Baby for Sale!

Well Sarah is gone to the states for the next 40 days for work.  Make sure you check out her website g here! and her blog here!

So this is my first blog post!  Can you believe that we have been here almost 10 months and I have yet to do a blog post.  Well while Sarah is gone I am going to keep the blog going.

We are currently working on our about us page so be on the look out for that too.

So we have been here for 10 months and we are loving it.  We really do enjoy things here.  Sure there are some things that still baffle and bother us...like the banks being on strike or the huge hassel of getting Sarah's visa fixed and taken care of.  But we are getting used to it all.

And then of course there are the things that we still find humorous. Recently we have been noticing funny packaging.  Look at these two packages and tell me what you think!

 Check out what I would call a cornish hen on the right...it's a baby!  They sell babies in the supermarkets!  Now we know they don't really sell babies, but the use of the word is pretty funny if you ask me.

This is a different supermarket, but still funny.  Breakfast of Champions! SUPER BALLS!  Now I know I am reverting to my teenage self by thinking this is funny, but come on it's funny you have to admit it!

There are so many other things just like this, but these are the latest two that I happened to snap photos of.  Language is so funny sometimes you just have to laugh at it, what works in one place doesn't always work in another.

Post your funny packaging pics and stories in our comments section.

Francy, francy, fancy pantsy.

le peace monsieur

So with our Jiu Jitsu gym we get a lot of visitors. It's a pretty well known gym (I guess) and they have a few gyms around the world. So a long time ago there were some Frenchmen, like 10 of them, visiting the gym to train for a month or week or something. We invited them over to the pool, because they'd been just going to the gym and back to the place they were staying. One guy thought our underwater camera was the best thing ever, and he took probably 50 pictures like the one above. We got one group picture, but with the other guy's camera. He said he would email us, but never did. This guy here really wanted his underwater pictures too. Oh well, his loss I guess?

So this is the subject of foreigners. There really aren't many of them here. This week we met  a Brit doing some post-graduate traveling, but mostly coming here to train at the gym (she goes twice a day, so that's what it seems like to me). So we've met her, the Frenchmen, and I met a guy at the Federal Police office (I'm almost all the way to a permanent visa!) from New Zealand...or Australia. I forget, sorry to both of those countries, I get them confused. There is one guy married to a Brazilian and they both go to our gym, he's from Hungary.

Oh, and Toby just reminded me of the last instance of foreigners. Cirque duSoleil was in town for about a month and I met some of them at our grocery store. We have two large, nice hotels near us. I was walking around and, not to stereotype, but Brazilians are sort of smaller, a little darker skinned and normally slight framed. Not too large people. So I saw a group of lighter skinned large folks (and one tiiiiiiny girl and one extremely muscular girl, who I decided must be in the crazy shows) and happened to be behind them in line and struck up a conversation. We never did get together though. Oh well.

So that was just an informative post. Recife=not many foreigners live here (that we've found).

House labels

And now, in no particular order:

Thoughts gathered thoughout the last few weeks:

Also, photos that just haven't made the cut. Or aren't organized enough for a whole post:

What's that? A sunrise, no way! It's a moonrise!

Soup! A really nice guy that works in our building made up soup! How nice? Right?

But we put it in the fridge and it congealed...the whole thing. Like jello soup.

And this piece of "meat" was in it. What is this? Any ideas guys? Because we have no idea. It looked like chicken skin, but had flaps, like pages in a book.

This guy is always sunning on this stump. Every day. I scare him away every day.

Electric lawnmower. That's right, it's plugged into the wall. Who invented a LAWN
(it seems like they'd know you were going to be outdoors) mower that you need a plug for?

*I know I don't speak the language well, but it seems really hard to get what I want to drink either way. With my tutor, the conversation goes a little like this:
Lena: What would you like to drink?
Sarah: Water, please.
Lena: Juice?
Sarah: No, just water, please.
Lena: Coke?
Sarah: Uhhh....
Lena: Guarana? (it's a Brazilian soda)
Sarah: ?

I usually receive anything but water to drink.

This game looks like a lot of fun to play. If you've ever played foursquare, a favorite of mine, it's very similar. Except there are only two squares, and teams of two. But pretty much the object is to get the ball to touch the ground in your opponents square. But it starts with a "serve" like volleyball, and is played like soccer, no hands.

*Above our sink is a shelf, right at forehead height. I hit it all the time. The cabinets in the bathroom extend over the sink knob, so you have to reach under the cabinet to use the sink. The toilet directly faces the shower, with about a foot of wiggle room. I usually slide sideways to get off it. Who built this place? It makes me laugh all the time.

Dinner with Lena

I go to my Portuguese tutor about three times a week. The first week I swear I heard her say "always eat with Lena". At the time I knew the words for always (sempre), eat (comer) and Lena, of course. So I'm almost positive that's what she said. Maybe I was wrong, but either way, she still feeds me every night, whether or not I tell her I am hungry (or not).

The first night was dinner with her and her daughter, we learned words around the kitchen table, and it was one of my first conversations that was slow and deliberate. The point of it was to get me in a conversations. I very much appreciated that, and I thought it made good sense as a lesson plan.

Since then I think the focus turned more towards showing me a little bit of Brazilian cuisine. Lena, my tutor, loooves to cook (she tells me every night). I did manage to tell her once that she should open a restaurant. I think she liked that. Or she liked that I could form a full sentence by myself. One or the other. The meals in the middle of my span of lessons were more 'traditional'. Local fruits and veggies, combinations that I do not think people use in the states. But by the end of my lessons (we're on a Carnaval hiatus right now) the meals turned into what I imagine would be good eats when you come home from a bar late at night. Or early in the morning. Not as much of a lesson in Brazilian culture. Or maybe it was?

An example of a meal that I thought was more Brazilian: macaxeira (a starchy vegetable, similar to potatoes) with a scrambled egg, shrimp and cheese on top. It was tasty.

A normal dinner meal, to me at least, since dinner is usually a little lighter: bread with cream cheese and like 10 other kinds of cheese, fried bologna, and maybe some crackers or biscuits (sweet crackers). A banana cooked some way.

One of those 'came home drunk and raided the fridge meals': See below:

What is that? It's a slice of pizza with two slices of additional cheese on top. Two bomboms on top of that, ice-cream on both sides and then honey, chocolate and some fruit syrup on the whole thing. 

This is lena. See her bread, the cheese in the cup (it's spreadable cheese) at the bottom of the picture. A plate of cheese is to the left of the frame, and chocolates at the bottom. I think that is cake too.

Lena's daughter, Larissa, and husband, Antonio (I think). And Cindy, the world's oldest dog.

So that being said, I really love my lessons. Lena is sweet, her husband seems like a normal guy, always walking around in his boxers or shorts (it's hot here, no AC), and Larissa is a normal daughter. It's fun to learn how to speak with this family. And I'm not losing any weight.

Doing a little good

Toby and I are both big fans of doing good things. Like helping people out, community service, you know, things like that. When we met I was big in to Habitat for Humanity. I hope I can find something like that here.

Our Jiu-Jitsu Academy went to volunteer at a local church last week, so we tagged along. All we really knew about it was that it was an event for the poorer children in our area. It was pretty fun. The kids played games the whole time, and I painted faces for a few hours. Big hits in the face-painting station were strawberries, hearts, butterflies and spiders. Luckily I knew most of those words. Spider was new, but I had my translator (Toby) with me. We had a fun, ate a weird sandwich for lunch, pinched little chubby kids' cheeks, I talked to the kids in my rough Portuguese and they understood. A successful day.

Truck full of toys and Jiu-Jitsu guys for the kids to play with. Yes. They will play with them both.

All the churches are open air. When there is a service, they fill this space in with plastic chairs.

See the fist this kid is making? She was super cute, but a toughy. Threatening me with more paint! Somehow we got this picture before she had both cheeks, both hands and forearms painted. She followed us around for about an hour, literally carrying a chair with her wherever we went and plopping down next to us.

Painting away. Also, see the girl in pink behind the boys? Waiting for more paint!

Days of the week

Here's something I would have though would be different. The days of the week in Portuguese are called second day, third day, fourth day, etc. I don't think that's the exact translation, but it's as close as I can get. All of the days are like this except Sabado, which is the last day of the week, and Domingo, which is the first day of the week. Here's a week translated:

Sunday         -          domingo 

Monday            -     segunda-feira

Tuesday           -           terca-feira

Wednesday      -         quarta-feira

Thursday          -         quinta-feira 

Friday             -       sexta-feira

Saturday       -          sabado

Also, I'm not sure that they capitalize those days. Hmm. Right now this is just what I'm learning from Rosetta Stone, so who knows, it could be wrong. Posts should get a little more interesting (more pictures, better topics) in... t-minus 8 days.....