Pictures from Our Place

Here´s what home looks like for us for the next little while. The house we´re in is an apartment above a bakery/corner store. We live with a lady and her two young sons (age 7 and 9), and I think her sister lives there too, but I´m not certain about that. She´s really nice, and the kids are cute and fun to talk to. The house is in a busy neighbourhood, and every time I look out onto the balcony all I can think of is, this is classic Brasil. There are bare-footed kids playing soccer in the street and flying kites that have the strings wrapped around old cans (and they don´t seem to worry about the fact that there are telephone wires everywhere). People sitting on the curb chatting. Bikes, buses, cars, busyness everywhere. As you walk up the street you can get access to pretty much everything you might need in day-to-day life - butcher, baker, candlestick maker :)

I kind of knew when we arrived that it wasn´t going to be the best location to go to bed early. The noise from the street at night is loud enough that it´s impossible to sleep without earplugs, although things seem to settle down before midnight. There wasn´t a working light bulb in our room when we first arrived, so once the sun went down we didn´t have a whole lot to do and so we tried to sleep early. It didn´t really work.

I´m so thankful for all the life-experiences we´ve had up until now, because it´s making the settling in process so much easier. I can´t imagine being here and not knowing Portuguese, or never having lived away from home, or never having had to live with other people, or never having been in Africa. Things are cozy already. We thought about moving the beds around so that we could have a bit more personal space, but then we realized that we both felt sad changing it!



Our place after unpacking. It feels much roomier now that the suitcases are off the ground. Jess took the picture standing in the very corner of the room, just so you get an idea of the size of the room.





Here´s the view from our balcony, up one end of our street. You can see the door from our room behind Jessica´s shoulder. The sign at the right is for the bakery below us.





Here I am with the view up the other end of our street.

Not that much is happening right now. We´ve gone grocery shopping (which made me both excited and sad all at once - both feelings eminating from the fact this was for REAL and not for fun.) It´s kind of fun to grow up, and kind of sad. The Lord has been so sweet since we arrived. He seems to be in so many places, speaking, teaching, and opening our eyes and our hearts to see more of who He is. He is so beautiful. Here´s a quote I got from a book I bought in Boston just before coming, which seems very appropriate for now:

In the One you are never alone.
In the One you are always at home.
Dag Hammarskjold