Words of the Week -just ignore and blurry

This week was pretty chill. We were pretty tired from the retreat. 🙂 Trev and I “hiked” around the community and up to the top of the property. It was STEEP, way steeper than the last hill we walked up, but the view was amazing. I’m liking our walks around the community.

We let the boys rest and watched online church again. Daniel came over and hung out with the boys. Trevor fed Daniel ramen “poison” and I don’t think I will ever forget it. Just ignore the junk food and candy that the boys snacked on while they played video games. None of them usually eats that much junk so I told them I didn’t want to hear a word about a stomach ache.

We checked out the Outlets nearby to see what they had. I was looking for a legal notepad but didn’t find any.

We have kind of found our groove working with the kids, learning a lot of their names and figuring out where we are most useful. This is the first time I watched the “littles” while they took a nap. They don’t usually want to take one but once they get still, they were hard to wake up.

We finally decided to brave the Brazilian grill in our outdoor cozinha. It was pretty much the same as back home so it was easy peasy. Just ignore our laundry drying. I have no idea what cut of meat is in the first picture as my translator app was useless remember, but I do know the second picture is filet. Beef is pretty cheap here so we had steak twice this week; not our norm at home.

Mrs. Sonia had us play a word game with dice and it got pretty heated with our competitive family. Mason is her star student at the moment. She humors Trevor.

We visited the sports camp nearby and then drove by another area that is economically struggling.

We didn’t drive down into this favela, as Roberto said it wasn’t safe and that we would probably need someone from inside the favela to ride with us to ensure our safety. When the Brazilian says don’t go, you don’t go. So we took a right instead of a left and just over the hill, we were back into the city. I wish I had pictures but we were driving so the pictures turned out blurry.

A difference between Brazil and the US, is the stores. We are so used to going to Walmart and places like that where it’s a one stop shop; that is not the case here. You go to this store for your electric stuff, you go to another store for your beauty products, and yet another store for home goods. Just little narrow storefronts lining the streets.

Later in the week we were invited to bring the boys to play wiffle ball at the Cox family’s home for what they call Grandma’s day, as it is held at Grandma Maryann and Grandpa Dave’s house and happens each week. The kids arrive at 4:20, 4:30 the game starts and is over at 5:30, the kids all know the rules, and Uncle David keeps stats on each of the kids and goes over said stats before the Brazilian or American national anthem (it alternates each week) is played before each game commences. This is no ordinary backyard game.

Neighborhood kids come to play. The boys had a great time. Carol Sue had homemade yogurt pops to wrap up the game. Obviously by the prompt start and finish times, you can tell that this family, although they have been in Brazil for most of their lives, are still Americans.

This is Dave and Maryann pictured below. They have an amazing story of starting a seminary sixty years ago when this area was nothing but raw land. They had no power, there was hardly any people, and they had to draw their water from the lake. They now have a legacy of ministry and a life well lived, six children, and a slew of grandkids and great grandkids, like 30 something. Such a wonderful family. They made us feel very welcomed.

If you can’t tell, we had a cold day for autumn (remember seasons are reversed below the equator) and once the high temperature was only in the low 70s, the pants and jackets starting coming out.

Friday was supposed to be our chill day and we were just running to the store to grab groceries for the weekend and a notebook for Trevor’s Portuguese notes, but, as is the case in Brazil, things change very last minute here. We found out that we were going to São Paulo on Saturday and had training on Monday so now our quick grocery trip turned into a – we need to get groceries for the upcoming week – kind of trip. I received my Brazilian CPF number this week too so I signed up for the wholesale club to test it out and it worked. Thankful, the Lord has continued to provide English speaking people in our path repeatedly.

Anyway, we came home unloaded the stuff we bought from the club and grabbed the boys. We picked up the interns, Joy, Meredith, and David from the ministry and took them to the nearby town of Bragança to Grill Sul Churrascaria – an all you can eat Brazilian steakhouse. They have a buffet bar with side items and sushi and fruit. Tuck and I loved the fried bananas but Mason and Trevor liked the warm cinnamon pineapple better. Everyone loved it and we had a great time hanging out.

With full bellies, we took the interns grocery shopping and grabbed the rest of the items we needed as well.

We were up early to ride to São Paulo with the De Lucias. They showed us around the city. São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world and is the largest in South America. We drove by the beautiful Parque Ibirapuera, which is larger than Central Park in New York and we saw the Monument of the Banderias, which commemorates the settling expeditions of the interior of Brazil during the 17th century and sits at the entrance to the park. Both are stock photos as mine turned out too blurry.

We walked the iconic Avenida Paulista, which is one of the busiest streets in Latin America due to it being a financial hub, bustling with art museums, shops, and beautiful churches. Think Atlanta surrounded by Buckhead.

With most big cities like this all over the world, you have the blend of excitement and beauty with the homelessness and danger.

Just ignore the back of Mason’s head and Roberto’s facial expression (he was in the middle of telling us about how the museum was built) because I was trying to get a picture of the street sign with the Museum of Art in the background. It is a concrete and glass structure that is supported only by two lateral beams with over 243 feet of freestanding space. Pretty impressive given the weight of the glass and concrete.

We toured the newly renovated historic Casa das Rosas. The colored bathrooms (one pink and one green) and the wood floors were signs of wealth at the time.

We rode the metro.

Then we visited the Mercado Municipal de São Paulo. It had a little bit of everything and was extremely crowded. We were told not to have our phones out in this areas. So I don’t have a lot of good pictures but I grabbed these two stock photos so you could see what a pretty building it is. Then they just piled a bunch of vendors in it and it just feels crowded, busy, and smells of fish. The shrimp did look tasty though.

The guys at the fruit stand were handing out fruit for us to try and at first we thought it was cool but then they became very pushy; not my favorite experience.

And of course, we had to try the famous mortadella sandwich for lunch.

Ya’ll know how much Trevor likes cities so he was pretty finished after all that and we headed home.

I think I need to have a What Dumb Thing Did Holly Do This Week section each week. Well, this week it would be Holly flooded the laundry room. Yep, it was me. I had the cleaning rags in the washer ready to wash in the morning but then realized I needed to wash Mason’s covers first because it would take the longest to dry. So I took them out and threw them in the sink next to the washer, put the sheets in, and started the washer. No big deal.

A while later I came to check on the laundry and found water all in the floor. My first thought was that the washer was leaking and then I noticed the bucket under the sink was full of water too, so I knew the washer couldn’t be leaking. Then I saw it. The water was overflowing from the sink.

Here in Brazil the washer doesn’t have its own drain; the hose is ran from the washer into the sink to drain. Remember, I had thrown the wet rags in the sink. Yep, so when the washer started draining, the water pushed the rags down over the drain and the sink filled up and overflowed. I quickly removed the towels and grabbed my phone to take a picture of my stupidity but most of the water had drained by then and I had cleaned up most of the water.

Water issues like that aren’t usually a big deal in Brazil because cabinets do not go all the way to the floor and most homes have tile floors with drains installed in them. The only problem in this house is that the floor isn’t sloped toward the drain. It flowed over the sink onto the floor and ran beside the drain out onto the rest of the room so all the water was just pooling up. In the end, I squeegeed the floor dry and Mason has nice clean sheets for his bed.

There’s no telling what I’ll end up doing next.