Feliz Natal!

Well apparently it's December already and, true to form, we haven't posted anything for a few months. As we've mentioned before, life here is pretty easy and it's a drastic change from the craziness of India where we would see something new and bizarre every day. Life in POA is not that much different than being in the US which is nice although it doesn't lend itself to many interesting and unique stories or pictures. Even so, we are loving it here and life is good.

Elizabeth is in the final days of pregnancy and we are ready and waiting for the arrival of Sofia as well as Kent, Pam, and Marie who will be arriving in a few days with ALL of our baby supplies! Hope they get here before the baby does! She has had a very easy and successful pregnancy so far and we hope the delivery will follow suit. Hopefully the baby will be a new catalyst for some regular blogging! :-)

The last few months have been great albeit uneventful. We ended our first semester of school and so far things are going well. There are some frustrations here and there being that it is a growing school in a country with overwhelming bureaucracy but all in all we are both loving our jobs and the kids and colleagues at the school. We've made some good friends both in and out of school and have enjoyed hanging out with all sorts of people and even having a delicious little Thanksgiving feast for all us Americans from the school.

Otherwise, our only other big adventure is trying to buy a car in the coming weeks which so far has been pretty successful. It took some time and research but we finally found some websites to search used cars and even made it to some dealers to look at a few. So far so good.

As for daily life, we are finally settled into our apartment now that our shipment (FINALLY!) arrived with surprisingly no major mold or damage (only one broken frame on a painting that we have had repaired). Just some wiping down of furniture and lots of laundry and we are now settled with all our stuff and it feels like home.

We have finished our Portuguese classes for the time being until the baby comes but 5 months of regular classes has done us a lot of good and we are able to do most things by ourselves now without the help of a language buddy. We've bought furniture, paid bills, had doctor appointments, and even talked on the phone with a good level of success. Hopefully we can continue to practice after the baby comes since we have learned a lot in a short time and don't want to start losing it!

Other than that, life rolls on and all is good down here. We are on vacation until February which gives us lots of adjustment time with the baby before I have to go back to work.

We had a quiet Christmas with just the 2 of us watching movies, listening to Christmas music and playing some games, trying to make it feel as Christmas-y as possible given that it's summer time and there's nobody around. :-/ But it was nice and we are ready for the new year and baby Sofia!

We have received a few Christmas letters and cards from folks in the US which is fun (and reassuring that the local mail seems to work quite reliably here). Sounds like things are good on the home front. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and has a great new year! The next post will probably be when Sofia arrives! Lots of pictures and videos to come, promise!

Boas Festas!!

um abraço K&E

The Gaucho

So like Elizabeth said in the last post, Rio Grande do Sul is pretty much like the Texas of Brazil. We've got cowboy ranchers, boots n' leather, steak, and a group of people who consider themselves to be part of their state before they consider themselves part of their country. People from Rio Grande do Sul are Gaucho first and Brazilian second, citing that they have more in common with Argentina and Uruguay than they do with the rest of Brazil, which is very true.

Just like Texas, everything is bigger and better in Porto Alegre too. Their lake is the biggest, their food is the best, their women are the prettiest, and even their sunset is the most beautiful in the world. Just ask them.

The best part is that they even tried to secede from the country in a civil war known as the Farroupilha Revolution (or loosely translated: War of the Ragamuffins). AND...it happened at the same time as the Texas Revolution and the Alamo.

Rio Grande Texas....Rio Grande do Sul. Hmmm.....

Anyway, back to Gauchos. So these men and women are the more traditional pioneers of the area and hold some fun cowboy-western-boot-smacking-accordian-playing-tea-drinking-spur-wearing-meat-eating-bbq traditions that we have been seeing over the last month.

First, we were invited by our school "host family" (our adoptive parent from the school to show us around) to go to a big

international fair outside of town called ExpoInter. It's a big exposition of livestock, farm equipment and other "county fair" products from Brazil and the surrounding region. This is a lot like a big state fair in the states only less of the crappy food and clowns and more of the cowboy stuff and farm machinery.

It was a lot of fun to walk around the livestock pens, seeing the prize animals, watch a cattle auction, eat fantastic steak, and browsing the shops filled with more leather than you can imagine. I also got to have my first sip of chimarrao, the Gaucho's favorite tea that they carry with them everywhere in little thermoses. And it just so happens that our host mom owns a cattle ranch in PA and her family business is breeding and selling beef cattle so we got the inside scoop on the cattle industry in southern Brazil and the region.

Our second round of full-on Gaucho-ness was this last Tuesday as we had a day off for school for Farroupilha Day. For weeks up to the holiday, there is a section of town that hosts a mini fair of everything Gaucho called Acampamento Farroupilha in which a small town of log cabin huts is created to host a variety of events, food, shopping, and everything Gaucho the town has to offer.

It was kind of like one giant tailgate party with a giant open flame bbq pit every 10 feet with entire racks of animals roasting away. Only in log cabins....and no trucks. Or drunk football fans.

There was also all the same stalls that sell all the fair junk food and other events and games and performances and such. This meant that we got our share of some down-home-country cooking and also some chocolate covered strawberries on a stick and a "Suiss Crepe" or chocolate-filled waffle on a stick. Mmmm.

We spent most of the day hanging out in a restaurant with a group of people who all came together from school enjoying some tasty meat and rice cooked up in the kitchen and served in a giant communal cauldron for everyone to enjoy.

The highlight I believe is the sign below that was posted several places in the restaurant that translates "No dancing with a knife in your belt"

Love it.

um abraço

K&E

Meat, Meat and More MEAT!

For those of you who don't know, we are now living in the Brazilian equivalent to the U.S. state of Texas. From attitudes, to history, cowboys (or Gauchos) and food you could compare the two and come up with the same thing in every category. If you ask someone from around here if they are Brazilian, they will probably say, no I'm Gaucho. Ever asked a Texan where they are from??

One of the big things here is obviously cattle ranching and with that, lots and lots of meat! A very nice change from India for those of use who enjoy a good steak. (Don't get me wrong, we love and miss the spice and flavor of Indian food too!) This means they BBQ a lot, or Churrasco.

Like anything else that is loved, you will find a variety of different types from quick/possibly low quality, to "the real" Churrasco. We've already experienced three different kinds, but I'll just go into the first two, as the third requires a post of it's own.

The first few days we were here, exploring the streets, relearning to cook for ourselves :-), we found a little Chuurasqueria just a few blocks down the road. There we had two skewers with Filet Mignon, and a piece a garlic bread also heated over the BBQ. Simple and delicious.

Our second type of Churrasco was the larger "steakhouse" variety. A few coworkers were getting together at a popular resturant near by and invited us a long. It also happened to be our anniversary, so it was a great way to celebrate.

This style of Churrasco, is like an all you can eat buffett, including a sushi bar, salad bar, pasta station and other typical Brazilian foods like rice and beans.

Salad Buffet

Once you are sitting down with a plate, the servers walk around with giant skewers of all kinds of meat, including different types of beef, pork and chicken.

Delicious meat!

They slice pieces off for you and your grab them will a little pair of tongs to enjoy! It was a great evening out, a chance to get to know some of the other teachers a bit better and celebrate our anniversary, including enjoying the desert buffet at the end!

Mmmmm, chocolate fondue. :-)

We look forward to a slew of visitors in the next few years, as many of you have promised to come to Brazil, and we will be sure to enjoy lots of good steak!

Thanks to Jenn Longmuir for providing some much needed photos! (See buffet and meat above) We really do need to get better at taking photos of every day life!

um abraço,
K&E

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

Mercado Publico

One of the first weekends we were here, the school got the group of new teachers together to go to the Mercado Publico for some lunch and shopping. This landmark and functioning public market is one of the places we can get fresh local produce, meat and other specialty/import items you may or may not find at the local grocery stores, with some pretty decent prices.

We have actually been twice now, both time with large groups, which makes shopping a bit more difficult as we are always worried about others waiting for us. One of these days we will be sure to venture down on our own, especially since it is a good place for us to get supplies to make Suri's food, aka bulk oats/grains instead of the tiny boxes from the grocery store. With the fantastic public transit system it is also super easy as two of the buses that pass right by our house go down and back.

Here are a few pictures from the first few times to the mercado.

Super Gaucho/Inter Fan

Busy ground floor of the market

View of ground floor from above

Smiling despite freezing in the open air market!

um abraço
K&E

Back to Basics

One month in and it's time to finally get all our saved up blog ideas out there. First of all we are at that stage again where the only possessions we have are what we brought in our suitcases so the apartment is still completely empty and kind of a disaster. We have sort of organized things and put together a plan for where all our stuff from India will go. However we are living off of the minimal supplies the school has provided us, which is great, but we are anxious for our shipment (and thoroughly pissed off at our shipper as they are totally inept and our stuff is STILL sitting in Mumbai). But life is good, school is good, baby is good, pug is good.....just need our stuff and life will feel like normal (at least until January :-)

I continue to be in that "everything is so great and convenient compared to India" phase which I love and am hoping won't wear off over time. We have a public transit system that is super efficient and makes it incredibly easy to get around town (and to and from work in about 7 minutes). We have a drug store, pet shop, gym, 2 grocery markets, 2 bakeries, several restaurants, and a park all within walking distance of our apartment (really short walking distance too) which makes things so convenient. Especially when we actually have to shop and cook for ourselves since we don't have Maria anymore.

But the parks are lovely, everyone LOVES dogs and Suri is in pet heaven getting to run around loose at the park and have people and other dogs love on her. Things are clean, there's lots of malls and big shopping centers if we need our fix of movies, clothes, toys, and other mall-rat things. There are farmer's markets every Saturday morning at the park, a huge public market down town, and tons of public green space to relax, play football, go for a run, walk the dog, shop for local handicrafts, or just eat and hang out with some chimarrão on a sunny day.

And the best part, and what continues to be my favorite thing about Brazil so far, is how friendly everyone is. It is such a welcoming culture and people are so quick to invite you in and tag along in their lives. It seems we've pretty much had something to do every weekend since we've been here which has been great. We've already met several people from outside of our school community which is so nice to get your bearings and figure things out as a foreigner. We feel so welcomed and well taken care of by everyone which has a great impact on the culture shock you feel when you first show up somewhere new (especially since nobody speaks English).

So the only real negatives so far are the fact that everything is RIDICULOUSLY expensive (like 75%-300% more expensive than the US depending on the product) and the language barriers continue to make things challenging but we get by with our Portuganish. There is a lot of bureaucracy which can be frustrating in certain circumstances although I continue to be surprised at how modernized and efficient things are despite these layers of red tape and weird laws and loopholes.

For example, registering with the police took 3 different trips to complete what seemed like a 10 step process which in itself was ridiculous however each of the trips was to a different office that were all relatively organized, had efficient technology, and were not any more frustrating than trying to get something done at the DMV in the states. I compare this to a system in India where it took only 1 trip to register but it included hours of wasted inefficiency, manual carbon copy documents, and a guy behind a crappy copy machine who took an hour to make a photocopy and print a picture after you paid him 12 rupees. In the end, about the same amount of time wasted, but at least it was relatively painless and I know the data is stored in a computer and not on some lady's carbon paper that's shoved in a drawer in a room somewhere. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy I suppose, but at least it's 21st century bureaucracy.

So that's the general report from the Roberts camp here in Porto Alegre. I have a number of mini posts that I am determined to get up on some of our "firsts" in the city and those day to day things that remind us that we are in Brazil. Tchau for now.

um abraço

K&E

First Day of School at Porto Alegre

Although today was a pretty typical first day of school, we thought we would share a few pictures from the day. The most exciting part (for Elizabeth at least) was the cupcakes served at the all school snack time.

Cupcakes for 10am all school snack time.

Decorations in the cafateria

In addition, they had the cafeteria all decked-out with ballons and streamers. At lunch they had two actual clowns making ballon animals plus ice cream Sunday's. Unfortunetly, I didn't get a picture of them. I know the elementary kids loved it all, especially with all that sugar in their systems. Not sure how thrilled the high school students were, but everyone loves cupcakes and ice cream.



And here is Kevin, waiting outside his room for his students before the first class of the day.

He looks deceptively warm in his sweater and scarf. His classroom was actually warm the last two days and stayed that way. My library, however was cold (because of the people coming in and out all the time) and the hallways and cafeteria are even more cold...like outside temperature cold, which was about 50 today. 

Now 50 is not actually that cold, until you never ever get to warm up.  Even with two sweaters, a scarf and jacket on (and occasionally gloves!) I was cold all day. I think I may need someone to send me some long-underwear.  I'm sure it doesn't helped that we are acclimated to Mumbai weather of 85-95 all year, but still, it's COLD here in Brazil. 

And with all this cold damp weather it's also impossible to get your clothes dried. Some day soon, when we run out of clean clothes packed from the US, we may have to wear cold, damp clothes as well. OK, maybe that is a bit of an over exaggeration. After a few experiments, we did get our clothes to dry using a space heater...not sure it's the most efficient use of power though. We may eventually invest in a clothes drier when we have a lot more to wash and dry on a daily basis. 

So, we hope everyone is enjoying their warm summer vacations in the US and elsewhere (and not overheating in the heat wave) as we enjoy our first day of (freezing) school in Brazil. 

um abraço K&E