Who's Complaining?

For all of my pathetic whining, the last two weekends have been spent like this:




When Paul and I are having conversations about how to structure our weekends better so we don't sit at the pool and Club all day long I guess I should stop complaining. Seriously.

Living Room Makeover

I hate complaining about our apartment-we live in a great community. The outdoor amenities are nothing short of breathtaking (especially in a city like Sao Paulo), but the apartments, and the buildings that house them, leave much to be desired. The rumor is that the architect was a bit of a communist and he wanted all the buildings to be "equal". All 8 of our buildings are plain cement towers and none of the buildings have balconies. The communist architect put all of his efforts into the grounds surrounding the buildings so that people would come down and "commune" (or sunbathe and drink caipirinhas for hours on end) with each other. He certainly accomplished that objective! But the apartments...some are better than others. In reality we got very lucky-our apartment has been renovated in the last 15 years. Although the decor is not my taste, per se, it is fairly neutral and we've managed to make it work. The biggest problem-the white! When we arrived last August it was so very white. The floors. The walls. The ceiling. Everything!
Remember?

The we painted around Christmas time and the apartment began to take on some personality:

Finally, at the end of last year, we managed to collect quite a few things from people that were leaving. Most of July was spent unpacking, arranging, and rearranging everything to make it feel like home...we're almost there!
Here are a few recent pictures of the living room/dining room. We're still looking for a large piece of art for the far wall, but things are coming along. The rest of the apartment is looking much better too, but this room has had the biggest change by far!



If Noah and Sophie don't stop waking each other up "to play" at 5:30 a.m. my next project is going to be to transform our playroom into an additional bedroom. They're making me crazy (and each other grumpy!).

The Last Few Weeks

Normally the beginning of the school year is busy for everyone. Add to that a two teacher household, a five year old beginning kindergartner, and a three year old heading to preschool and it gets a little crazy. Add to THAT the swine flu fears (thus a few days home already with a slight cough), a new, heavy teaching load and coaching position for Paul, professional leadership commitments for me, a broken toe, abandoned race training (grumpy mama), and negotiating a house closing from Brazil and you have pure chaos! That's pretty much what's been going on here. It hasn't been pretty. This morning I believed we were starting to emerge from all of this, but was then reminded Paul was working late tonight and half of tomorrow and Noah had his first tee ball game tomorrow morning. And it is cold. Really cold. And Noah just came back from a playdate early because his ear was hurting him so badly and he couldn't stop crying. Should I go on?
It has been a ROUGH couple of weeks.
There are so many wonderful, amazing things happening, but I've been a bit blind to them lately. I just need the fog to clear.
Fun fact? We've booked our trip to Buenos Aires in late November!
Hopefully I'll be back with great pictures and fun updates soon!

Swine Flu Fears and First Week Insanity

We're drowning in swine flu fears and first week insanity....be back soon!

Sunday Afternoon in Embu

A few weekends ago we headed to Embu, a small artisan town about 20 minutes from here. Weekends there are fun-there are quite a few craftsman that set up shop along the streets, small restaurants, and a relaxing, laid back feel. We were hunting for a few pieces of art for our living room. We didn't end up buying anything (yet), but had a fun time!

A Small (Large) Bump in the Road

Since late May when I ran a 12k I've had my sights set on The Rio International Half Marathon. The a little less than twice the 12k and I was feeling very ready for it. My training back in the States was spotty-but once I returned to Brazil I was very diligent, and I was just about a month out from the race. My training was right on track. Until Sunday when I made the crazy decision to turn on a light in our living room. And bump into a wall. Now my foot looks like this:

I know-it doesn't look so bad, right? That's because the white tape is covering my purple and black toe that is swollen to the size of my thumb. Our nurse at school feels confident I broke the toe, but Paul, in his ample broken bone experience, feels I may have just sprained it. Three days later, it still hurts like crazy and I still limp around like Tiny Tim. I have no idea when I will be able to run again-the nurse told me to stay off of it for 4-6 weeks-almost laughable since the school year started on Monday and I have two little darlings that need me up at home. We'll see. I'm awfully bummed that a goal I've had for many years, and was so close to reaching, disappeared in a split second of clumsiness. I guess there's always next fall (spring).

Last Days of Vacation (for some of us)

I made it back from Seattle! Can you tell?


Today is officially the our last day of winter vacation and tomorrow we are back to school. The last few weeks have been miserable here-cold, rainy, muddy, and gray. Usually I have no complaints about living in an apartment, but after three weeks of that weather I was beginning to go crazy and the apartment walls seemed to be closing in. I was starting to feel ready to go back to work, but, of course, today the weather turned and it was gorgeous. It gave us a perfect day to enjoy a chuhasca (Brazilian BBQ) with friends in Embu, but it definitely made me long for a few more days of lounging at the Clubbe and playing at the park. Hopefully, these sunny days will start to be a little more frequent, although the rumor is by Tuesday we could be in the 40s! Either way today was a perfect way to end our "winter" vacation (which is strange since we battled 100 degree temps in Austin and Seattle and perfect summer weather in Virginia).

I bought the new kids new backpacks in Seattle. It seemed like a fun way to kick off the new school year-Sophie is starting the K-3 program and Noah is a big, full day kindergartner. Unfortunately, due to the swine flu concerns our school decided to postpone the first day of school for students until Monday, August 10th. Most schools here are closed until August 17th, so we'll see if Graded follows suit or actually opens on the 10th. Noah is really, really excited to head back, so for his sake I hope it is sooner rather than later!

Not so fast, guys!

Tchau

Tchau, Mama!

Tonight I'm up alone-Noah and Soph are zonked out in their newly bunked beds. Paul, too, is in dream land after being up very late last night and dutifully fetching our service door key from our porteiro early this morning so I could get our milk delivery behind the locked door. That could be a whole other post-the Brazilian double door system (service door versus social door) and milk delivery (possibly the best thing ever), but it will have to wait for another evening when list making, packing, and ironing aren't consuming my time. Tomorrow I leave for Seattle for an Everyday Math conference-stimulating, no? I'm excited for the trip. Just having traveled with two little ones I realize what a luxury 16+ hours of sleeping, reading, and otherwise doing whatever I want to do in my little airplane seat will be. Paul will be alright-today we stocked the fridge, yesterday we had this new member of our family delivered, and Katty will be here Monday-Thursday 9-5 to lend a hand. The weather has been just plain awful here-cold and rainy-and Seattle's forecast looks HOT and sunny-the perfect last minute escape before we head back on August 3rd. I've promised to return with bags filled with mac and cheese, Coffeemate creamer, and Hungry Hippos (which I may regret later). Noah's promised to remind Paul to pick up the milk waiting in the morning and Sophie declared she'll "watch my earrings and necklaces" so I feel like I can leave confidently-knowing my accessories are in good hands.

Sophie is the New Shirley

Sophie has become rather taken with Shirley Temple lately. I think she first learned about her when I would randomly sing "Animal Crackers in My Soup" (at least the two lines that I know) and eventually showed her this video. She's probably seen the video close to 20 times now-usually watching it 4-5 times in a row before all of us (except for Sophie) tire of it. Sophie often uses the same expression "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness" just like her hero and throughout the day often comments on Shirley's behavior ("She stands on the table!" and "She bangs her fork!" are favorite criticism) in the aforementioned video. As much as I get awfully tired of the same video and song week after week I am certain that Shirley beats Hannah Montana in our house any day of the week!

Happy Birthday Paul!

We celebrated Paul's birthday yesterday at the local chuhascarria (Brazilian meat bar) Poncho Verde. It is always an easy place to go-it opens early (6 o'clocks is early in this area), always has good picanha, and the waiters are about the friendliest, best babysitters around. Not many people are back in town yet, but we met up with a few friends and their kids and had a great time!

This handy brochure tells you exactly what part of the cow you're enjoying-the illustration with the name of the part (in English and Portuguese) is very helpful!
The green button above means "go" (as in, bring on the meat!)...flip it over and it is red for when you've had enough.

Noah uses his tongs expertly to get some meat!

Sophie's getting the hang of it too!

Happy Birthday!!

Night at the Museum

Noah and I went out for a little Brazilian culture and history today. We went to the Museo do Futebol in downtown Sao Paulo. I was pretty impressed. It was well done - even to a gringo who speaks and reads limited Portuguese and his 5-year old son.

There were lots of good photo-ops at the museum, which is in a building that is attached to the Estadio Municipal in Pacaembu. You could actually walk right out into the stadium from the museum. The problem was that when I pulled the camera out to take some pics of Noah, it had a dead battery. So photo below of Noah and me is the only evidence of our trip. The photo was taken in a penalty kick cage. It's just like those speed pitch cages at baseball stadiums in the U.S. Only here, there's a virtual goalkeeper trying to stop your ball. Standing in line for about 30 minutes and watching other people kick demonstrated that the keeper block about half of the attempts. Noah's kick? As they say, GGOOOOOLLLL!!!!!

Web Show 49312

Photo Dump

I cleaned out the photo card on our nice camera. The one we left here in Brazil. I get it-Paul's totally right-we can't cart this nice camera across the world only to have it break. But, to be honest, I was less than impressed with the quality of our new camera's pictures. I like my lightening fast shutter and never-see-red-eyes button. Here are a few favorites from the cleaning session:

Okay, this is from our new camera, but it is so stinkin' cute I couldn't resist. Clearly.

Who needs organized summer camps? We can scuba dive right in our apartment.

Sophie' s working on her poker face.

Some people have chardonnay-I have Katty. And chardonnay.

At the risk of this turning this into a blog about our great kids, I must admit that everything, everything is SOOO much easier this year. The language, the culture, the shopping-everything-is much easier. I'm sure we'll have lots of adventures and ahem, experiences-but thankfully not every hour of every day. This is good for me! And...I'm this close to buying a dryer for our apartment. Returning from a month long trip with 8 suitcases of wrinkled, sometimes dirty clothes will do that to a girl!

And We're Back!

After a whirlwind trip to Austin and Virginia (with a few days in Ohio) we are back in Sao Paulo. Thankfully, our flight back to Brazil was much smoother (minus the two hour delay taking off) than our trip to the States. The kids slept most of the trip and by the time they were waking up we were landing. Paul wrangled our 8 70 lb. suitcases without too much trouble (much easier than the 19 we had last year when his arm was in a sling!), we caught a taxi, and we made home without too much traffic. While Paul and the driver were unpacking the trunk of the taxi the kids' favorite porteiro (doorman) came over to help. Noah and Soph greeted Natty with big hugs and we were in the apartment in less than a minute. The last few days have been spent unpacking, organizing, grocery shopping, and general regrouping after being gone for 30 days. The kids have transitioned well. Truthfully, I was a bit worried. During our last days in Virginia, we heard lots of "I want to stay here" and "Why do we live in Brazil?". In the airport both kids cried for a few different stretches, missing all of their grandparents and cousins. It is difficult to explain to them that we have not been living in "real life" for the last month-real life isn't filled new experiences, sleepovers, late bedtimes, ice cream, and FUN everyday. Just when you visit after a year of being away! We are planning to return at Christmas and I think that helped ease their minds a bit. Leaving for 5 months is a lot more manageable than a whole year! Even for us adults. We had a great time, but it is nice to actually put clothes in drawers, have a bedtime routine, and cook dinner. Both kids were hoping to start school the day we returned to Sao Paulo, but we have three more weeks before we head back. We contemplated a trip to either Buenos Aires or the Amazon, but quickly realized we should take advantage of these quiet weeks to run errands, tend to appointments, and generally relax before things get busy again. We may make a trip to Campos do Jordao, but it would only be for a few days. We only had a camera the second half of our trip, but here are a few favorites:

The cousins (minus Olivia)

Sleepovers

Williamsburg

Fourth of July Fun

We're not Sao Paulo anymore...

We finally made it to Austin after traveling for three days. Our travel itinerary should have looked like this:

Wednesday - 3:30 p.m. bus to SP airport, 9:10 p.m. flight to Chicago
Thursday - 6 a.m. arrival in Chicago, connection at 8:40 a.m. to Austin with arrival at noon.

Instead, it looked like this:

Wednesday - 3:30 p.m. bus to SP airport, 9:10 p.m. flight delayed until Thursday morning at 11:30 a.m. Had to stay in SP hotel.
Thursday - 11:30 a.m. flight to Chicago delayed until noon. Arrival in Chicago at 8:30 p.m. Had to stay in Chicago hotel.
Friday - United couldn't get us on the first flight out in the morning, so we caught the 12:50 flight out of Chicago that was delayed until 1:30. Finally arrived in Austin around 4:30.

At least all of our bags showed up.

But now we're here, and it's great to catch up with Abby's dad and family. The kids have been SO looking forward to being here to see their uncles Max and Sam, their Little Grandpa and Mimi. Since we've been here, Noah and Max (he's 8) have been best buddies. Sophie's latched onto Sam (who's 11). It's been relaxing, but HOT. We went to a Round Rock Express baseball game last night - Houston Astros AA affiliate. Tomorrow we're headed to Seaworld in San Antonio. We're off to Virginia on Wednesday. More in a few days...

We Made It!

Sorry for the delay...life has been busy. Report cards, shopping for family back home, and packing has kept us occupied lately. We leave on Wednesday (our 8th anniversary!) for a month back at home. We can't wait-we are so ready for this! It has been an incredible year, but now we just want to enjoy the comforts of home. I'm sure we'll have lots to share when we return in a month!

Petropolistic

I'm back from my 3-day trip to Petropolis with my 8th graders. We all survived and it was a good time. More importantly for me, it was my first real opportunity to get a sense for the history of Brazil. Petropolis was kind of the Camp David for the ruling Portuguese King when Brazil was still an imperial nation under Portuguese control. The royal family had a palace built there in the 1700's. Petropolis is a small city in the mountains of the state of Rio de Janeiro, and the family would travel there during the hot summer months. So today, the palace is a great museum depicting this old world Brazil. We also visited the house of Santos Dumont, the first person in the world to ascend from the ground in an airplane. The important distinction between Dumont and the Wright brothers is that they flew from a raised hill, thus their achievements are complementary but different. We visited a beautiful cathedral downtown that was built over 200 years ago called the São Pedro de Alcântara Cathedral:
Nothing compared to the history of European cathedrals, but beautiful Gothic architecture and an impressive piece of history nonetheless. Yeah, I'm the only teacher who paid much attention to this one. The others are all Brasilians....
We also visited an old casino (although gambling was outlawed in Brazil 6 years after it was built in 1939) and the Crystal Palace as well. All in all, a beautiful part of the country and rich in history. I'm sure I got more out of it than our students.

Of course, when you've got the tour agency running the operation and accounting for the students, there's plenty of time for the teachers to have a leisurly lunch and enjoy the beautiful weather:
On another note, we're getting excited to come back home for a visit in a couple of weeks, evidenced by the countdown chain:
It's been 10 months here, and although it's a wonderful place to live for the most part, there are so many things (mostly people) that we miss and can't wait to come home for. I only wish it were going to be more than a month. All the best to friends and family. Tchau for now.

Thank Goodness for Portal

Life has been busy lately. The end of the school year keeps our days filled to the brim, Paul and kids have been sick intermittently, and Paul traveled to Petropolis in Rio de Janiero State this week leaving me to do the solo parenting thing for a few days. I've also been trying to keep some semblance of a training routine for tomorrow's race while feeling pretty run down by everything else. I just realized it is 12.5 kilometers-not just 12. Somehow that is making a big difference to me right now! All of this adds up to pretty poor blog maintenance. Sorry! Hopefully when Paul returns I can download some new photos and at least plaster the screen with cute pictures of Noah and Sophie. I'm sick of looking at my running shoes every time I consider posting a new entry!
Even as busy as things have been I have had time to realize how amazingly wonderful it is to live here in Portal. As much as I loved our house in Virginia, we didn't really have any sense of community there. We had good neighbors (on one side), good friends an hour away, and of course, family nearby-but nothing quite like what we have here.
Just today (Paul's still traveling) the kids and I headed down to the large park around 10:30. We met friends down there and the kids played for a couple of hourse. Then we all (the kids and our friends) headed to the Club for lunch. The kids played more (too cold for swimming though!) and the adults were able to visit and referree occaisonally. After lunch we headed back down to the park-it was just too nice to go inside. It is now almost five o'clock and we just returned home. We are heading to a friend's apartment for a pre-race pasta dinner in half an hour. Such a nice day. Truthfully, here in Portal this is really the norm-not the exception. We are so very lucky.

Mother's Day 10k

I was beginning to question my sanity when I realized that I signed up for a 10k on Mother's Day. It is, after all, the one day of the year that I feel I can sleep in guilt free. In the end, I am so glad I did it! For the past three months I have been very committed to both running and yoga and it was good to put my dedication to the test. The day was warm, the course ugly (we ran on a highway!) and hilly, but having Paul and the kids greet me at the finish line was a great Mother's Day gift! Next up, a 12k in two weeks!

Ballerina

To celebrate Mother's Day Sophie's ballet teacher invited all of the mothers to come and watch class on Friday. I was able to find some coverage at school so I could dash away for 45 minutes to see Sophie demonstrate her ballet skills (or something like that!). It was very sweet!!