3 months in Brasil

Hello all!
It has been a long time since I updated the blog so I thought I would take some time after a hectic week to let you know how we are doing!
The kids started school on June 1st and after a brief 17 days in school, they were out for 'winter' break. We love having uniforms for school. It makes it easy to get up, get dressed and then out the door by 7am. Marilyn starts school at 7:30 and ends at 3pm and Brady starts at 7:45 and ends at noon. They both enjoyed the first month meeting new people and going to a birthday party almost every weekend! The birthday parties here are full blown family events with tons of food, drink and activities. It is more like a wedding than a birthday party!
We got our first shipment of items in June so that made it a little easier than having 4 forks, spoons, knives, glasses, etc. Some kitchen items, clothes and electronics arrived in the air shipment. We only had one rental car at first but as luck would have it, another family was moving from here to South Korea and needed to sell their car. It is pretty nice but it is a 2 door so David uses that to drive to and from work. We received our company car at the beginning of July just in time for the break. It is a new Hyundai Tucson so it fits our family nicely. The best part is that it has an ipod attachment! The radio stations here seem to play the same 10 songs over and over and over!
The winter break was pretty fun. We tried to plan a lot of activities. Some of the kids from school rented a van and driver and we all went to the Sao Paulo Zoo. It was really fun and it was a gorgeous day. We also have our international group that meets every Tuesday so we tried going to those events every week since other people had their kids home too. We went to the equivalent of the state fair here in Brasil as well. A friend from school told us about it and took us there. They had a lot of animals and of course, the midway and junk food! David made a trip back to Phoenix in July also to stock up on Trader Joe's supplies and birthday presents for future parties. Toys here are VERY expensive and VERY cheaply made. There are some cool wooden toys that you can by at some of the fairs and outdoor markets but even stuff at Walmart is really low quality and expensive. Other things that are expensive include anything that plugs in, especially electronics, clothes, towels and linens.
We took a few day trips to the beach in July. We went to Ihla Bela a beautiful island where you can sit on the beach and sip umbrella drinks while the kids play in the sand. It has no waves and awesome scenery. You drive your car on the ferry to get there so that is extra fun for the kids. We also took a 5 day trip to an island called Ihla Grande. It is literally the middle of the jungle. There are no roads of cars so you can take the boat taxi around the island and go to the amazing beaches there. We saw tons of wildlife including little monkeys that were swinging through the trees right off our balcony eating fruit from the palm trees! The kids had fun and we even got to bring our big dog, Biggie with us. It was his first swim in the ocean at 10 years old!
When we returned we were supposed to start school right away but they cancelled it for the first 12 days because they are freaking out about the swine flu. There are only 3 people in the whole city that have it. When Marilyn had a fever one day in June they were telling me where the children's hospital was so I could take her. I'm like, she's only had a fever for one day! Needless to say they over react a little when it comes to illnesses/fevers, etc. We finally started school just last week. Marilyn had a rough time at first although she has many friends. The first half day is completely in Portuguese so she understands very little so far. Brady's class is more bilingual and he has told me everyday that he loves school!
The other thing that happened over break is that we found out that the school administrator not only lived in our neighborhood but that her golden retriever had puppies!! We found out from our friend that took us to the "state fair" so we immediately called her to see if we could come and see them. They were only 2 weeks old and couldn't even walk yet! I'm pretty sure those were the smallest puppies I had ever seen and for sure the smallest goldens I had seen. The rest of the break we were over there about every other day visiting the 6 puppies, one girl and 5 boys. Needless to say, we could not resist getting one so the Wed. before school started, we got the little girl at 6 weeks old and named her Rio! She was born on my great friend Tracey's birthday, June 23rd and we got her on Lester's birthday, Aug. 12!! Of course the first night I was up and down all night with her helping her adjust to her new home. The 2nd night I went to take her out about every 2-3 hours, the third night I think I was up twice and after that she has not made a peep at night! So much easier that a baby! LOL She is very smart and the cutest thing you've ever seen. She loves having Biggie as her adopted dad too! She waits to see where he will lie down and then she goes and snuggles up on his tail.
We celebrated Marilyn's 7th birthday last Friday with a few of her school friends because we ended up getting our giant boat shipment the same week! It had all our furniture in it including all of the toys and the rest of our clothes. Unfortunately I got my old maternity clothes instead of my sweaters and long sleeve shirts! We ended up with 18 missing boxes and just found out they are officially missing and did not accidentally go to storage. Time for the claim form. Our piano doesn't work either so they'll be owing us some dough!
The best parts about Brasil: a full time housekeeper that comes 5 days a week from 8-5pm for very little money. You can get your nails, toes and eyebrows waxed for about $10 total. Everyone is SO NICE here! I already have great friends that help me make appointments or anything else that I need or want help with. The food here is wonderful. It is so much better than when we lived in England and I constantly craved food from home. They have a fresh vegetable farmers market every day of the week in different parts of town so everything was picked that morning, organic and very cheap. I go to the one on Tues. near the school or the one in my neighborhood on Thursday. I also have my own vegetable/fruit garden. This morning we ate fresh strawberries and tomatoes that I picked and we have a ton of lettuce and spices like basil, cilantro, mint, etc. We even have things growing that I have no idea what they even are. We also have a papaya and lime tree in our yard that make huge juicy fruit!
Not so great parts about Brasil: I am not fluent in Portuguese so the language barrier is significant as times. Portuguese is a very difficult language especially at my ripe old age! We are taking lessons and I can now understand much more than I could before and much more than I can speak, but we continue to keep at it hoping it eventually sinks in. There are speed cameras everywhere here so I already got a speeding ticket! They get you for going just 1 mile an hour over! The crazy thing is that no one stops at stop signs, stays in their lane or signals to switch and lots of people run red lights if they feel it is taking too long. There are also a million motorcycles here weaving through traffic in between cars. I've already seen 2 of them get squished and I almost ran over one myself cuz they are crazy!!
Other than that, we absolutely love it here. It is the most beautiful place ever with the nicest people. Now that we have all our things we feel much more at home. If we can master Portuguese than we would maybe consider staying here forever, especially if we could live in this house. I'm not sure when we will plan a visit. We thought about Christmas but may consider traveling around South America instead since it is summer here and the kids are off school for 6 weeks.
I finally have 2 walking buddies and walked 4 days this week for a total of 22km! One is from Australia and the other one is from New Zealand! Love my new friends from down under! There is an awesome and gorgeous park here with a 1km loop and lots of wildlife. Their is an old hospital on the land that was once an insane asylum, then a tuberculosis clinic where people were quarantined and then a nursing home. Since Brazilians are very superstitious they decided to close it down because too many people had died there. I'll let you know if I see any ghosts!
Thanks to everyone who sent postcards over the break to the kids. They had fun sharing them with their friends at school. The kids all laughed at the one with the saguaro on the car ~ thanks aunt casey ~ since they have never seen or barely heard of a saguaro here!
We miss you all very much and hope you don't forget about us! E-mail us anytime or you can call our local Phoenix number with NO long distance charges at (480) 282-8713. We are 4 hours ahead of Phoenix right now at same time zone as Iceland. Also, if you haven't joined facebook, you should! I have hundreds of photos on there. It is easy and a fun way to stay connected to tons of people.
I'll try to update again soon! Much love!