schools in town. The school year is based on the Australian model. School just started on Feb. 4th so it had only been in session one week when we visited. They take almost all of July off for winter break and then December and January for summer break. The first school was much bigger and more spread out. Most of the classrooms were virtually outside. They have turtles and chickens and a huge garden. There are so many fruit trees that I had never heard of 1/2 of them. This school is a little further away from our neighborhood so we ventured to the 2nd one. Marilyn and Brady both loved this school and it was the one we had pretty much picked since they do a 1/2 day in English and a 1/2 day in Portuguese where the other school was mostly Portuguese. All kids in both schools take taekwondo and flute! Of course there are some other things but I thought both of those were neato!
We went to lots of good restaurants. Most restaurant workers do not speak any English so communication was interesting while we were there. Occasionally we came across a menu that had English under the Portuguese. We ate pizza and lots of beasts on skewers. They love to bbq meat and seafood on giant spears and everything comes with pinto beans and rice. We also ate Italian and a couple of places that had huge yummy salad bars. They have great food and the biggest part of the menu is the fresh squeezed juices that they literally walk outside, pluck off a tree and squeeze for you!!
I could actually feel my Portuguese lessons starting to work.....then of course I came back here and don't have anyone speaking the language constantly. The great thing is that even Brady at 3 years old keeps asking me how to say different things in Portuguese! They will both fluent in no time.
The best scenery we had was driving from Sao Jose to the beach at Ubatuba. It was literally like the rainforest even though the official rainforest is much farther north and west! Please check out my facebook page for photos and I'll send you some from shutterfly if you don't have an account. I will update more soon on our new plan for moving! Don't forget to become a "follower" so it lets you know when I post new info. Thanks for reading!