We did it! We’re boring!

I was sitting here wondering what to share in the blog, thinking about how little has really been happening lately, especially since I closed the drinking fountain in my classroom.  For those of you in the drinking from the bidet club, my friend has been much better behaved, but is also getting a little tired of my constant check ins while he is taking care of business.  His new line when I ask why there is toilet paper spilling out under the curtain is an aggrieved, “I’m wiping my bum!”, which sounds as funny as you imagine it.  Besides the normal school insanity, boredom might be the biggest change for us.  We had a kind of regular old week or two.  Went to school, girls did some sports, ran some errands, and just kind of hung out in Brasilia.

Not that everything is normal.  Lila spent 24 hours away from the family on her own for the first time two weekends ago.   She party hopped her way around town from the US Embassy swimming pool to a sleepover, back to the US Embassy for a morning swim, and then off to the Swedish Embassy for the afternoon.  Yes, she was an absolute train wreck Sunday evening.  Tired, hungry, and having spent every ounce of politeness with her friends, it was lovely.  Oh yes, she was quite the treat to spend Sunday evening with.  Quality father daughter bonding time that was.

I got my hair cut by the Brazilian Edward Scissorhands.  I’m not sure who he was trying to impress, but even with my Tupperware Bowl #2 hairstyle, it should take longer than fourteen seconds to cut my hair.  I’ve never had a barber move so fast.  I was just trying to sit as still as possible so I didn’t get my ears cropped.   He would even take two or three warm up snips in the air with his scissors before he came in to make each new cut.  It was like watching a golfer take practice swings in high speed before teeing off.  Slightly disconcerting to spend the whole time wondering why he needed all the practice.  To his credit, no blood was shed, the haircut is pretty good, and I literally spent twenty minutes and nine dollars from start to finish, so there’s that.  Yea, I’ll go back.

We are getting the hang of finding ingredients to make some home favorites.  Taco night was a huge hit.  Everything you need except for hard taco shells is readily available here.  When you can find it, that $1.99 box of hard taco shells from Lexington, Kentucky has undergone a transformation. Somehow in the magical world of international commerce, when it finally makes its way through customs to the Whole Foods style store here in Brasilia, it has quadrupled in price and will set you back a healthy $8.00.  Small fortune maybe, but tasty, and the the girls will say that it was worth every cent.  Which brings me to the sad realization that no one should ever under any circumstances try to send us anything here.  Friends had their family send them a package valued at $20 US and had to pay over $200 US in fees and taxes when it arrived.  You might as well just fly down with your suitcase full of taco shells for that price!

And if you are wondering what the rather uninteresting picture on the blog is this week, that is my very typical example of just how things seem to go here when I start talking Portuguese.  Take another look and then imagine a totally white nightstand, two inches taller, two inches wider, and without any glass, because that’s pretty much what I thought I was arranging by Portuguese text conversation with a very nice gentleman from Facebook Marketplace down here.  I was feeling pretty darn good because I was able to order the dimensions and color the girls wanted and I even managed to arrange delivery to our apartment and everything.  Don’t mind the fact that it was a back and forth three day conversation, I had done it!  Imagine my surprise on delivery day when from a block away Lila spots my new friend outside our apartment with our nightstands and says, “Dad, those aren’t white.”  And in another ten steps, “Dad, is that glass on the top?”  In my head are several words that are not shareable here, followed by the thought of, “what the ______ happened?” I know the word for white in Portuguese, even without Google Translate.  And if it’s not obvious from picture that we kept them, we did.  I do admit to Lila and I deciding in the last thirty seconds of our walk that we cared more about having nightstands than going through this process again.  And as in many decorating decisions, at least involving me, once it’s in the house, no one cares any more.

Sara is still alive, at least that’s what we hear from her co-teacher.  The two of them are doing pretty well and seem to be settling into their relationship.  Long talks, weekends and nights together, you know, figuring it out.  We hear she might be home in time for Thanksgiving, so we’ll keep you posted.  The girls have been setting hot coffee outside the apartment in hopes of luring her home earlier, and we’ve gotten a couple of phone calls from the posters we put up, but they were in Portuguese, so we don’t really know.  (We have parent teacher conferences this week, so there’s almost no chance she’ll read this, but I’m going to pay for this one at some point.)

We love hearing that all our friends and family in Bend have already had snow in town.  That feels so far away right now.  We are planning trips to the beach instead of trips to the mountain.  Hannah is doing great, spending lots of time with friends, and super excited we are spending Thanksgiving surfing on the coast.  Well, off to bed, love to everyone, and fingers crossed that we get a little more boring before the next good story.

Adam

141 Days

One hundred forty one days.  That is the number of days in a row without rain in Brasilia.  And we are not talking about without accumulation or without serious rain.  We are talking 141 days of not a drop, barely a cloud, zero precipitation.  We have been here for about 70 of those days and we can tell you that it is unlike anything we have ever encountered.  Humidity in the single digits, eyeballs sticking to eyelids, children drying up at recess and blowing away sort of dry.  Even for denizens of the High Desert, we were impressed.  

Amazingly and thankfully, that streak ended tonight.  Hannah smelled the rain before she heard it.  That amazing scent of wet soil that only comes after a long dry spell.  It almost seems like the earth was exhaling after holding it’s breath for so long, releasing pent up energy in a burst of damp joy.

We all ended up outside just enjoying it.  Glorious, gentle rain soaking into everything.  Clearly I was missing it more than I even realized.  I’m sure you’ll see a future post bemoaning how much it’s raining and all the mud, but right now, it is so nice to feel a cool, moist breeze running through our apartment.

Crap, should have brought an umbrella.

Drinking from the bidet!

Not the actual toilet from the incident, but just offered as a reference.

In honor of the full moon and our first Friday the 13th of the school year tomorrow, I just have to share a moment from my classroom today.

It is the latest in a line of adventures with one of my new little friends who truly, despite what you read next, brings a smile to my face every day.  He is one of those kiddos who is never late, never sick, and never boring.  He has his own little backpack of interesting personality traits that he brings with him every day.  He constantly keep me on my toes.  One day, he left the lunch room to sneak back into our class to use the date stamp on every available surface.  He is that kid, who without fail, ends up with more marker on himself than on his paper whenever he writes.  Just this week, he succeeded in fitting his entire fist into his full glass of water at lunch, covering not just the table but anyone near him with a lunchtime shower.  At least it wasn’t his juice.  He tends to save the juice to dip his spaghetti noodles into.  To his credit, he eats them happily afterwards.  On his way out the door the other day, he politely informed me that the carpet might be wet.  When I asked him why, he said it was because his pants were.  Case closed, call the custodian.  

Which brings us to today.  If I haven’t mentioned it, I have a boys and girls bathroom in my classroom, which has some serious advantages as far as not worrying about kids walking through the halls and not coming back.  One disadvantage is that there is no door on the bathroom, just a heavy vinyl curtain.  Said curtain does a very mediocre job of containing any smells from the bathroom.  Not surprisingly, it also does a less than effective job of deafening any sounds involved in producing the aforementioned smell.  And guess who typically is involved in the full body experience when they are taking care of business?  Yes, my new best friend.  I was fairly confident early on in the year, based solely on the amount of sound he was making during my writing lesson, that he was passing a kidney stone. Turns out he is just an exuberant participant in his bodily processes.  

What caught my attention today was the noticeable lack of sound while he was in the bathroom.  Upon not hearing him, I poked my head around the corner to see the soles of his two little shoes poking up at me from just outside the curtain, which means my friend was kneeling on the other side right next to the toilet.  I do admit to a short pause while I pondered what exactly he was doing (aka what in the . . .?). Then it struck me.  He is right next to the bidet hose. Why would he be kneeling next to the bidet hose?  As much as I wanted to poke my head around the curtain, I decided that the whispering of his name would elicit a very informative response.  It did.  My little friend shot up like a rocket, ran out of the stall, and stood in front of me with water dripping from his arms, shirt, and face.  Can I 100% confirm that he was drinking from the bidet hose, no.  Can I reasonably assume that he was using the bidet in a manner inconsistent with its intent, yes.  Can I get the thought of someone drinking from a bidet hose out of my head, double no.  With the urge to smile and laugh welling up inside me, all I was able to muster up as far as a consequence was to have him repeat after me, “the bathroom is not for playing.”  Weak I know, but I was in no place for anything else.

So, no matter how tough your day is tomorrow, just be happy you aren’t drinking from the bidet!

Chapters in our Lives

Friday Night:  It’s amazing to me sometimes what I find challenging.  A couple of years ago challenging would have meant trying to stay awake after not sleeping for sixty hours while racing full speed through some crazy landscape in the dead of night.  Now challenging is trying to find the language to have a conversation in short basic phrases without resorting to google translate and lots of pointing and grunting (don’t knock it, it has worked).

My body, which anyone who has raced with me knows, is much happier now that I have stopped trying to destroy it from the inside out, and my brain, which was clearly not helping in the decision making process at that moment, is now what is being pushed and taxed on a regular basis.  That same, “I just want to rest for a couple of minutes” has been replaced by “I just want to be understood for a couple of minutes”.  I’m not sure which is harder.  Right now getting lost in the woods is kind of appealing, as long as the woodland creatures don’t mind toddler level Portuguese.

That’s sort of a random start to a blog I know, but I have been following some old teammates as they prepare for another big race and reflecting on whether I wish that kind of challenge was still part of my life.  Honestly, right now I don’t, and that feels pretty good.  I’m as excited as ever to have adventure in my life, and I’m looking forward to finding new things here in Brazil that challenge me mentally and physically in that same way, but right now I want those challenges  to involve keeping the food I eat inside my body.

And it’s really nice to finally have a moment to slow down and think about things.  Today we are in an old colonial town a couple of hours from Brasilia called Pirenopolis and our biggest concern right now is which waterfall to hike to tomorrow.  Seriously, it’s not as simple as it sounds.  Today’s waterfalls were amazing and we want to continue that streak.

Hiking here is very interesting because many of the trails are operated by private enterprises, which means that there are fees to hike everywhere.  It also means that things are being protected and taken care of, which is great, but it’s not like the state and national park system in the US.  Lots of what we would think of as state parks are way more commercial here.  Not that cold beer isn’t a great way to end a hike, it’s just different.  People protect and develop the land they own as a business and as a resource.  The two go very much hand in hand.  I feel like tourism here really is driving a lot of conservation.  Yellowstone wouldn’t stop being a national park if people stopped coming, but here people coming is what is turning things into protected lands. Or at least that’s how it feels to me right now.

Sunday Night:  Success!  We officially went on our first vacation in Brazil, and came back in one piece.  And it was awesome.  Three great days of swimming in waterfalls, eating good food, swimming in our hotel pool, ziplining, swimming in other people’s pools (notice a trend?), seeing our first wild iguana, and just exploring the great little city of Pirinopolis.  Lots of speaking Portuguese, out of necessity, which was great.  Learned a few new words and milked the heck out of the ones I know.  I think I must sound like the Portuguese audio book version of Green Eggs and Ham, “I will eat food, hot or cold, I will eat food, please no mold”.  I am probably giving myself too much credit.  I am guessing it is more like Dick and Jane speaking Yoda, “Food please now, money have I give you, thank you man with three foreheads, I children teach good stuff for job, no speak bathroom.”

However we did it, we did it.  We rented a hotel room in Portuguese, drove a rental car three hours across Brazil and back, and managed to disconnect and just enjoy being a family.  The girls even stopped complaining about not having other kids around, at least when they were in the water, in the trees, or eating ice cream, which was most of every day.

I’m not going to try to add any captions to the photos this week, I’ll just pick out a few of the fun ones to give a feel to our weekend.  It turns out, three day weekends are an amazing thing, no matter the language.  We hope everyone is having a good start to the school year up there, and we miss and love you all.

Today I will teach.

Nutshell update from the last post.  Better sleep, better health (bye, bye sausage toe) and just a better week all around.  Sara’s cough is improving, but still there.  She did get to fly to a great training for four days about the workshop model.  Hannah played her first two basketball games, and Lila started after school clubs where she is playing soccer, doing robotics, practicing Spanish, doing a version of Girls on the Run, and learning capoeira.

It is strange to think of everyone in Bend getting ready for the first day of school, as we get ready to finish our first month.   We are missing friends we usually see over Labor day, but we do get to look forward to our first three day weekend this Friday as the country celebrates Brazil’s independence.  It’s a pretty low key event as far as holidays go, but it’s still a three day weekend, and we’ll take it.  We are headed a couple of hours away to go hike some waterfalls in a town called Perinopolis.  

So, the million dollar question.  How is teaching down there?  Turns out, it’s still teaching, it’s still hard, but it is definitely different in some ways.  To start, I have students from Brazil, America, Spain, Costa Rica, Nigeria, and Egypt.  I have students who ride the bus and students who have a personal driver drop them off and pick them up.  But then like everywhere, I have an interesting collection of kiddos.  I have a runner who loves to “forget” and end up in other places around the school.  I have a student who gets overwhelmed and curls up in a ball unresponsive.  I have legitimate readers and I have students who don’t know the letters in their name.   I have kids falling asleep on the carpet.  I have 12 of my sixteen for whom English is not their first language.  I have a couple boys in that group routinely tell me no (at least it’s in English) because they are overwhelmed and frustrated.  And they are young!  I have four students who just turned five in the last two months.  But they are an amazing group of kids, and no surprise, I have totally fallen in teacher love with all of them.  And yes, even with those two.

We are using the Units of Study in Reading, Writing and Phonics, and I absolutely love them.  As a curriculum combo pack, I haven’t used a stronger combination for literacy.  And I’m not even good at using them yet.  Math is still a work in progress, but it based on EngageNY’s scope and sequence.  Jury is still out on that one for me.

And for those folks I told that all I really need is my box set of Elephant and Piggie books and my puppet, it’s true.  I haven’t been able to incorporate all the curriculum I brought with me, but E and P and Mikey the Marmot have been lifesavers.  We have a class poster going with all the “life lessons” we have learned from Gerald and Piggie, and it has worked wonders.  Mikey brings books to read and is starting to cause some problems that we need to address as a class. It’s nice to have scape-marmot to use a my non-example.

But it’s still strange.  You can’t find a Sharpie or a pencil with an eraser on it to save your life, but my kids have a covered soccer field, bouncy houses, and in ground trampolines to use at recess.  I have a boys and girls bathroom in my classroom, but there is not one drinking fountain in the whole six classroom wing.  I have been able to ask for any resource I want, but I may have to wait six to nine months to get it if it’s not from Brazil.  Kooky little idiosyncrasies that are normal for international schools, but new to us.  

What makes it the most impressive is the staff.  It really is an incredibly dedicated and strong staff from top to bottom.  And everyone is valued and supported, which is something I haven’t been able to say everywhere.  And I lucked out landing with an amazing teaching team in my grade level, so that helps so much.  So yeah, in a nutshell, it’s a pretty incredible place to teach and I do feel so lucky to be here. 

This is my room.  Everything has wheels and moves, all the tables are whiteboard tables, and I have a wobble stool for every kid.  Kind of cool.

This is the long walk from my classroom to the playground.  I do try to make them walk at least the five steps over to the green part.

Yep, that’s a soccer field.  And that’s where I spend recess, monitoring of course.  I need to get some zip off pants and soccer shoes.  I’m working up a sweat getting schooled by five year olds.

Did I mention the sliding glass doors to my classroom and the outdoor seating?

And yes, that toilet is that small.

And it’s not a great picture, but it’s one of the best things about being here.  This is the view out my classroom windows, and it’s hard to see, but that’s Hannah with her head down working on an art project in the middle of those palm trees.  I get to be at school with both of the girls again, and that’s worth every hard moment I’ve had here so far.