julho!

Hi friends and family! Brett and I haven’t been up to a whole lot lately, but here are some updates on our life here in Brazil. We are slowly adjusting (although I’m already convinced it’s freezing when it’s 55 degrees).

I completed my first class at the University of Brasilia (UnB). On the days that I had class, I would wake up at 6:30 with Brett and leave the house by 7:30. Brett would drive to his office and then I would drop him off and drive to school. Driving in Brasilia is not that bad! The blocks are a little confusing, but thankfully I didn’t have to deal with those too much.

they were towing cars one day with... a forklift 

The class was a two-week long winter interim course and was really intense. Three hours a day (9am-12:30p), five days a week. I can speak some and form very basic sentences, but it was mostly vocabulary, grammar, and listening skills. I just enrolled in the next section- that begins August 5^th. I was able to make some friends in the class as well. A girl from Russia named Tatiana and I became close while discussing Russian literature and our love of eating all the time. She may not be in my next class though, which is unfortunate. An Italian mother and her two daughters asked me if I wanted to teacher her daughters art, so that may be an opportunity in the future that could be fun!

some of my course material

After the last day of class, we all got together and ate dinner at what appeared to be a Brazilian chain-type fast food restaurant. We paid R$18 each and could order as much food as we wanted. The restaurant served "tapiocas" and even though I've been there and had them, I still have no idea what they are. I took a lot of pictures to document this strange new type of food, so you can make your own conclusions. There were two types, a sandwich version (tapiocas) and pizza version (pizzoca- a play on words, obviously). 

my first 'tapioca'. it had some kind of meat inside. 

the second one. it had coconut and sweetened condensed milk. it was good!

same, but the inside. i was really trying to figure these things out.

Brett's 'pizzoca'

We have been spending some time with our neighbors as well, Estrella and Lucas. They had a party a couple of weekends ago to celebrate their furniture and belongings arriving from France. We met a Russian couple there that we are pretty sure are spies. They “work for the embassy” and brought traditional Russian pancakes to share with everyone.

from the house warming party

Estrella and Lucas took us out to breakfast one Sunday to a French themed restaurant. This is a huge deal because Estrella is French and she claims the croissants they serve are almost as good as French croissants.  

Things are still pretty uneventful though. Dessy swims every day, even just by himself. He’ll run in, take a quick lap, run out. He loves it. He’ll stand in the water and just stare at me if I try to get him out.

Desmond running off to swim.

"Not ready to come out yet, mom!"

Also, Brett got a tentative end date for the project, so it looks like we will be home by Christmas! We also may get a trip home at some point, but not so sure on the details for that just yet. Hopefully we will be able to time it in time to meet our new nephew!

Miss you all!

atualizações!

Happy Fourth of July! We spent our holiday (Brett took off work) in Pirenópolis hiking around some natural waterfalls. The town itself is very tourist-y. It’s bright and colorful and was pretty quiet on a Thursday afternoon. We drove about two hours to get there from where we live in Lago Sul. The drive was beautiful. The terrain of Brazil is reminiscent of Hawaii and Colorado, mixed together. We packed a lunch and started out around 10:30 am. The roads weren’t too terrible, except for one part near the end of the drive. We had to switch over to another road that would take us straight to Pirenópolis, but the way to do so was to essentially cut through this sketchy area on dirt roads. But that’s what our GPS said to do, so we did it.

It was definitely worth the drive. The waterfalls themselves were about fifteen minutes outside of town on a farm property. We parked and paid R$ 30 (a bit steep if you ask me, but whatever) and dodged a few giant roosters before starting our hike. I had no idea that the hike was going to be as strenuous as it was- I wore flip flops. The first few waterfalls were all right, but towards the end we were basically climbing a mountain to get up to the top. We even swam in one! It was really frightening though because you could not see the bottom. As soon as I got in I imagined that an anaconda lived in the bottom so I was done with that. I did, however, do a lot better than Brett.

This was the mildest climb we had all day.

Love this guy

Cachoeiras = waterfalls

Jurassic Park?

straight out of Lost 

Trying not to think about an anaconda coming up from the water.

When we were done with the waterfalls we hiked back down (much worse than going up), and made it to our car. We stopped for ice cream in the town; Brett got some popsicle type things and I got a couple scoops of coconut ice cream and a scoop of milho verde (CORN) flavored ice cream. It tasted just like corn. I’ve been spoiled- I now would like to ingest all of my vegetables in ice cream form. We hit the road again and Brett had a really good time following a speeding Jetta. I think at one point we reached 170 kmph (105 mph). After we made it through rush hour traffic we were happy to make it home.

Other things we have been up to…

- Made a United States breakfast feast for our neighbors. It included scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes.

Zion is a funny dog.

- We bought the dogs “beds” (Penny really misses her bed back home). They are pretty funny- Penny’s has barbies on it and Desmond’s has hot wheels.

- Desmond swims every single day, and he even has helped Zion learn to get in the water. This habit has resulted in his hair getting really gross and full of burrs, because he goes and runs through the brush directly afterwards. Today I gave him a bath because I suspect he and Penny rolled in something nasty. I attempted to comb out most of the burrs but he wouldn’t hold still. I took a few pictures of them together- look how big he is! His back is taller than Penny’s already.

Penny is used to being the subject. She obviously loves it, as you can see.

Desmond on the other hand was thrilled! 

Switched positions. 

100% done with this. 

- I start my classes at the University of Brasilia on Monday! Having one car will make things a bit tricky, but it will also be my first experience driving down here. We’ll let you know how that goes.

We miss you all! Starting to get a little bit homesick, but we got a package from my mom and dad this week that was full of BBQ sauce and peanut butter, so we will continue to survive. 

protestando

I have had several questions surrounding the protests in Brazil, so I figured a quick post for those that are interested is in order.

Here is everything I know: there was a new tax put on busses, something like 9 cents. There is a perception that the World Cup is bad for the country and the tourist financial gains will only benefit the rich, and they are neglecting the poor. With this being the Confederations Cup weeks and lots of media attention already focused on Brazil, it seems like the right time to "speak up", I guess.

Today, I left work early because a protest was scheduled in Brasilia for 5pm and it is much easier and probably safer to just avoid it. Much of the major protests and riots have been happening outside of Brasilia. There were some demonstrations during the opening game last Saturday, but we weren't there so we can't speak to it. From what I gather Rio, Sao Paulo, and Belo Horizonte have been the major sites so far. Today maybe Brasilia will make the news.

As I left work I did see a young guy with a Guy Fawkes mask and a sign, I didn't have time to stop and read it, but lets be honest I couldn't even if I did. Other than that, it does not seem like the people have changed anything in their day to day lives so I remain unconcerned.

From a safety standpoint, neither Natalie or myself have felt in any danger during our stay thus far. I don't think this will change. Once the Confederations Cup has ended and the world media has exited, I believe things will quiet down. I might be wrong about that though, but I can certainly see this being true.

Some quick notes about us:

Natalie has officially enrolled for Portuguese lessons at the University of Brasilia, it starts in early July. She's excited to get started and has been working on her own to get ahead.

My project has resumed, some small snags here and there, but overall, we are finally moving forward. They have extended the timelines all the way through April of next year. I'm not sure what my involvement will be for all of the different phases but I think I can get done much sooner than that.

Healthwise, we haven't had any issues. Dogwise, they love it, Desmond has taken to a daily routine of a morning swim to get his exercise. Penny swims occasionally as well. She's a natural while he has had to work at it, but he's pretty much gotten the hang of it now.

The latest thing we miss from the USA: syrup.

We'd love to hear from any of you, drop us a note in the comments with questions, or updates that you think we should know about!

morpho menelaus

Saw this guy today. He wouldn't open his wings for me, so I've included the wikipedia article so you can read about him. He/she was as big as a small bird! 

I skimmed through the wikis on this particular species, and from what I can tell I think this is the one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpho_menelaus

vizinhos macaco

I just got back from running a few errands with Betto and spending way too much on dog food. Ah, language barriers. Betto was able to talk to the shop workers and get us a discount. That’s what we get for not wanting to feed our dogs the McDonald’s equivalent of pet food. We also had to pick up some fly-preventative collars. Supposedly there is an insect-borne illness here that can be transmitted to dogs. We could get them a vaccine, but Betto doesn’t seem to be too worried about it. He says the collars are fine.

I just put Penny’s on and she’s moping about it.

We spent the weekend mostly just hanging out. On Saturday we went to an open air market by the TV Tower in the city center. There was an interesting mix of tourist-y knick-knacks and things that local people buy. We didn’t buy anything. It definitely reminded us of the Muslim bazaar in Xi’an, China, though. After that we headed over to Grenat, a café downtown. It opened at 1 pm, so we had lunch there (really good steak sandwiches on baguettes) and coffees. Yes- Brett had a mocha!

Later we came home and wanted to swim, but it wasn’t as hot up here as it was down in the center. The dogs did though (well, Penny). We also found out about a farmer’s market that is open on Saturdays just up the road from us. We will definitely be hitting that up! The next day our neighbors invited us to eat breakfast with them. They had a fruit strudel, some small strawberry cakes from the bakery, coffee, juice, green tea, pao de queijo, and some breads. We hung around eating for maybe three hours.

love these goofs.

After we left, it seemed like we’d only been gone for an hour when they invited us back down for lunch!  They had leftover meat from a prior barbeque so we had that, along with some corn and potatoes, squash and bread. A couple of their friends came over to play War (Risk, essentially) but that didn’t happen until way later. Brett played for a little while, but we had plans to go see Star Trek. After the movie we very nearly got locked into the Carrefour parking lot, but we heard a guard signaling to us the exit, thankfully.

Our monkey neighbors came to visit the other day as well. Desmond didn’t like them, but Penny really wanted to know why they wouldn’t come down and play. One of them sat around for a long time just throwing sticks down to Penny. I was sitting outside while they climbed around in the trees.. it was actually quite frightening because I’ve been told they will come down and take food if you have it out. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them making their monkey noises above me. I don’t think they’ll come down with the dogs around though.

Tonight I’m going to go with Estella to the University of Brasilia and attempt to register for a Portuguese class. So we will see about that.. it’s essentially a 48 hour intensive course, over a certain amount of days or weeks. I haven’t figured out how long it is. I will hopefully be able to teach Brett some :)

sweet zion

looking for macacos

he came down pretty close! Penny loved it.