“A dog and a log”

There are days when I forget that the important things to me are not the important things to everyone.  I was most recently reminded of this when I came walking up a trail over Thanksgiving break to find Hannah sitting on a log; hot, sweaty, tired and with an ear to ear grin petting a dog that had somehow adopted us for the day.  I don’t honestly know how we seem to end up hosting random dogs, but it is not the first time.  We once rented an AirBnB and ended up dog sitting for an entire weekend.  We had thought the owner was joking when he asked if Buddy could stay with us, until he drove away.  Oops. Our most recent friend Pacoca is, as best as we can tell, just another resident of Ilha Grande off the coast of Brazil.  He met the girls on the beach on our second day and just kept following us as we walked.  Every other person would say hello to Pacoca, but no one seemed concerned that he was following the random tourists.  And so we walked, and Pacoca walked, and five hours later after hiking over mountains, climbing into a sea cave, and swimming in the ocean, we ended up back at the village where we started and Pacoca simply walked off up a side trail  to wherever it is that Pacoca spends the rest of his happy dog life.  And so Hannah declared mid-hike when I wandered up the trail towards her that all she needed to enjoy a good walk in the woods is a dog and a log.  So thanks Pacoca, for being that dog, and thanks Hannah, for being that kid.  

It has been a while since our last blog, and we continue to live the roller coaster that is the pandemic.  So here, in mostly chronological order, is what we have been up to in the last two months.

Our school had a week long break in October and it was the first time we had left the Brasilia area since March.  So we jumped on a plane, took a six hour drive into the middle of nowhere, and ended up in the heart of the Pantanal, a place like no other.  In our first twenty four hours, we had seen toucans, macaws, capybaras, and a jaguar.  By the end of the week, we had filled the animal bingo card by adding anteaters, a tapir, a puma, giant river otters,  and more caiman and piranhas than you really want to acknowledge.  It is the world’s largest tropical wetland, and I didn’t even know it existed before we came to Brazil.  We’ll throw a few pictures in the blog, but it is so hard to capture a place like the Pantanal.  And I know how silly it is to say it, but you “have to go”.

October 26th, Day One of Blended Learning:

Apparently “blended learning” is just teacher code for once again reimagining education, in your spare time.  Down here, blended learning means that my class is on campus for a week, and then back doing distance learning for a week.  And when we are on campus, I am teaching most of my class in person, while simultaneously broadcasting my lesson to other five year olds from my class who have chosen to stay at home.  So not only do I have to watch and engage the students in the room, I have to simultaneously watch and engage the kids at home, on Zoom, at the same time.   And let me tell you, conducting the Zoom seance in front of a live audience is not the best way to keep the five year olds on your carpet engaged.  “Ellie, are you there?  Ellie, can you hear us?  Ellie, please give us a sign.  Ellie, please don’t take the iPad into the bathroom!  Ellie, the whole class can see you!”  Let’s just say that teaching continues to be not boring.

Hamilton 

Did I mention we got a hamster, named Hamilton? We just call her Hammie, because well, she’s a girl.  Apparently it is anatomically distracting when you have a boy hamster, so we are going to call her Hammie, at least until she requests otherwise.  And because apparently we chose the cutest hamster in the world, we will now be researching how to acquire US citizenship for a rodent.  But the little FuzzButt, Hannah’s name, has grown on all of us, and we can’t see leaving her here.  

Thanksgiving. 

No, we didn’t even try to do the turkey dinner thing, but we were able to leave town again and see another new to us part of Brazil, a coastal island called Ilha Grande.  It is a car free island about twelve kilometers off the coast, and as close to a tropical paradise as we have visited.  Yes, there are giant spiders, venomous ten foot long snakes, heat and humidity, and near vertical trails, but the beaches are amazing, the water is crystal clear, and the trails are empty.  Our favorite day involved a hike across the island to a fishing village where they were hosting a beach soccer tournament with teams from around the island.  We hung out, swam and met a man with an old wooden boat who drove us out to a remote beach and then around the island back to our hotel.  

Our Covid numbers are back on the rise, but are still way lower than the United States, and we have the advantage of not heading into winter, so we are hopeful that this bump is not a wave.  It stills feels strange every day to be living the dual existence of living here and worrying about home.  I read the New York Times every morning, and it feels at once so close and so far away.  We feel incredibly lucky to be able to explore Brazil again, and we feel incredibly sad that folks stateside are facing some seriously tough months ahead.  It is strange for us to start to think about the fact that we are heading into the last quarter of our time here in Brazil.  We are having conversations about when we are flying home, and what things we will bring with us, when it feels like we just landed and moved in.   

We feel lucky every day to be healthy, we try every day to be grateful, and we hope every day for some happiness.  We wish the same to all of you.

Be safe,  be healthy, be happy, and enjoy the pictures.

The Pantanal

Hammie, and Hannah

Thanksgiving on Ilha Grande