In Sorocaba

I arrrived safe and sound, if a little sleepy and have been spending these days relaxing and laughing with a big family that has no problem with loud. I feel like I'm at home! There are two sisters living at home, plus two nieces aged six and eleven. Another sister is married and lives about ten minutes away...and there always seems to be someone coming over to visit...

We saw the main tourist attractions today, which were:

A) The fish at the Prefeitura (city hall). Greedy little beasts. And some of them actually quite monster-like. I guess carp really just grow and grow and grow...

B) The coxinha at the Padaria Real which was the best coxinha that I have ever tasted and well deserves its reputation as the best coxinha in Brasil. Really. Never tasted another fried-chicken croquette quite like this one...

That was about it. Not much to see in Sorocaba, which is fine by me. I need rest! And tomorrow we're just hanging around the house, then going out to a friend's cabin to celebrate the coming of the new year with worship songs and lots of food.

Wishing you all a wonderful New Year!!!

Vacation

I am finally taking vacation!!! Technically, it's already started, but Thursday night I should be getting on a bus and travelling six or eight hours to Sorocaba, where I'll be visiting with a friend of mine and enjoying the holidays with her and her family. So I'll be pretty much out of contact for a bit, as my cell will be on roaming and I don't know what my internet access will be like. But I should be back by the 5th or so...

These pictures are from our Christmas weekend:



There's me and the scary mechanical reindeer at the Rio Sul shopping mall, a behemoth temple of consumption that's so large people forget what floor they're on...



Tiago playing Papai Noel...



And Tiago after a day in the sweltering Christmas heat...isn't he cute?!

A Merry Mishap of a Christmas

Christmas in Brasil is more technically celebrated on the 24th. Tiago and I are, in his words, "orphaned and abandoned" in the city, so we were going to celebrate together, something small and um, romantic. Since presents aren't supposed to be opened before the huge dinner feast at midnight on the 25th, we were going to have it at my home. A Mexican lunch, lasagne supper.

Everything went wrong.

First, the refrigerator freaked out in the heat. The freezer should more honestly be called a refrigerator and the refrigerator is so warm that it only works to keep the cockroaches out. This did not make me happy.

In the middle of the morning, I remembered I was supposed to check up on Puxa. You may remember her from previous posts, my coworker's crazy cat. They live about fifteen to twenty minutes away. It was close to 100 degrees outside and the streets were packed with people coming back from church and doing their last-minute Christmas shopping. After sweating and pushing my way through the crowds, I arrived at their house. And the portão was open. Which usually isn't good. But I didn't see any dog poop (the neighbor's dogs love the Nichols' landing), so I started walking. And stepped into a lake of orange dog pee. With flipflops on.

Shaking the pee out of my sandals as best as I could, I put the key into the lock. It didn't turn. I looked at the key, then the keychain, then the key again, then the possibilities of breaking in through the window. It wasn't the right key. Their key wasn't on my keychain. I don't know WHERE I've put the key to their home, but the probability is high that it's lost in some stack of moving stuff somewhere in my house.

At this point, I was livid. With myself, with the cat, with the pee, the heat and the lack of a spare key. I stomped home and looked, unsuccessfully for the key. And then, after spending close to three hours this morning prepping food for the week and for our dinner, I went to light the stove. The brand-new stove. And I couldn't get anything to work. There was no smell of gas. It didn't light with a match. It didn't light with the self lighter.

I cried.

Tiago called right about this point. I let him in, gave him my sob story, and left to take a cold shower and stop being so emotional. After all, "Christmas is about Jesus. It's not about traditions or lasagne. We can eat somewhere else. Let's focus on what we're celebrating here." So I tried.

Praise the Lord for Tiago. He read the instruction manual for the stove (what men actually do this???) and discovered that it is idiot-proof. I'm supposed to push the dials in before turning them in order to release the gas. So we have a working stove...yay! So what if I have to throw out all the contents of my freezer???

All in all, our Christmas was rather un-traditional. We ate lasagne and Mom's famous cinnamon rolls, read the Christmas story, went to night church, and watched a couple of Alias episodes. Christmas day we celebrated with the family of a friend of ours, who took us right in like we were long-lost third cousins, roping us into their crazy games and getting Tiago to be Santa Claus for the kids in a suit that was about two sizes too small!

And now I'm home, relaxing in front of the fan, typing out my Christmas 2006 memories...trying to dream of far-away places where homes don't feel like saunas and fireworks are only used on the Fourth of July...

Morning Scribbles

Yahoo! wants to know if I've ever used a credit card on their site...to verify my supposedly incorrect sign-in information. Of course, I assume this is phishing and send it off to their security department. But then, a quick Google search turns up a host of info that makes me wonder if it wasn't a fake after all. But I didn't type my password incorrectly, because when I reloaded the browser, it opened to my inbox. I'm starting to dislike the Yahooligans...

Anyone know anything about this?

Yesterday we walked a sight more than I'm used to. Around Copacabana, around Ipanema for some really divine ice cream across from absurdly expensive haute couture stores with massive bodyguards and red carpet laid out on the cobblestone sidewalks...from Urca and Sugarloaf to the Rio Sul shopping mall where we inhaled burritos in a restaurant where all the windows were crooked and on the ceiling...

I can't believe Mom's only here until tomorrow night. That's kind of a depressing thought.

On a slightly up note, I should be heading off to São Paulo state right after Christmas to spend time with my friend Zé and her family. As much as I wanted to hang out on the million man + crowded beaches of Copa and Ipanema on New Year's Eve, watch the Black Eyed Peas and John Legend and a couple other artists perform for free before the midnight fireworks show...I think I'll give it all up for a little peace and quiet and the chance to NOT get macerated in the crowds. Or trampled. No matter how good the music might be...it just isn't worth it. :)

We visited mother and baby today. They're still not out of the hospital. It's

syphilis. They're not coming home for another week or so, as mother and daughter get treated. Little M- weighs a sack of sugar and has the wrinkled ancient face of a crack baby. But she's so beautiful...and her mother so fragile as she queries about her boyfriend and whether he's asked about her...

There was a man with a cast up to mid-thigh, a lucky escape when he was run over by a car. He muses on why the people who pass by look at them with disgust. Perhaps it had something to do with C. Vinicius, who shows off a pair of Lenny Kravitz aviators he stole off of "a gringa." A Dutch girl. They're not sure if they're good sunglasses or not. As if I would encourage them...

"Maybe that gringa was my friend..."

"Liar! She was part of a tour group!"

Bruno wants to know how much my camera cost. It was a gift; I'm not going to ask my mother.
"Well, can I ask her?"
"Sure."
He turns around..."Wait a minute! She doesn't speak Portuguese!" We both grin.

Someone wants to know why Jesus doesn't just come down and separate the Atlantic ocean at the Copacabana beach. That would be a sufficient miracle to make faith easier. "This whole "blessed are those who believe even when they can't see thing..." is really tough. It would be easier if we could see...but I know why God did that. He did it so we'd come to him out of AMOR. Out of love..."

And he also wants to know how we knew what God's will for our lives was, how we heard him speak so clearly that we left our homes to come here...

Ah, such interesting conversations that arise on the street....

Mom played tic-tac-toe with a street boy. She won. We can tease her a bit: she's been bragging and I had to remind her that she won off of a kid huffing glue. Not exactly in the most excellent of mental spirits.

Some of the kids were doing math problems. Go figure. We have a bunch of teens who have probably barely completed twelve COMBINED years of schooling, and they're excited to do math problems. Asking for harder stuff, like multiplication and division, even though North Americans draw the division lines differently than Brazilians...

I asked C. Vinicius why he was doing so good at math if he'd never gone to school and he looked at me with that tilted, gap-toothed smile:

"I know how to count money. Duh."

Ah, yes. I guess that would be a requirement for the streets. Even drug dealers don't want stupid pushers.

because i'm crashing...

we hiked around the market today looking for dishtowels and beads. tiago was more than patient. then it was a tram ride and long hike around santa teresa. wonderful day. even though it was blazing hot. hello summer in rio!

i'm exhausted and and almost falling asleep typing. we're going to bed, me and mom, with our fans turned on full blast over these sunburns and our poor, swollen feet elevated.

hint to the traveler: when doing the rushed rio tour, eating (i.e. gorging on meat and sushi) at a churrascaria one night and following that up with mineiran cuisine equals a sure recipe for salt overdose and a very, very sore stomach. we're on a salad diet for the next few days!

in other news, a friend on the street gave birth last week and we hope to have time to go visit her tomorrow. it's her fifth baby girl. and she's about as old as i am. i don't know if that makes me feel old...or just jaded...or what.


sleeepyyyyy.....g'night!

On the Lake

Here's a teaser photo of our fun times in Rio as I sit down to quickly type out my prayer letter....

Me and Mom at Lagoa!

It's been a while since I wrote anything here...

because I'm in the process of moving Ben's stuff out of my apartment and moving my stuff in. Of course, that assumes I actually have stuff, which I don't, which is why I'm being a bit lazy updating...I'm out buying refrigerators and spatulas and dishes and toilet seats and kitchen faucets...

I'll be back online soon...