Friendly Neighbors

One thing that has truly surprise me, is how open and friendly people are here. Not that I didn't expect people to be nice, but the fact that random strangers have welcomed us with open arms, even with our limited Portuguese, has been truly amazing!

One day as I was out walking Suri, I ran into a very nice women who also lives in our apartment complex. As many people do, she stopped to talk to me and admire Suri, because people here really love dogs, all dogs, not just our adorable pug! Anyway, we stumbled our way through a conversation with me not knowing any Portuguese and her not knowing any English. She told me which apartment she lived in and told me to come over any time.

A few days later, we got a knock on our door and her son, Fransisco, who is learning English, was at the door, Portuguese/English dictionary in hand, to chat. He asked how we were, admired our dog and told us how much he loves pugs (in fact he has a pug t-shirt) and told us if we needed anything, we could always come over. He then came by a few days later, and invited us to have lunch at his house the following weekend which we gladly agreed to.

So the following Saturday, we made our way to their apartment and were quickly introduced to a number of other people who would be having lunch too. It turns out that Vera and her family are Seventh Day Adventists and had invited several other people from their church for lunch that day. Luckily for us (and unluckily for our Portuguese) two people there spoke English.

We had a lovely lunch, got to know several different people from outside of school and even made plans to have a "real" Churrasco and go to an Inter football match in the near future with one of the other couples that was there.

It's been so nice to meet local people and make plans to hang out, which is something we were not very successful at in India. We are looking forward to meeting more people, especially when we start to pick up more Portuguese, and of course, have more things to blog about as we explore and get to know people.

um abraço,
K&E