For anyone who still checks

I've put up more photos and written comments to catch you up :)

http://joyalegria.multiply.com/photos/album/27/August_and_September_2009

A completed project

This is hardly a post . . . but here are pictures of the bead curtain I've been working on. It's finally done!

http://joyalegria.multiply.com/photos/album/26/The_Bead_Curtain

More Photos

I've put up a few more photos.

Here's the link:

http://joyalegria.multiply.com/photos/album/23/A_Little_More_Life

Jess' parents are here with us now. It's so, so nice! We're taking lots more photos now that they're here, so I'll have lots more to post again soon.

It's been a long time coming

We’ve just passed our five month mark of being here and to me it certainly feels like it’s been that long. So much has happened that when I think back to our first months here, I feel like that was ages and ages ago and I’m already a different person than I was at the beginning of the year. I realize that I’ve done an absolutely terrible job of keeping all of you up-to-date, so I’m going to attempt making up for that now. Get ready for a good, long, post. :)

It’s been so wonderful to have our own place, and be located close to the school. In fact, we’re close to everything we need. Close being a relative word. I guess what I really mean is that we’re within walking distance of everything we might need – school, a park to run in, a mall, a few grocery stores, downtown, friends etc. Walking distance is also a relative term. We’ve wound up walking really far with really, really heavy bags - something we would never do if we had the option of a car. But when you don’t have options, you find that difficult things aren’t impossible! So yes, we’re walkers and we enjoy it. It slows life down, but there’s something lovely about not having the ability to rush around the city frantically doing all the things that “need” to be done every day.

It’s taken this long for us to get certain things under control. Sleep for example. We wake up every morning at 5:47, and one of us goes in the shower while the other gets breakfast ready. We eat and get ready and make it out the door about an hour later, rush to school (which sometimes consists of me running beside Jess’ long strides when we are exceptionally late) to get there by 7am. The days are packed with kids and noise and papers and activities and lunch and snacks and problem-solving until we leave again at 4pm to get home and really live. Between fixing dinner, taking care of house responsibilities, paying bills, getting bank accounts and grocery shopping, there isn’t all that much time to do things simply for pleasure.

So we got ourselves into a bad habit of staying up late night after night. Not only that, but our weekends have been absolutely packed. I recently took out a calendar to find out why I feel like we never seem to get to relax, and discovered that it’s because we rarely do. Since we moved into the apartment (about three and a half months ago) we’ve had a total of two weekends that we were here at home with nothing to do. Once a month we have a Special Saturday at the school where there are activities for the students and their families, and all the rest of the weekends we’ve either had visitors, or travelled to visit friends. What this all led to was a point where I was completely and utterly exhausted. It was a Friday night and one of the teacher’s had kindly invited us over to her mother’s house for typical food from this region of the country. We were there for so long, and I wanted my bed so badly, that eventually I excused myself to go the bathroom just to cry because I was so tired.

So we started going to bed early. Really, really early at first, and then just normally early. It took a solid two weeks before I started feeling like myself again. I must say, getting the right amount of sleep does wonders for your quality of life.

Grocery shopping is always an experience. We live within walking distance, but it’s between 15 minutes and half an hour walking distance – not, say, 5 minutes. So we try to do one big grocery shopping every month to stock up on all the non-perishables. It’s taken us up until this month to sort through all the brands and prices and ingredients of things to know what we really want. We’re finally getting to that stage where we can walk in and know where we want and where to get it. The first two times we went we bought reasonable amounts of things and carried them home. But since then we’ve been getting too much to be able to carry home, and have to take the bus home. Two months ago we had a lot of stuff - so much that my backpack got stuck as I tried to make my way off the bus, causing me to drop the bag of 24 rolls of toilet paper I was trying to hold onto along with the other grocery bags banging against my side. Both Jess and I had a good laugh about it all when I finally managed to collect all my belongings and get myself off the bus (avoiding eye contact with all the people I knew were staring at me). This last trip we got even too much to take on the bus, but we did it anyway. We’d forgotten our backpacks and had so, so much weight in our hands that it was quite a painful experience. Not to mention, that you can’t just get on a bus and sit down here in Brasil. There’s the little turn-style you have to walk through after you pay the cobrador. He had to help us and our bags through the turn-style this month. By the time we got home all the handles of the grocery bags were stretched out by all the weight and looked so funny. Needless to say, none of the difficulties have taken away the joy of grocery shopping for me – I still love to do it for some reason. I wonder if I always will . . .

Well talk about groceries leads nicely into the food we eat. Lots of you from home ask what we eat (people here are more likely to ask if we cook for ourselves and I always feel a bit confused by that question for some reason). Our breakfasts for a long while were yogurt, granola and fruit every day. We were going through tons of yogurt, because you can only get yogurt in cups – there aren’t big containers of thick yogurt here for some reason. So we started making our own yogurt. That’s been interesting. The first batch was good, the second was absolutely disgusting and had to be disguised in various milk-shakes and such, and since then we’ve got a perfect formula going that makes the most delicious homemade yogurt. And it’s so easy, that I’m always on the lookout for people that might be interested in trying it themselves. It’s incredible to me that just bringing milk to certain temperatures and mixing it with a bit of yogurt and letting it sit creates new yogurt. As my mom says, it’s a little miracle! So now we eat even more yogurt than we used to, but we’ve also started to eat other things for breakfast, especially since the weather’s gotten colder. We’ve done oatmeal, cornmeal, milkshakes, eggs and toast, muffins (which are a big deal – more on that later), muesli, fruit salad, and once we got pão de quiejo (cheese bread) on the run at a bakery for breakfast.

We eat our lunches in the cafeteria at school. The food is good-tasting, and varied. There are always rice and beans, salad, vegetables, and some kind of meat or protein main course. This past month we had a special treat, though. The nutritionist has started putting on an international lunch every month, and she started with a Canadian lunch. We gave her recipes for Shepherd’s pie and brownies, gave pictures from home to post in the cafeteria, and a CD of Canadian music. It was on a Friday afternoon, and we happened to be very homesick at the time, and the taste of the Shepherd’s pie was completely authentic. It satisfied that home-cooked-meal spot on the inside. As the fiddle music played a mournful tune through the cafeteria, Jess and I both struggled to hold it together so as not to burst into tears in the cafeteria. It was tough. We both ended up crying, but held back from outright sobbing.

So, we do our main cooking for dinners and weekends. Although I guess you wouldn’t consider popcorn cooking, would you? Ha ha. We eat a lot of popcorn. It’s just that it’s such a great food. It’s good when you’re not so hungry for dinner, and it’s good when you’re a little hungry after having eaten dinner. Okay, so some of the real things we’ve made so far are: quiche, veggie-pita sandwiches, soups, sweet potatoes, crepes and pancakes (those are favourites), lasagna casserole (your dish, Susanna!), spaghetti, cream cheese and tomato sandwiches, pita pizzas, tacos (wow, that was delicious), lentils, chicken, and wraps (they have flour tortillas here!). As you can see, we eat lots of Canadian food made from our Brazilian groceries. There is no cheddar cheese or sour cream here, though. We make do but nothing really replaces either of those things.

There are two things that send both Jess and I into frantic, panicky homesickness without fail, and that is to either leaf through our Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, or to search for dessert recipes on the internet. The pictures and names of all the various pies and cookies and cakes and puddings and muffins can send us over the edge of calmness in mere minutes. We’ve made plenty of desserts - especially to take to our friends when we travel, or when they come and visit us – but we’ve had to make a weekend-only rule for desserts because we were getting a little carried away when we first got our own place. We’ve made chocolate chip cookies, ginger spice cookies (your recipe again Susanna), butter tart squares, banana bread, granola bars, brownies, chocolate pudding, carrot cake with cream cheese icing (Jess’birthday), cinnamon rolls, and recently, apple streusel muffins with a muffin tin we borrowed from our Canadian friend Melissa. We buy lots of butter on those monthly grocery trips!

It’s downright cold here lately. Recently I was talking to Aeden (my five-year-old neice) and I was telling her that I have to wear lots of layers and scarves these days because it’s so cold, and she said, “That doesn’t make any sense – you live in BRAZIL!” She’s right. There is something very wrong about how cold I feel every morning. My theme song for the weather these days is, “Baby, it’s cold inside”. My classroom has these big huge glass doors that lead directly outside, and don’t keep too much of the cold out. Some kids wear gloves and hats and scarves to keep warm. We’ve had a bit of a warm spell for the past few days which has felt like beautiful fall weather – it’s been amazing.

Speaking of school, I’ve had a project going on for the past two or three months to teach one of my six-year-old boys to read. I’ve never done this before, and am so thankful that Carolyn had already had success teaching Aeden to read using a phonics method she had recommended to her, because I would have been totally at a loss about how to go about teaching him. I’m actually not trained to teach the age-level I’m teaching here, and am completely clueless about taking kids through the literacy process. I don’t remember learning how to read at all. It amazes me that we can look at words and know what they say, especially since English is so irregular. Anyway, I knew that Carolyn had used a book called, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and so the school ordered in through amazon.com and I started using it with my student. I was kind of nervous, because I had this huge fear that somehow I was going to fail and we’d make it through the 100 lessons with him still being unable to read. Just today we finished lesson number 39 and I have to say that I am truly amazed at how the literacy process happens – I don’t really feel like I’ve done anything because I just follow the book’s instructions, but it’s absolutely incredible – he’s reading! It has been one of the most satisfying and rewarding things I’ve got to be a part of this year. I think it is just amazing to watch him improve little by little. It’s kind of like yogurt-making . . . I want more kids to teach reading to now!

Well, I’ve left lots out, but that will always be the case. I think I’ll post this now and hopefully this will satisfy the emails I haven’t responded to as of yet asking for details. I would love to tell about the wonderful friends we have here – here in the city, and those we’ve visited with recently from out of town. I’m so thankful for them. It’s been so nice, too, to have spent time with families. Just this past weekend I was visiting our friend Priscila and it was so, so nice to be mommied by her mom and daddied by her dad. Homesickness has hit – not in a way that I sob myself to sleep or anything, but I miss home and all it entails. I’m so happy and so thankful for all we have been given here, but there really is no place like home. Which is why I’m looking forward to next weekend when Jessica’s parents come to stay with us for two weeks. It will be wonderful!

Goodbye for now, and I will write again. Thanks for following!

There Isn't Time .....

I feel so badly that I haven't been keeping up with the blog . . . amongst other things. When I ran across this poem recently, I thought it was quite fitting for how I generally feel these days:

There isn't time, there isn't time
To do the things I want to do,
With all the mountain-tops to climb,
And all the woods to wander through,
And all the seas to sail upon,
And everywhere there is to go,
And all the people, every one
Who lives upon the earth, to know.
To know a few, and do a few,
And then sit down and make a rhyme
About the rest I want to do.

~ Eleanor Farjeon

I've put up a few more photos, and as you go through there are little stories to go along with most of them, which will catch you up on some of the things that have been keeping us busy.

http://joyalegria.multiply.com/photos/album/21

Pictures

I've put some more pictures up. Enjoy!

http://joyalegria.multiply.com/photos/album/20/A_Certain_Sense_of_Home

By Searching

This is a little something that Jess and I have each enjoyed recently. We brought the book, By Searching, along with us, not realizing how good it would be to read it. I felt like it was "sent" to me at a perfect time:

When is the Search ended? In one sense, it is finished when our hand, stretched out to God in the name of His appointed mediator Jesus Christ, feels the answering grasp and knows that He is there. But in another sense the searching never ends, for the first discovery is quickly followed by another, and that by another, and so it goes on. As I write it is dawning a new day. The far horizon has seen the bright spot of the rising sun, but heavy clouds soon covered it. However, these clouds have become illuminated and streaks of pink and gold beauty are breaking through chance rents in their filmy cover. One discovers glory after glory as the eye eagerly explores the heavens. And so it is with God. To find that He is, is the mere starting-point of our search. We are lured on to explore what He is, and that search is never finished, and it grows more thrilling the farther one proceeds.
Up to this point I have discovered that God is; and that He is mine by the mediatorship of Christ. I have discovered that He can and will teach me His way, or His plan for my life. I have found that He can overcome obstacles and that we do not need to arouse a great hullabaloo to get Him to do so. Hudson Taylor was right in his discover: "learn to move man, through God, by prayer alone." By searching I have discovered that He has strange and sweet ways of manifesting Himself; at sundry [various or many] times and in diverse manners God is still speaking (Heb. 1:1)
~Isobel Kuhn

We Have a Home!

And it's thrilling. I'm not sure what we were worried about before, thinking it would be too small, because it fits just right. I was telling Jess that I look around and feel like I've been given so much . . . even though I know mentally that the apartment is tiny and we don't have many things. It's such a satisfying feeling to feel satisfied.

Part of the reason we can appreciate the little so much is due to the grand finale of our first two months' living situation. I think if we had arrived here straightaway, our feelings of gratefulness would have been quite different. Don't get me wrong, we LOVED living in Santana with Bernadette and were sad to leave (we've already gone back to visit both her and the neighbourhood), but by the end our bedroom was serving us as a bedroom, a kitchen (our dried goods were stored above our clothes in the closet and our fruit ripened on the floor), and a laundry room (we strung up a clothesline back and forth over the foot of our bed)) . . . which lead to a general air of permanent claustrophobia. On top of that, Jess got quite sick and had to stay at home in bed for three days, soaking up the "crampedness" to the full during our last week.

By the time we came to see the apartment again before moving in, we were like, we thought this was too small? I still revel in the fact that when we buy groceries, they ALL get to stay in the kitchen! :)

I have plenty more to say, but as usual there are not enough hours in the day to do all I'd like to do. It's almost 9:30pm, our usual bedtime, and we're getting up extra early tomorrow to be able to get to the outdoor market in a park just around the corner from our apartment before we have to walk to work at 6:40am.

So for now, goodnight dear friends and family.

P.S. Please think about coming to visit . . . wherever you are!

Two Minute Post

This is just to let you know that we´re alive and well. We´ve moved into our new apartment, and have been cleaning, and travelling about the city (and out of it) in order to collect the bare necessities of a new home. We discovered this internet place nearby recently, but hardly have the time to use it . . . however, that should change soon because we´re scheduled to have the internet installed in our place this Saturday. Which means that very shortly (I hope!) I´ll have the opportunity to give a real update on our lives. Until then, so long.

Accounting for our Absence

Since I last wrote I´ve been sick, we´ve been to and from the International Conference at the Estancia twice, we´ve done some recording in a professional studio, I´ve gotten and gotten rid of lice, and Jessica´s got sick and is in the process of getting over it. A lot of everything has been happening lately, and we´ve hit the ``I want my Mommy`´ stage. What doesn´t help is that while we were at the conference, two sets of our friends parents took care of us in various ways, and now that we´ve returned home by ourselves the absence of parental figures in our day-to-day lives is felt keenly. However, there´s no need to be alarmed. We´re doing well. On top of all the outward busyness, there´s tons going on below the surface. Jesus´ ways are certainly not my ways. I wouldn´t have planned all the things He´s done and is doing, but I can see that they are good. I keep remembering the song I learned way, way back in the day:

Whatever God says is true
Whatever God does is good
Whatever God plans He carries through
Whatever God says is true

We´ll be moving this weekend, so I´m not sure when I´ll write again for real. But as soon as I can, I will. Thanks for the recent emails. I´ll be responding bit by bit.

Pictures

I´ve posted some pictures here for all to see:

http://joyalegria.multiply.com/photos/album/18/18#

There would have been more if it didn´t take quite so long to load, but alas, it did, so these will have to suffice.

It´s Been a Month Already!

That makes it sound as though I can’t believe so much time has passed, when in reality all that has happened since January 14th seems to be too much to fit in the space of only four weeks. But it certainly has. We’re still living in Bernadete’s house, and although we’re excited to get our own place (we decided to take that apartment I wrote about two weeks ago, and are just waiting on paperwork to be able to move in), a lot of unexpected and “unplanned” events took place this week that made us especially happy that it hasn’t happened just yet.

It’s so good to be able to live with the certainty that God is in control of our lives, but there’s something so exciting about those times when He lets us take a glimpse of some of His “behind the scenes” workings. We knew that Bernadete was a believer, and we’ve all been able to speak freely about the Lord together, but we hadn’t really connected on a deep level until the Lord arranged a few perfect circumstances that allowed us to all be able to open our hearts up this week.

After school on Thursday Jess and I were preparing something to eat, when Bernadete told us that she’d made a decision about something because she felt that the Lord had told her that she was headed in the wrong direction. She shared with us how she’d been having doubts, and had been waiting on the Lord to show her clearly what He wanted, and now that He had, she was going to follow Him even though it would cost her things she wants/feels she needs. As she shared with us, I felt amazed that the Lord had brought us to live in this house. It made me realize that sometimes outward situations hide the most precious things – as we fellowshipped together I realized that we were in the presence of someone who lives such a sweet and simple life before the Lord, relying on Him inwardly for all of her needs. She had no idea, but the things she shared with us were also answering questions that had recently come up in our hearts. One of the things we talked about was having discernment, and that the more we know Jesus, the more we are able to recognize His presence (or the lack thereof) in the events of our lives.

She shared with us how when she was initially renting our room, she had prayed to the Lord to only bring someone (she was renting for one person at the time) who served Him. A lady had come along, and wanted to rent the room, but Bernadete didn’t feel like she wanted her, so she told the lady in faith that she was sorry but the room was already rented. And that’s when she got a call about us (the day before our arrival), and put an extra bed in the room to prepare for us. Now we know why she and her sister were high-fiving each other when they found out that we were believers. God’s pretty good at what He does, eh?!

It just so happened that after this we all (Jess, Bernadete and I) went together to a Christian gathering that we’d been invited to the day before, to which none of us wanted to go, but somehow we’d all said yes. I would actually like to put the word Christian in quotes in that last sentence, except I am certain that there were genuine believers there, so I won’t. I really believe that the Lord took us there to contrast the inward life with the Lord that we had just discovered in Bernadete, because what we got was an extreme outward show, but no Jesus.

Picture simplicity: we were in the back of a very simple house in a very out-of-the-way neighbourhood with a group of people who don’t have much of anything. This was contrasted greatly with the person leading the meeting, who was flashy in everything he did. From the start to the finish this person demanded our attention (in no uncertain terms), and commandeered every single aspect of what took place. He started off by asking performing “healings”, then told us when to stand, when to sing, when to pray, what to pray and what not to pray(and kept throughout this time so that it was impossible to even think let alone try to contact God), sang songs prepared background music he’d brought along, told people when to be silent (even when they were obviously crying out the Lord), shared things briefly from the word, asked everyone what they needed from God and told them that he was responsible to provide all those things because God had sent him to them (to people who nobody visits because they have no money – yes, he said that out loud), and ended by collecting an offering. Absolutely everything that occurred pointed obviously to himself as the centre and focus of our being together. He could certainly sense that Jess and I weren’t being controlled, because he was surprised at the part where he went around asking what we all need from God, when both of us said, “Nothing”. When we talked about it later, we laughed because both of us had had the same thought, “I don’t need anything. I’ve got Jesus!”

By the end I felt completely disgusted and offended that someone should try to stand between God and I, and so thankful that I can come to Jesus without any intermediary. When we arrived home, all three of us agreed that we don’t ever need to go again. Jess and I had plenty to talk about after that night! It’s funny how much the Lord can show you through contrast. I’m so thankful that God is so real when we seek Him, and that He’s promised to be found by us when we seek Him with all our hearts (Jeremiah 29:13). I felt so much for the people in that gathering who had come because they wanted Him.

In the past two months the Lord has been teaching me about believing. It’s impossible for me to write today all that He’s taken me through, but I have come to realize that there is a whole different world available when I really and truly believe: it’s the world of faith. And it does not depend on what we see, but it depends on what Jesus says, and who God is. I don’t believe so that He will accomplish such and such. If He has spoken, I believe because He is faithful. Whether or not it looks possible does not change the fact that He will do as He has promised. Because no word will be impossible with God. (Luke 1:37)
Here are a few verses, a poem and a couple songs the Lord has encouraged me with to help me to take my eyes off of what I can see, and place them on Himself. We aren’t the authors of our faith; we just have to receive the faith He is offering us, because He operates within us is as the power to believe:

And Mary said, Behold, the slave of the Lord. May it happen to me according to your word. (Luke 1:38)

And blessed is she who has believed, because there will be a completion of the things spoken to her from the Lord. (Luke 1:45)

Do not let your heart be troubled; believe into God, believe also into Me. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:1,27)

Now when Daniel came to know that the writing had been signed, he went to his house (in his upper room he had windows open toward Jerusalem) and three times daily he knelt on his knees and prayed and gave thanks before his God, because he had always done so previously. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and he was found completely unhurt, because he had trusted in his God. (Daniel 6:10,23)

For my faith
though it be weak,
makes me strong: (R.W.)

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.

Lord, now I see,
You only want me to believe
Not to change
In all my failures and defeats
To believe what You have done,
And not in what I see.

Lord, I believe,
When all around me is defeat
And it seems that nothing’s changing outwardly.
No! I’m not discouraged,
I’m believing You.

Yes, I believe,
And there is no demand on me.
Simple faith, yes , that is all you want from me.
Freed from anxious doubting –
I’m free to just believe!

Believing You,
Because, Lord, You are my success!
When I fail, all I must do is just confess,
And go on enjoying You –
I love believing You!

Highlights of the Week

I keep remembering that the very first time we came to Brazil with a big group of young people back in 2001 that I said out loud, “I could live here.” And now, here I am. It surprises both Jess and I over and over again. Every few days one of us says to the other, “Can you believe we’re living in Brazil?” Usually we can’t. We had a great week. Exhausting, but good to the core.

Music in the street
Monday was a long day, starting at 5:15am (which turned out to be exceedingly early – even after sauntering to school from where the bus dropped us off, we arrived at 6:40. . . we now know to catch the 6:30 bus rather than the 6:05) and ending with an after-school meeting at around 4:15. By the time we’d caught the bus home and were walking down our street it was getting to be dinner time, and we were pretty tuckered out. Deep in conversation as we neared our place, we faintly heard music drifting through the commotion of the busy street, getting progressively more definite as we continued on our way. When we got close enough we saw that in a tiny used instruments shop a lady was trying out a keyboard while the shop owner accompanied her on his guitar. The chorus stopped us in our tracks, and we just stood staring across the street, taking in the sight, the sounds, the moment:

At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light
And the burden of my heart rolled away
It was there by faith I received my sight
And now I am happy all the day

It was as if my senses picked up signals from all the outward stimuli and worked together to cause all the emotions of that particular moment of my life – joy, sadness, restfulness, anticipation – to surface. It’s hard to put certain feelings into words, but I think the sentiment that wafted over me was a recognition of the changeableness and fragility of life, and a subsequent welling up of an appreciation for all I had at that very moment. And for some reason, it made me cry.

Caught in the Rain
There was a staff meeting at 6:15pm on Tuesday, which we hadn’t known about until we arrived in the morning. With our friend Denise, who is here from the Philippines for a year to do the same thing as we are doing, we walked to a bakery after school to get away for a bit and have something to eat. On the way back to school there was thunder and ominous clouds, which made us hurry on our way. We had to leave the meeting early because we’re all living so far away and wanted to be home before dark. Had we known the amount of rain that was coming, we would have left earlier. But we hadn’t known, and just as we were reaching Denise’s bus stop, it started pouring. Denise had an umbrella, which she and Jess shared, and a girl named Sebastiana offered to share hers with me. It poured. Our shoes and jeans and were soaking wet. We waited and waited and waited for Denise’s bus to come. It got dark. Her bus finally came, and she was on her way with her umbrella. Jess and my umbrella’s are currently in a suitcase in São Paulo at Arne’s house, so we were grateful that the rain let up as we started towards our bus stop a few blocks away. The let up was short-lived. We got poured on. I kept having to wipe my eyes because I couldn’t see for all the water in them. I had to laugh at myself, because even though there wasn’t anything left of me to get wet, I was still jumping to try and avoid puddles. The rain was warm enough that I wasn’t uncomfortable despite the fact that I was only wearing a sleeveless top. Our bus was a long time in coming, and by the time we finally got home (two hours after we’d left the school) both of us were quite ready for a hot shower and dry clothes. All in all, it was a thrilling adventure. I loved every minute of it.

Culture Shock
After the first day of school, which came with an overload of awakenings and realizations, I felt like, a year is going to be a long time. Same thing after the second day. Both Jess and I had shocking realizations about how much we are not from here by running into school-culture culture shock. When we talked later, we found out that we’d gone through the same thing feelings as we watched our teaching partners affectionately hug and kiss the students as they arrived; and I emphasize, affectionately. I felt like the most freezing-cold stiff person on the planet. I’ve never felt extremely uncomfortable with the warmth of South American people the way some people do. In fact, I like it. But in the context of school my whole being forbade it. Throughout our teacher education, it was emphasized, and reemphasized, and re-reemphasized about the importance to not ever show anything that could be interpreted as love towards your students. In fact, it’s best not to let them know that you’re a human being just in case someday someone happens to interpret what you do in a way you wouldn’t want them to and . . . the inevitable negative consequences of your good-hearted intentions occurs. I only slightly exaggerate. We were told to be sure never to do this, and never to do that, to the point that once we were actually teaching, it was awkward to receive hugs when the kids gave them to us just because.

It’s not the only difference in school-culture, however, which has made me realize that one can’t go from being a Canadian teacher to being a Brazilian teacher just by way of teaching in a Brazilian school. I know I will inevitably be changed after this year, because we as human beings have an incredible ability to adapt. I am already having to fight and hold on to my Canadian English – we are in such a strong Brazilian English environment that when I speak to the kids, I can already here the lilts as my voice rises and falls in ways it ‘should’ not. But I’m excited to change and be changed by the coming year. A year is a long time, but that’s not a bad thing.

The Kids
By day three I lead an activity with the kids in my class and was reminded again why I became a teacher in the first place. As they came up to me one by one, or called out to me, “Ms. Joy, Ms. Joy – come see”, and as they crawled into my lap at circle time I remembered how much I love being with kids, and how much I love to be able to be a positive influence in their lives. I’ve already gotten attached to my two classes, and realize that a year is going to be over all too soon. There are a few who stand out:

J – the little blond boy from Australia, with his two front teeth missing and constantly has a shock of hair falling into his eyes, who has an incredible accent and can’t speak enough Australian English to satisfy my desire to hear it
D – our new arrival from Pakistan who also has an incredible accent, and cannot speak without smiling
D – a little charmer who has an incredible personality, and loves to joke around, but who also has an incredibly strong will (he refuses to eat anything he doesn’t like and at lunch every day he eats a plateful of rice with salt on it) and is my challenge to discover ways to make him want to do things he thinks he doesn’t want to do
P – an adorable little boy who makes every effort to speak English, and speaks it in such a way that makes him seem much older than his seven years
C – a girl of Kenyan and Finnish decent, who is always ready for everything that’s going on
M – C’s friend, who is an extremely definite little girl
M – a boy who I’ve already gotten through in terms of a change of attitude, and who I’m looking forward to being with the rest of the year

I could go on, but I must eat breakfast so that we can go and accomplish things today.

Smorgasboard

I can’t believe it’s only been two and a half weeks since Jess and I arrived here. So much happens every day, it feels like we spend each day racing to get as much done as possible before we collapse on our beds at night. We’re pretty exhausted, but it’s a good, satisfying exhaustion from having accomplished a lot. Here’s a ‘potluck’ of the things that are currently part of our lives:

School
I think I mentioned before that I was happily surprised by the school setup and environment. After a week of preparation for the beginning of the school year on Monday, I can say I’m even happier to be a part of it. We didn’t just sign up to be teachers when we took these jobs. The school’s philosophy (boiled down to essentials) is not to focus simply on high-quality education, but to produce well-rounded, proper people who will be an asset to the world. They really are about developing the whole person. Which means we play a lot of the Mom role as teachers. It’s the little details that show it. For example, every student is given a toothbrush and after lunch we take our classes to the washroom and help them all brush their teeth. Crazy, eh?
We’re working with a great group of teachers, which is good because we’re at school a long time. Our schedule’s been changed a bit. We now go from 7am until 4pm, with an hour off for lunch. Starting at 7 means that we have to catch our bus at 6:10, which means that we’ve got to start waking up around 5:15, which means we’ve got to be in bed around 9 at night. Which means that we have almost no life outside of school at present. We’re looking for a place closer to the school as a result. More on that later.
I found out this week that here time isn’t money the way it is back home. In this sense: all the things that teachers buy to put up in their classrooms back home, I was making by hand. Jess made an entire alphabet (printing and cursive, upper and lowercase) for her classroom, cut each square down to size, pasted it onto coloured Bristol board, and has yet to laminate them. By hand. I spent much of my week making large posters of the class schedule, a birthday calendar, a special helper board etc. Oh, and we both worked together on a bulletin board for the school. We used recycled materials for the whole thing, including kids’artwork from previous years. The school is really big on recycling. I have to say that even though doing all these things takes tons of time, there’s a great deal of satisfaction when you get to the finished product knowing that you made it yourself as opposed to having bought it.
School starts tomorrow. It’ll be exciting to meet all the students!

Buses
Bus rides are an adventure. Actually, they’re quite hilarious once you get a seat. The driver’s seem to all have two modes. The first mode is to gun it, and the second is slam on the brakes. For corners, as Jess describes it, it’s seems that their goal is to make it around using only two wheels. So what happens is you get on the bus, and you pass the driver, and then you have to give your money to the cobrador, who gives you change if you need it, and then he swipes his card so that you can go through one of those metal turn thingys to get to the seats, if there are any. If you ride the bus early, you most likely won’t get a seat, but it’s pretty easy to stay standing because there are so many people that you can’t actually fall anywhere. However, getting off can be a challenge. One day Jess and I had to squeeze through people and I had to keep yanking my backpack through after me until we made it to the back door. If you ride the bus at 8 or 9 you are more likely to get a seat, but it can be tricky to stay standing until you do. I noticed yesterday that I somehow pulled a muscle in my right leg, and I’m pretty sure it happened while trying to stay upright on a moving bus.

Banks
The last thing we need to do to be setup here is to open a bank account. We tried this week, but we’re still missing a piece of documentation. Banks are open from 10 until 4, Monday to Friday. Which means that when we want to deposit our paycheck, we’re going to have to ask for time off work. It kind of makes me wonder why we’re getting bank accounts at all. Except when I think about stockpiling cash at home (that’s how we’ll be getting paid) I remember why.

Our Neighbourhood
We love it here! It’s feels like what I imaged Brazil to be. We live in the oldest neighbourhood of the city, and I know I’ve described it before, but I want to paint the full picture now that we’ve been around. It’s like the neighbourhood is a small city in itself. People refer to this area as little Minas Gerais (the state just north of us) because there are so many mineiros who live here. We’re on the main street, which makes for constant noise. Here are the things you’ll see and hear at any given moment: groups of people standing in the street, or just outside a place to eat, chatting and wasting the day away, big kids and little kids out in full force flying their kites as high as possible and trying to avoid getting them caught in the rows of telephone wires, dogs meandering up and down the street in search of food, cars, fuscas, buses, horse-drawn carts, men unloading trucks and carrying heavy loads from one place to another, people working on their cars, a game of street football, bare-footed people in the supermarket aisles, soap-opera scenes taking place in the street in the wee hours of the morning, birds singing, dogs barking (and barking and barking), mothers carrying babies, kids darting around in their bare feet sent out on errands by their mothers, busy people, doing-nothing people, people people and more people. It’s been fun to find the little useful shops along our road, the sewing shop, the health-food shop, the internet cafés, the bakeries, the ice cream shops, the pharmacies (where we can weigh ourselves for free to see just how much we have or haven’t been eating). And it’s fun to start establishing relationships with the people who work in all these places. The neighbourhood certainly lends itself to a certain sense of belonging in a very short while. We’re already sad that we can’t stay.
I’ve learned to sleep with the noise. My ears were sore from using earplugs every night, so I realized I just had to get used to it. A good dose of tiredness every night helps a lot! But when it starts raining at night, Jess usually says, “Quick! Let’s try and fall asleep before the rain stops and people get back out into the street!”

Our ``Family``
We love them too! The lady we live with is named Bernadette, and her two sons are Eduardo and Vinicius. Her sister, Benita, also lives with us. Her fiancé Paulo is often over with his daughter, Paula. They’re all really happy people, and it turns out that Bernadette is a Christian, which we discovered shortly after we arrived. She was thrilled to know that we are too. Considering that it was decided that we would live here only a day before we arrived, I am certain that the Lord’s hand was in the choosing of us being here. We feel completely at home. It’s going to be hard to go.

Apartment-Hunting
Our friend Daniel, who we met at the International conference in September through our friend Marcio, was super kind to take us to look at places yesterday. Here you go through real-estate agents even to rent apartments. We’re asking for something ‘’impossible’’ between our combination of wanting 1)walking distance from the school, 2) something furnished, 3) a low price 4) a pleasant place to live. We’d looked at places the first week we were here. It’s so interesting to me how you get feelings just by walking into places. I mean, I’ve always took home for granted before. Home was wherever my Mom and Dad chose to live, and it was always great. But you learn pretty quickly what to look for, and almost as soon as the front door is opened I can get a pretty good sense as to whether or not I could handle living in the place. One place was particularly horrific (everything was narrow and dark and made me feel like I was in hiding during war times), which has made me appreciate pretty much every other place we’ve looked at. So, anyway, yesterday we looked at two places, and the second place, aside from being a one-bedroom apartment, seems to combine all of our unrealistic requirements. It’s in a great neighbourhood, fully furnished (except we’d have to buy another bed), within walking distance from the school, fairly bright and homey, and at an extremely reasonable price. Neither of us being good on-the-spot decision-makers, we haven’t decided for sure, but I’m getting the feeling that this is the place the Lord prepared for us. Pray for us.

The Feira
I am at a complete loss as to how to convey my extreme pleasure of getting to live in a country where there are street markets. Certain streets have markets on different days of the week, where vendors set up around 6 in the morning and sell their fruits, vegetables, meat, grains etc. until around 1pm. Jess and I went today for the first time, to one a few blocks away. It made us so incredibly happy to wander from stall to stall and find things like Quinoa, fresh spinach, granola, sweets, cheeses . . . in amongst the noisy crowd of vendors and market goers. You can get them to grate a fresh coconut in front of you. How cool is that?

Jesus
Although this is the last topic of today’s post, it really is the most important, because it’s what makes all the rest have any meaning. Over and over again the Lord has been showing that He is with us, and what it means to live life walking with Him. I have to say that Psalm 16 best describes how we feel about life right now: In Your presence is fullness of joy. I can see that the Lord is teaching us what it means to live in His presence. It’s not something apart from real life. But it makes life real. It makes all the seemingly insignificant details of life have meaning. Something so subtle happened in our apartment-searching yesterday, and I realized that Jesus was with us and teaching us how to follow him in such a gentle way, that it made me so incredibly excited. Both Jess and I are really, really happy. No, not happy. We’ve got real joy. Not because things are easy, or because they’re comfortable. Actually, if I look at the facts there are many things missing in my life. With our time so limited, I’ve had such little opportunity to contact people outside of my immediate world. But somehow everything is okay. It’s so exciting when one of us reads a verse, or a book, or a song, and realizes the Lord is supplying us. It’s so incredible to see how the Lord leads us through our prayer together each day. It’s so wonderful to be with Jesus.
My heart feels so full that it could burst.

This, however, is not a license to all of you to not write. Because I really want to hear from you. We need contact with life outside of Sao Jose dos Campos, and I apologize to all the people I haven’t written yet. My plan was to write more emails today, but I’m overwhelmed with everyone I want to write, and so I decided to do this instead to fill everybody in at once. But if I haven’t written you yet, please know that I’ve been thinking of you still, and that I would have written had time allowed it. You can pretend you got a letter and write one back :).

This will be the end of today’s massive entry, because we’ve really got to get out to the internet. I’m typing this up on my laptop so that I can just copy and paste it once we arrive, because we’ve still got to do our wash (which is semi-by-hand) and do some baking and food prep for our breakfasts and dinners this week. I’m so glad that we get a good solid lunch at school every day. Not having to make lunch the night before is one of the most beautiful feelings as I crawl into bed!

Every Day´s Been an Adventure

I have the feeling I may end up saying nothing in what I write today, because I have to much to say, and so little time. Here goes . . .

We´ve started our training. It´s been pretty intense: 9am-5pm every day since Tuesday, and we´ve had lectures and workshops all about the neurological bases of learning. All in Portuguese. Put that together with lack of sleep, looking for a new place to live, learning how to take the bus and you´ll understand that we´re pretty exhausted. I´m totally impressed by the school atmosphere, though. It´s so much more than I was expecting. The other teachers are so positive, it´s an environment I´m looking forward to working. It looks like I´ll be teaching grade 2 this year, as an assistant teacher, and Jess will be doing grade 3 half the day, and other repsonsibilities the second half of the day.

Yesterday we hit our low. Being immersed in technical Portuguese had tired us out, and then we were supposed to have prepared a two-minute presentation on some aspect of the lectures to be evaluated by the other teachers on our presentation skills. Well, it´s one thing to be able to understand when the lectures go by. It´s another thing to retain the information to be able to speak it back. We had no access to materials to do research (we get home too late every night to be able to go out to use the internet). So we had nothing ready to say. And we felt sick all day. It´s incredible how quickly you revert to childish ways when you become a student again. We were DREADING the presentation all day long, and on our walk back after lunch Jess started making jokes about finding a fire alarm to pull. As three o´clock drew near, we seriously considered getting up and leaving (because technically our attendance is mandatory). I have to give Jess the credit for being the strong one to keep us from leaving. Anyhow, we did what we had to do. We just said we didn´t have a presentation and observed the others in our small groups. And thankfully, in my group I wasn´t the only one, and on top of that, everyone was really understanding. It was such a relief.

Anyways, after all the accumulated stress, we went home and did all things Canadian: ate maple fudge, made banana pancakes for supper, made ourselves mugs of raspberry tea from home, and crawled into bed early and watched part of Pride and Prejudice. It was a good end to the day :)

Today we´ve been invited over to one of the other teacher´s houses for dinner. She´s Canadian but she´s married to a Brazilian and has been here for 7 years. She´s a fantastic person, and we´re planning on bombarding her with all kinds of questions about how to access the things we need here in Sao Jose. Should be lots of fun.

Well, I´ve got tons to say, and only 1 minute and 30 seconds left. If you wrote me an email and I haven´t repsonded, it´s because I can´t get into hotmail for some reason. It´s driving me curiously crazy because I can see I have 6 messages and can´t read any of them. So I´ll write back when I read them. Bye for now!

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

We´re Here . . . For Now

This is going to be really quick, but I just wanted to write for the people checking to let you know that Jess and I arrived safely yesterday in Brazil, and we´ve moved into the house (or room, rather) that we´ll be in for the next month. Jess´ precise words after we saw our room were: ``Can the beds get any closer?`` In fact, they can´t.

In order to be able to use the main door, the closet doors, and the balcony doors, the two single beds have to be right beside each other in the centre of the room. We´d been told that they were finding an apartment for us to share, so we were a bit surprised to find out that we´re living in someone else´s house, far, far away from the school we´ll be working at. Anyhow, over lunch we reminded ourselves that everything IS the best that it can be, no matter how it looks to us. And we also took the opportunity (realizing what close quarters we´ll be sharing) to apologize ahead of time for all the things we´ll say and do to hurt each other this next year, and to let each other know that we are already pre-disposed to forgive each other for all the said things that will happen :)

It turns out, however, that the two guys that picked us up from the airport and took us to our place failed to mention that our current lodgings are only temporary. It was only when we went to one of their houses to pick up a new mattress that his mother filled us in on all the details (thank the Lord for moms, even when they aren´t your own!). It looks like they had an furnished apartment arranged for us, one that was near the school, but everything fell through at the last minute and they had to come up with something until they can find a better place.

Okay, I´ve got to run, so I´ll continue later.