Back in the Saddle

Hi again. It's been a while. It'd be one thing if I could say that I've been so busy, but not really. Status quo in that arena for the most part. Although we did just have an amazing, warm weekend with some serious pool time and lunches on the patio at the club. All the other couples and families were there, so everybody was happy. Last night before bed, Noah was crying about about the fact that the weekend was over because it was so "special". This is a kid who generally loves going to school as much as anything else in the world, so it's saying something that he was so upset. Kind of a relief though...I don't want the kid to grow up loving school THAT much.

So we've bought our Brazilian freedom...wheels. I got a Citroen Xsera - a nice family station wagon. After driving a minivan for the last two years in Virginia, I feel downright cool driving a station wagon. I looked at cars about two weeks ago, and had it delivered a couple of days later. So needless to say, we spent some time each day of the (three day) weekend driving around the city. My sense of direction in this utterly unnavigable city it terrible though, so we spent a good two hours completely lost in Sao Paulo on Saturday. I ended up stopping at a roadside information booth (kind of a rest-stop I guess) and asked an Italian couple in broken Portuguese if they knew how I might find Morumbi. They spoke Portuguese better than me, but they clearly weren't fluent either. So communication was pretty tough....that said, the woman had no regard for how ridiculous she looked as she motioned everything she said - charades style. It helped though.

Ultimately, the guy told us to follow them, and off we went. 30 minutes later, we stopped at a gas station and they pulled up next to us. She gave us a note telling us that "our home is your home" and their address and phone number. She gave us hugs and kisses and told us that they have lots of neighbors who speak English, so we should call any time and set up a visit. We made it home another 30 minutes later. So I can now safely say that Italian-Brazilians who speak limited Portuguese and no English are some of the most generous and kind people I've ever met. I'm not sure how that knowledge might benefit me in the future, but it sure did help last weekend.

In other news, I went out with the "boys" on Saturday night too. That was a good time. I went with four colleagues and we ended up in a kind of sketchy part of the city. Although I wouldn't go back to that particular area, I do find that going out on the weekends shows me what the city is all about and gives me a true sense of the culture here.

By the way, the photo at the top of this post was taken from the livingroom. Sao Paulo really isn't a beautiful city, but when the sun sets, you'd never know it. Come next weekend, we'll be 3 hours later than all of you east-coasters. Tchau for now.