Week One Down!

Week One, Check!  It is hard to believe that we have already been here seven days, but it’s true.  Whirlwind would be a mild term to describe this week, but as accurate as anything my brain can produce right now.

Positives so far:

The school has done an amazing job of welcoming us and getting us settled.  We have been to get our official visa cards, set up our banking, and to get our new Brazilian SIM cards for our phones.  We have also been to Sam’s Club and WalMart to stock our apartment with the things that weren’t here when we arrived, all with school support.

We are walking everywhere.  Our apartment is a 12 minute walk from school.  If we swing by one of two local grocery stores we have checked out so far, it makes our path home take 15 minutes.  My big outing to the hardware store was a 20 minute walk.   You really can walk almost everywhere, and UBER anywhere you can’t.

The food is ridiculously fresh and delicious, and Brazilians love to eat.  The school hosted a barbecue today and there was a rotating assortment of dishes that started when we walked in the door, and ended only when we left three hours later.  I think my family must be in some way part Brazilian, because they are in foodie heaven.  And the food literally is everywhere.  We have already been warned that we are going to need to start paying attention in a couple of months when the mangos and avocados come in season because they are so big and plentiful that they fall everywhere and can actually do some damage.  And all the trees are considered public, so everyone is out gathering whatever they want.   We have mango, avocado, and jackfruit trees on our street, and several other fruit trees we haven’t yet identified.  

This is my favorite from today, and it is awesome.  They close an entire highway every Sunday all day long.  I mean the big highway.  If you look at a map of Brasilia, it is the highway that goes right down the middle of both wings.  And every part is just for pedestrians.   People are walking, running, biking and just hanging out on and near the roads.  There are vendor zones every once in a while where you can rent a bike, buy a fresh coconut, get some street food, or join whatever festival is taking place.  It is the craziest thing, but so cool.  This is a picture of one of the food zones on the highway today.

The whole stereotype about Brazilians always being happy and kind is no lie.  They are incredibly patient, kind and generous.  A smile goes a long way, and they love to smile.  Amazing people everywhere.

Challenges:

We are tired.  Learning Portuguese, navigating a new city, meeting new colleagues, and generally adjusting to our new home is exhausting.  We finish each day worn out.

The beds are hard!  Seriously hard.  Lila absolutely loves hers, but the rest of us are feeling a little beat up by them.  We are going to get mattress toppers at some point and they will be fine, but oof, they are rough right now.

My Portuguese stinks!  It is getting better every day, but it is going to be a while until I feel like I’m more eloquent than a small baby.  Thank goodness for Google Translate and double thank goodness that Brazilians are patient and kind.  

Honestly, we don’t have anything to complain about.  Things are going as well as we could have imagined, and better in many ways.  This is the honeymoon period and we know that more challenges are ahead, but we are enjoying every positive moment we can right now.

Hannah’s First Post

I have finally managed to drag Hannah into her first post, which after much negotiation, will forgo the more typical use of words and rely on a pictorial presentation of her current and desired future bedroom here in our apartment.  It’s a start.  And so we present to you . . . Hannah’s room.

We made it!

We made it!  I am typing this post from our new apartment in Brasilia, and it is a great place (more on that later). 

This is a picture of most of our pile of luggage at the American Airlines desk in Redmond.  We also each had a carry on and the world’s bulkiest personal items, so it was a no messing around pile of stuff.  Hannah isn’t in this shot because she is off chatting with two of her friends Kendall and Penelope, who decided to come see her off at the airport.  Amazing!

The baggage embargo decided to rear it’s ugly head for one last final attack on our plans.   Despite all of our best efforts, EAB’s efforts, and honestly the efforts of the agent in Redmond, we could not crack the airline bureaucracy and were only able to bring eight of our eleven bags with us. It may seem like losing about 30% of your luggage would be catastrophic, but remember, we had only gotten the information on Monday morning that we might be able to bring more than eight bags anyways.  The three bags we had to leave behind were two inflatable stand up paddle boards and one bike box (small cry there from me).  Despite all of our concerns initially, and because eight bags is all we thought we were allowed until Monday; we actually fit all the stuff for our family of four in those eight bags.  400 pounds of stuff is nothing to laugh at.  And at least no extra bags means no baggage fees!

Now I’m sure there are things we will wish we had brought, but I think that would be the case no matter how many bags we were allowed.

The flights were mostly smooth.  Redmond to Phoenix was straightforward.  Our Phoenix flight was delayed forty minutes, and with an hour layover turned to 10 minutes in Miami to make our Brazil flight, we got to practice the fine art of two terminal airport sprinting.  And just to raise the stakes during our sprint, they were calling our names over the loudspeaker saying that they were erasing our reservations and closing the doors.  But despite American Airlines’ inflexibility in their baggage policy, they actually held the plane for us in Miami.  That was a very welcome minor miracle.

Passport control, customs, and the in country flight in Brazil were easy, and it was interesting to go through their security and see their priorities.   Totally relaxed about some things like leaving shoes on, full water bottles, and not a word about three ounce containers of liquids.  Their picture signs about prohibited items included work tools (agreed, saws and hammers probably shouldn’t be on planes), hand grenades and Wile E. Coyote style TNT bombs (fair enough), police cudgels and brass knuckles (maybe a leftover from World Cup hooligans?), and guns (which almost seemed like an afterthought).

And now it’s 9:30 local time and I’m the only one still awake.  It’s been a long couple of days, but we are here, relatively settled and excited for two family days just exploring Brasilia before work begins.

Gratitude

We really are horrible people.  Not in every aspect, and hopefully not in many, but we failed in our attempt to get ready for this trip.  It has not been pretty in our house for the last week, and we are to blame.  We left way too much for the last minute and paid for it.  And that would have been fine if our friends and family hadn’t had to pay for it right alongside us.  My amazing mom spent her entire birthday helping us get ready to fly out.  One of my incredible friends Dean spent more time helping us than he did with his own family.  Countless other friends and family helped in a myriad of ways and there is absolutely no doubt that we wouldn’t have made it without them.  We are sorry.  We wish we could have had a last couple of relaxing days to hang out with everyone and enjoy our last moments in Bend, but like I mentioned before, we failed badly.

So to that amazing group of friends and family who so valiantly saved our keisters, and continue to, we are eternally grateful and forever sorry to have drug you that deeply into our chaos.

Because despite all of those things we didn’t do right, we did make it.  The house is empty, the storage is full, and we have achieved the ultimate goal that my good friend Andy kept reminding me of, and that’s “butt on plane”.

So, I am typing this as I sit on the first of four flights that will eventually land us in Brasilia sometime tomorrow.   I find myself absolutely exhausted, but incredibly excited, and because I can finally slow down enough to realize it, kind of emotional about the whole process.  We are leaving an amazing community we love so much, and we already miss everyone.  And we are moving to Brazil, for two years, with our family, to teach, to live, to adventure, for real, today.  Right now, for me, in this moment, it has just become as real as it has ever been.

Two Days to Go

I really should be packing, but we’re sleeping down the street at Sara’s parents house so we can clean out our house in preparation for moving on Saturday, so instead I’m typing and trying to convince myself it’s all going to be alright.  It’s Wednesday night and the roller coaster ride is in full effect.  

The upside of this crazy ride is that the amazing team at EAB (the American School of Brasilia, our new home) worked a miracle and was able to get a note attached to our airline reservation saying that there is no baggage embargo for our flight.  So we can now take all the luggage we want, which is both a relief and a curse.  When all you can bring is clothes, then packing is easy.  We did not think things would change, so we hadn’t even really thought about what we would bring if we could.  Do we bring bikes?  What about our inflatable SUPs?  Is a third pair of shoes now ok?

And we now know where we will be living in Brasilia, and it is so close to school.  Just the idea that we can walk together to and from school is a huge relief.  We may get a car at some point, but now we don’t have to right away.   We are so grateful for that.  

Am I ignoring the fact that we have four days worth of tasks to get done in two days? Yes.  Is that stressful? Yes.  Will we be asking everyone we know for help?  Already did that.   

Here is our storage unit so far.  

Here is what Lila is bringing.  She is the best packer of the bunch so far!

Are we incredibly lucky to have such amazing friends and family?  Beyond.

I won’t bore you with the details, but tomorrow is final packing up of the house day, and Friday is packing up of us day.  I’m heading to bed, but will try to add a few pictures and post this in the morning.  

Adam

July 3rd Update

This is our basement.  This is our reality.

It is the morning of July 3rd and we are bouncing between the joy of summer and the panic of the fact that we leave for Brazil on July 20th, ready or not.  Lila put it best when she asked me, "Dad, shouldn't our house look a little more empty if we are leaving in less than three weeks?"

A little background for those who haven't heard.  Sara and I accepted two year teaching positions at the American School of Brasilia in Brasilia, Brazil.  I will be teaching kindergarten and Sara will be teaching 5th grade.  Hannah and Lila will be attending the same school, in 8th and 5th grade respectively.  Our school district here in Bend granted us a two year leave of absence, so we will have jobs to return to when we finish in Brazil.

This blog is where we hope to share the joys, struggles and day to day realities of teaching and living in Brazil as a family.  I'm not sure what it will turn out to look like, or how often we will post things, and it may simply become our own digital diary of our time there, but it helps me sometimes to just stop and try to put thoughts into words.  So here are few of our most current thoughts.

One, a family of four accumulates just a few things in the deep dark corners of a house over 19 years.  Goodwill might just start making trips by our house, and the big garage sale happens this weekend, but we have a lot of stuff in our house.  We are making progress, but everything feels like it takes more time than we thought.  We are still in the mode of thoughtfully going through every drawer and deciding if we really want to keep it, or if it will even fit someone when we come back.  The pure panic where we just start shoving things in boxes to go into the storage unit hasn't hit yet, but I think it's coming soon.  As our amazing property manager explained it to us, renting really is moving, your house is not yours while you are gone, and that's daunting.

Two, leaving is hard.  This is the only home both of our daughters have ever known, and the place Sara and I have lived for the longest in our lives.  All of our friends and family in town are incredibly important to all of us, and leaving has really made that reality clear.  And as much as we tell ourselves that it's just two years and we will be back, it is still strange to be saying goodbyes that end with, "see you in a couple of years."

Three, packing is harder.  We have been hit by an airline baggage embargo, which despite our best efforts to circumvent, means that we are limited to one carryon and two checked bags each.  That is not a lot of space when you are moving to a new country for two years.  Thankfully we will be arriving to a fully furnished apartment, but it still isn't a lot of room.  Before the embargo, most folks brought between five and ten bags each with them, which seemed like too many to us, but we were hoping for three to four each.  We are just starting to get down to the brass tacks of what exactly we are going to bring.  In some ways, it simplifies things because we won't be bringing a lot of things that we were wondering about bringing.

Four, the girls are really doing ok with it.  As we have found ourselves saying, "they are doing as well as we can expect." Lila, our soon to be 5th grader, is really on board with the whole adventure.  She and Sara have been practicing their Portuguese, she is excited for the new fruits she will encounter, and she seems to be the calmest one in the house right now.  Hannah, our soon to be 8th grader, has some much deeper connections with her friends that is making this harder for her, understandably.  As part of the move, Hannah now has her first phone, and as much as we don't want that to take over her life, it has helped. She has downloaded Whatsapp and is connecting with her friends and making sure that everything is set up before we leave so that she can stay in touch.  That part of our new digital world is great.  The percentage of their lives that the next two years makes up is much higher than for Sara and I, and I need to keep reminding myself that this is an even bigger deal for them in some ways.

I'll leave thoughts five and beyond for later.  The basement is calling.