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.