Another Campinas Discovery

One of Vagner's friend's took us to a park we hadn't been to as of yet. And wow, it was sooo beautiful. Huge and green and this one, and unlike the Taquaral park, is paved with bricks and has an inhouse zoo. And the only thing that costs money is if you get hungry. The forest is so thick in there you can't see or hear the city. I felt like we were exploring in India or something (if we ignored the school groups on field trips around us). We had a great time.
Since I still have no [working] camera, I've found some great pics of it online.

Getting a Visa isn't hard for Everyone

Well, Logan was delighted this morning to discover that the Tooth Fairy does actually come all the way down to Brazil if you lose a tooth. She left him 3 reis (in change, unfortunately- she must have been a little short).
Apparently, she broke tradition because when kids lose their teeth in Brazil, they just throw their teeth on the roof and recite a little poem. It was in this conversation with my husband that I realized (again)how materialistic we Americans are.

Me: So, they just throw the tooth on the roof?
V: Yep.
Me: And then...
V: They say the poem and that's it.
Me: No money?
V: Nope.
Me: Well, without money or presents, what fun is that?

Iguatemi Shopping-Home of the $10 Happy Meal

Today we went to one the cities "smaller" malls. I heard they had some good bookstores with books in English (and, I admit, am dying to get my hand on Breaking Dawn). I am just amazed how modern and clean things are here in Campinas. The mall was bigger than the malls I can thing of in Utah, and had high prices to boot. I feel like all I talk about is how expensive everything is. I told the kids ahead of time that we would be eating lunch at the mall. No big deal, right? But we get to the food court and there's so many choices, and none of them I'm familiar with except for Applebee's (WAAYY expensive here) and McDonalds. Because everytime I ask how much something costs, I'm sure my shocked face makes me look soooo classy, so I didn't want to go through that again today. Now those of you who know me know that if I have a burger I am a Wendy's girl. I rarely eat Mcdonalds, and if I do, only for breakfast. But of course, my kids love the toys in the happy meals, so I thought it would be nice to have a taste of home for them. And many Brazilians have assured me Mcdonalds here is way better than in the US (but now that I'm typing this all the people who told me that have never been so...). So we order 2 happy meals and a chicken club combo, and the total is 33 reis! That's like 25 dollars. I wouldn't mind paying that if we were having like nice food, or even decent food. But the Mcdonalds here is the same crappy stuff you have in the States. And there were a lot of people eating there, I just don't know why a person would pay so much for crappy food. They can't all have had my excuse of being indimidated by the language and the choices.
Oh, by the way, Vagner's cousin Isaias was impressed when the cashier was asking me what I wanted and I knew to answer what kind of drink and if I wanted crispy or grilled without translation. Little did he know I had those questions memorized! And no luck with the book. They had the first two twilight books in english though.

My favorite thing about Campinas

This is the awesome park I was describing earlier. In the left hand corner you can see the pirate ship they're building, and in the middle the fountains and the tree covered area in the middle is where all the bird cages are. You can't see the other 2/3 of the park, but this gives you a good idea.

I knew it was a bad idea!

So a few months ago Vagner bought Logan a Playstation. Well, that's not quite the whole story. After mutually deciding that Vagner would come home from Brazil in May, we told the kids he was home for good. He did come home, but after being scared by the current economic conditions in the US, decided to give it one more try. So he had his plane ticket to leave (I think it was 2-3 weeks after he got home) and hadn't broken the news to the kids yet. Keep in mind they had spent 4 weeks total with him since the beginning of December.
Vagner, mastermind that he is, knew Julia would be no problem. Tell her she's pretty, you see a balloon, or tickle her and she's pretty much a happy girl. Logan on the other hand is really sensitive and has the memory of an elephant. He also adores Vagner completely and thinks he walks on water basically. So we were driving in the car, and Vagner turns around and says to the kids, "Well, guys, I have to go back to Brazil the day after tomorrow." They start their protesting but then he continues, "but right now we're on our way to Walmart to buy a playstation". That was met by cheers and smiles, of course. So Vagner turns to me and smiles, what a sly dog. I had been putting off buying one for so long , I was afraid I'd be constantly fighting Logan (and Vagner) to keep the playing time to a reasonable level. But how could I say no now?
So here we are in Brazil, with a limited number of toys, all the books read and workpages done that I brought with me. All Logan wants all day long is to play playstation! If he isn't playing, he's asked about playing. It never stops all day long. I've had a recurring nightmare this week of Logan's future:



I've tried distracting him with puzzles, charades, hide-and-seek, leaf people (don't ask), but he doesn't like playing alone so unless I am right there playing with hime, everything is "boring". Yesterday I suggested we do an obstacle course with jumping jacks, situps, etc at different locations all around the apartment. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: Logan, it's not good for your brain to be playing playstation all the time.
Logan: I know... [brightening up]How about disneychannel.com??!!??
Me: Same thing. You need to do something that gets your body moving, exercises your muscles.
Logan: [sighs, then speaks very slowly to make sure I understand] Mom, don't you know when I'm playing playstation, MY HANDS ARE MOVING THE WHOLE TIME!! That's exercise, see?
Me:[silence-feel free to insert cricket sounds]

I love you like a Kumquat

Something I love to do here is try all the tropical fruit that isn´t available in the US. I´ve tried passion fruit (eh...) cashew fruit (eww!), and yesterday I had kumquats for the first time and they were delicious! It looks like a tiny orange and you squeeze the contents into your mouth and suck it out. The outside is sweet and mild and the inside is sweet/sour. My mouth is watering as I´m typing this.
I´m going to spend the next two weeks with the kids in Itauna with Vagner´s family. He´ll be really busy with work and school this week (oh, did I mention he decided to get an MBA?!? crazy boy) so it´s just easier for his mom if we spend time here instead of her coming with us. He left an hour ago, and I miss him already.

Due to Technical Difficulties....

Ugghh! In the past two week, my laptop stopped working, and tonight Julia broke the camera. So, my posting will be "photo-free" until I get home in August and electronics are actually affordable.
The only pictures I've taken in Brazil are when we first walked into our apartment and I wanted everyone to see where we were living. We live in a pretty busy part of Campinas (at least it seems that way to me) We live in a little building on a fork of a one-way street. Underneath us is a hot dog stand, a little bar, a pharmacy, and a filtered water shop.

Every morning I wake up and walk down the street about 50 feet and buy fresh bread for breakfast (so much for losing weight while in Brasil). At about 11, I start making lunch, which is the big meal here. I always make rice, which was a disaster the first 2 days, and beans (ditto), some kind of meat, and butter leaf lettuce with lime sqeezed on it and salt. Cooking this way is a learning experience. Since Brazillians make just about the same thing everyday, they are really good at it. After 2 days of trying to cook with the limited utensils/ pots that I had, and using a pressure cooker for the first time, this is what happened!





Actually, I'm lucky b/c it's actually really dangerous to use it incorrectly, and I hadn't been taught. So my friend Fernanda was nice enought to come over and give me a cooking/Portuguese lesson. She doesn't speak English, but we were able to communicate pretty well (with some help from her husband over the phone). She was a great teacher and now my meals are very good if I do say so myself!
After the meal we went to the Don Pedro mall (or "shopping" in Portuguese). It's the largest mall in Latin American and only about 5 minutes away from me. It was beautiful, really modern and clean and lots of windows (and A/C!)tons of stores and activities for kids, and a theatre, a huge grocery store, and even rides for kids. I can't wait to go back!
Another cool thing in Campinas is this HUGE park with a lake in the middle and paddle boats, train rides, exotic birds in cages (although I guess here they aren't exotic!)a huge pirate ship, and (dirt) soccor fields, and a playground (playground seem to be really rare here). If you circle the whole park is like 5 km, so all the time there's tons of people exercising. Right next to the playground is a weight lifting area, with a scale and a "mist machine" in case people get hot. I've never been to such a nice park. The first time we went there we say a possum, and a capybura, which I didn't get a picture of but here's what it looks like:

We've had a lot of fun visiting friends and family in Brazil. That's our main form of entertainment here- just talking. Brazillians are such great company. I just hope I can learn Portuguese quickly! I mostly stay home and walk around near our home during the day since I'm afraid of getting lost while driving in these twisty, turny, one way streets. But then Vagner gets home and we go out!