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.

Feeling Like a Tourist . . . at Home

For the many of you who don't know yet, after a sudden change of events, Jess and I are back in Canada. Temporarily, however :)

We discovered at the beginning of the month, while renewing our tourist visas, that the only way to obtain the necessary visa in order to begin our job next month was to leave the country. After researching our options, we realized that we needed to return to Canada, and were just as surprised as all of you to be going home. And now, here we are.

I had already prepared myself to be gone until July, and with that preparation, had all the necessary homesickness in place. So now it feels like a special treat to be here. I'm enjoying absolutely everything. I can appreciate things I never appreciated before. As we drove home from the airport after Jess' dad picked us up, I was admiring how all the trees look without their leaves. Yes, dead-looking winter trees are indeed a thing of beauty. Silos too. Even the bitter cold is beautiful. It's amazing what being away does for you. I wish I could capture this feeling of appreciation and gratefulness that I have right now, and remember to feel this way every day for the rest of my life. It feels so good to be thankful, for the small details especially.

I'm excited to see what what the Lord has for us when we return to Brazil, but right now I'm especially thankful to be able to enjoy the present. I'm thankful for this selah. Pause, and calmly think of that.

Adventures in Pirénopolis

Yesterday seven of us headed out to Pirénapolis with a bag full of 18 sandwiches, a bottle of Fanta, various Canadian snacks that Jess and I have managed not to gobble up, and not enough water between us. We spent the day hiking, climbing, swimming in a river, and enjoying the beauty of cascading water. It was the kind of day that makes you want to plan many more similar adventures.



The crew before setting out: Felipe, Vinicius, Márcio, Joy, Jess, Lídia, Thiago



The climbing part: it was steep, and scary when you looked down. We climbed up huge mountains of broken up rock



A picture at the top of the mount. By now we were wishing to see the promised river and waterfalls, but they were still a long time in coming.



After having lunch while seated on large rocks near a picturesque water fall, we had a quick swim and then started making our way down the river. We walked barefoot where we could, put our socks and shoes on when we had to, took them off again each time we needed to cross the river, and kept each other from falling into the current. Here we are in one of our crossings.

Certainly Not in Canada

These are many of the things that remind us that we are far away from home (even though the normally unusual is becoming unusually normal as time goes on). Here are a few:

1) Showers - having to justify taking a shower in the morning - here showers are most often for the afternoon or evening. I tried, but I just end up feeling gross all day.
2) Salt and . . . toothpicks (as opposed to pepper) on the table
3) Blistering heat in November/December - the weather makes it very difficult to remember the month, that's for sure.
4) Shoes - fighting the feeling of wanting to remove my shoes after entering people's houses (somehow I haven't adjusted to that completely)
5) No cheddar cheese - it's been almost three months already! They have something they call cheddar cheese, but Jess and I discovered early on that what they really mean is cheese whiz. Not even close to the real thing.
6) Portugized English:
"A gente might have to sair soon"
"Is the key with you?"
7) Seatbelts - explaining to people that I wear a seatbelt even when I'm riding in the back seat because it's the law back home.
8) The absence of brown sugar. Haven't seen any since we've arrived. They've got something called mascavo, which is a dark sugar but powdery, and thick granuled white sugar, but no brown. I would never have imagined. It makes for experimentation when baking (which is right up Jess' alley).
9) It now feels wrong to put the toilet paper in the toilet, even when I can.
10) House plants growing outdoors - the most spectaclar so far was an enormous Ficus benjamina tree.
11) Computer keyboards - you have to learn to type differently or else you end up getting accents instead of apostrophes.
12) Common cutlery - steak knives are considerably more abundant than butter knives.
13) The News - a lot more blood and guts and gore up close than I ever remember seeing back home. We hear about it in Canada, but more often than not I find I actually see it here.
14) The price of Hagen Daaz ice cream - it's already considerably more expensive than other ice creams back home at $6 for 500mL, but here it goes for $9!
15) Maids/housekeepers - it's a respectable job and extremely common to have one here, but I just can't help feeling guilty about having someone hired to clean up after me.
16) Milk - most people use the kind that comes in cartons that don't need to be refrigerated until you open them - Ultra Heat Treated.
17) Gas stations - they're always full serve, and the attendants are often dressed up with blouses that are tucked into their matching pants, wearing a tie, or a little scarf, and waving the cars into their spots like planes coming in from landing.
18) The meal that comes after lunch - it can either be lanche, which consists of something light such as a sandwich and something to drink, or janta, which is a full meal. Or you can do both. This/these meal(s) take place anytime from about 6pm until midnight, and it never seems to be the same thing two days in a row. I've learned just to go with the flow, but truthfully I find it very confusing never knowing if I'm eating for the last time or not . . .
19) It being okay to give people nicknames based on their race, skin colour, body size/shape - we are often shocked. I'll leave it at that.
20) Noise - there are a lot more hard surfaces, a lot more tile, and a lot less insulation in buildings here than back home, which leads to lots of echo. I get auditory overload quite easily when there's a large group of people. At times I wish I could invent an ear funnel to siphon out the things I want to listen to in all of the noisy chaos.