Feliz Ano Novo

 What other professions besides teaching are there where missing work takes more time and effort than going to work sick?  Has anyone ever gone to the doctor and had a sub?  Can you imagine a doctor leaving detailed histories, medical notes and treatment plans for all of the patients that their sub will be seeing when they are out sick?  Maybe some do.  I just get the phone call asking me to reschedule.  And clearly for those of you who know my wife and I, you know that I am talking about her.  She woke up this Sunday morning not feeling great, decided that it is smarter to stay home for a day to make sure it isn’t anything serious, and has worked most of today just so she can be sick tomorrow.  And right now thankfully she is just teacher sick, which usually means an extra cup of coffee, a long day at work, and an early bedtime, but with Covid, she has to stay home.  We are on campus this week, and everyone has to fill out a questionnaire on an app every morning asking if we have had any symptoms in the last 24 hours, and she would get the big red stop sign if she tried.  And it makes sense.  We got back from traveling to northern Brazil seven days ago, which puts us in the incubation window.  We are 99% it is just another case of Ghost Covid, where every cough makes you wonder, but it’s not worth risking.

It is 2021 now, and as much as I was hoping it would bring changes for the positive, that does not yet seem to be the case.  Covid is rising again here in Brazil.  It is not on the level that it is in the US, but there is really nothing keeping it from going that way.  The first person was vaccinated in Brazil today, and while we are way down on the list of people to receive it ourselves, at least that process has started.  Like so many folks, we find that Covid is still step number one in everything we do, from grocery shopping to getting on an airplane.  It is sad how normal it has become to begin all discussions with can we do this safely?  Or at minimum, can we do it at a level of risk we are comfortable taking?

And it still remains weird to share anything happy during all of this, especially with the amount of suffering that is happening right now all around the world.  We have always lived a very fortunate life compared to so many, and that divide only seems to be increasing the longer the pandemic lasts.  We try to give back in our own small way, but it definitely feels like a drop in an ever expanding bucket right now.  That is my disclaimer in an attempt to assuage my guilt before sharing our latest adventures.

We have been back from our big holiday break for one week, and as much exploring and enjoying as we did, one of the hardest things has been not being able to share Brazil with as many folks as we had hoped we could.  Every place we go seems to connect in our minds to friends and family back home.  “So and so would love this.  This would be the best place to come with so and so.”  And there have been a lot of places and a lot of so and sos. Fingers crossed that maybe we will be able to show some folks around in June or July before we leave, but we will be sad to keep Brazil all to ourselves if that doesn’t happen.

And we feel so lucky that Brazil is open, because as sad as we have been not to be able to explore the rest of South America, Brazil is an incredible country all on its own.  We started this vacation by taking a quick four day trip to our most touristy destination yet, Foz do Iguazu, which is an incredible waterfall in the southern part of Brazil on the border with Argentina.  It is kind of like a combination of Niagara Falls and Victoria Falls, and well worth the hype.  One bonus of the pandemic is that there were only about 10% of the normal amount of people there, so it did not feel crowded like it can.  Imagine Yellowstone with 10% of the regular amount of people.  And we stayed at a hotel with a water park, which is still kid heaven for Hannah and Lila, especially since it was virtually empty which means you could go down the slide as many times are you were willing to climb the stairs.  We also got to visit a conservation and education organization who is working to preserve the Atlantic Rainforest, which means we got to see up close some of the amazing species of birds, like macaws and toucans, that we have been loving seeing on our journeys.

We then turned right around and went back to Chapada dos Veiadeiros, our local national park, to spend time with friends hiking and exploring more of the waterfalls we have not seen yet. The running joke for most of our time here in Brazil is that Hannah has somehow developed the ability to affect the weather and cause rain to stop, no matter the forecast.  It began last Christmas when we went to the Amazon in the middle of the rainy season and the rain stopped the day we arrived and restarted the day we left.  It has continued in so many ways that it has become laughable.  One day, Sara and Lila went on a bike ride to one part of town, and Hannah and I went to another, and they got soaked in pouring rain and we got sprinkled on for two minutes.  When we were hiking on this trip, we would see rain clouds all around but somehow always end up in the clear spot.  As we were packing up on our day heading back to Brasilia, it rained so hard streets were flooding and we could barely see out the windshield for a while, but then when the sun was back out for the hike we did on the way home.  

We spent the middle week and a half of our break back home in Brasilia.  Brasilia really has become home for us, and it was exactly where the girls wanted to be for Christmas.  We had a whirlwind four days of baking and decorating before Christmas Day.  Baking is no small feat down here.  The apartment ovens here are really not much bigger than a toaster oven, so the assembly line of Christmas cookies was a little slower than in the US.  Luckily, they were a dedicated team of bakers and I supported by washing dishes and sampling the different varieties.

We ended our break by spending ten days up in Salvador, which included some new stops and a return to Surf Camp.  When we made the decision to come to Brazil, we made the girls a deal that they could each choose one of our vacations while we are down here.  After last Thanksgiving up in Salvador at Bahia Surf Camp, that decision was made.  So, we found ourselves spending our last chunk of vacation back on the beach for round two of learning to surf.  We did add on a couple of days in the city of Salvador itself, which is full of amazing architecture, history, and people.  We also added a day on the end to go check out a sea turtle sanctuary, but we devoted a week to just the beach, swimming, surfing, eating, napping, and relaxing in a little slice of Bahian paradise.

And so we find ourselves in January of 2021, only five months from our adventure here coming to a close.  We are starting to have discussions and to make plans for when we return to the United States, and it is a little sad.  Like so many things, time has flown and stood still at the same time.  We have lots of adventures remaining before we leave, and with luck and some vaccinations, maybe some of you can come down and share them with us.

Be safe, be well, and be happy,

Beijos,

Adam

“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

The Q-tip of Comfort

 

I don’t know how many of you have had a Covid Test, but apparently you really want to pay attention to which box you check under test type.  Sara and I had ours this week as part of our returning to school in person protocol, and let’s just say that not all tests are created equal.  There is the blood test, which for the needle averse, could be scary.  And then there is the nasal swab, which can best be described as a fiery poker to the brain.  I had heard that it was uncomfortable, but clearly that was coming from aliens who have a much higher discomfort threshold than I do.  Granted, I should have known there was going to be some ”discomfort” when the nurse pulled the swab from the package like she was pulling a ninja sword from a scabbard.  Do you remember those really long matches that people kept around their fireplaces for lighting the kindling from a safe distance?  Yes, well those are short compared to the nasal swab.   And so, despite looking at the world’s longest Q-tip, I was still naive enough to think that maybe it’s really long so that she doesn’t have to get too close to me.  Wrong, we got intimate.  And it’s not really so bad initially, it’s just that it takes long enough to actually penetrate the brain that you are convinced that when she hesitates for a second that she has made it in as far as she needs.  I think that pause must have been so she could make that ninety-degree turn somewhere north of my eyeball before really getting in there deep.  I am pretty sure I saw cotton in the corner of my eye as the swab went by.  And it’s not like it’s just in and out.  It’s in, pause, adjust; in further, pause, adjust; in further, and jackpot, cerebellum.  And don’t forget the twisting, because apparently you can’t just find the end of the rainbow, you need to spin the Q-tip of Comfort in order to find the entire rainbow. And oh yes, there were tears, uncontrolled tears.  Of pain, of discomfort, and mostly of relief as she finally pulled the swab out.  But what they don’t tell you in the manual is that apparently Covid might only be present in one nostril.  So yeah, it’s a package deal, and nostril number two knows what’s coming.

So that’s fun.  Clearly things remain interesting down here.   I won’t say that things are better or worse for us, just the same and different all at once.  Sara and I were at school this week trying to wrap our heads around how we are going to teach our students, and maintain safety and social distancing when we return to campus, which happens for us in three weeks, hence the test.  Our family will have to go from near zero exposure to being communally exposed to over half of the student population once we all are back on campus and bringing all the viral love home to share.  Yes, with the numbers as high as they still are in Brasilia, we are nervous.   Thankfully, our school has the resources to do this right, and Brasilia itself has a favorable climate that allows open windows, fresh air,  and being outside, which should make a big difference.   And we have one more week of school before we get a weeklong break, which is always a moment to savor.   

We remain grateful that we are healthy, that we have friends on both halves of the earth to lean on, and that we have each other, especially right now in our crazy world.  Be safe, be happy,  and be well.  And if you can find it in yourself to help others do those same things, even better.   

Love to all, thanks to all, and don’t sneeze on the swab lady.  She doesn’t like that.

Ups and Downs

Stress is cumulative.   That’s one of those adages that you hear so many times, but it doesn’t seem to penetrate until you hear it as you are living it.  Now I hear it. Stress is cumulative.  It feels like a toxin that builds up in your system until it reaches a level where it starts causing damage.  And like so many other things, just stopping the accumulation of stress isn’t enough.  Stress seems to have the half life of uranium-232, and like Covid, there is no pill you can take to make it go away.  So not only do you have to stop accumulating stress, you have to then figure out a way to reduce stress, so it slowly leaches from your system, hopefully sending you back into the world of manageable levels.  Unfortunately, this is not some sort of self-help blog where I regale you with the ten simple steps to a stress free life, this is our life in the pandemic.  Stress is not always negotiable.  I don’t get to choose to not worry about every interaction I have every time I leave the apartment.  If I don’t want Covid, I don’t get a choice about wearing a mask.  I don’t get to go and meet a friend for dinner at a restaurant.  We haven’t gone to a restaurant since March.   Hell, we haven’t hugged someone outside our family since March, and we are in the hugging capital of the world.  I have probably averaged one real face to face conversation a week with someone not living with me in that time.  That’s ugly.  

I think that we had convinced ourselves that we were rejuvenated after our June and July holidays, but I think we simply were doing enough positive things that they offset all the negatives and our stress level plateaued.  I now understand just how precarious that balance was because school has been that extra layer of stress that we weren’t ready for.  And it wasn’t that teensy little straw that broke the camel’s back.  It was the Wile E. Coyote anvil dropping from the sky.  Today, tonight, too much is too hard.  There is no joy in the Mudville of distance learning.  It is all the stress, and more, of teaching, with ten percent of the joy.  It turns out, I really do like children.  What I wouldn’t give right now to solve a meaningless argument over the proper procedure for sharing the one pink ruler at the table.  I would smile to again see a five year old look me in the eye as I give them directions, and then completely ignore everything I said.  I look so forward to reteaching the short vowel sounds so many times to that one student that I question my sanity,  because at least I would get to see more than a flat expression on Zoom.  

So, if it is not abundantly clear, today, things are not all rainbows and unicorns.  It is Thursday of Week 5 of this year, and  Month 5 overall, of distance learning and I might just be a little tired.  But this is our life tonight, in this moment, and that’s the story these words are meant to portray.  Tomorrow will be better.  We will be ok.  We have a three day weekend ahead of us and an extra day will make all the difference right now.  If this makes you feel bad, that was not my intention.  This is simply our story of today.  If you want to help, send my wife a text or email telling her you are thinking of her, and don’t be upset when she doesn’t reply.   If your children know my children, they would appreciate the same.   As for me, I’m ok, I just wrote it all out and won’t respond to texts anyways because I’ll be asleep on the couch. 

As always, be safe, be happy, be well,

Adam

My son doesn’t like it when you smile.

Seriously!   Seriously!  I am killing myself trying to teach your child and nineteen other five year olds on Zoom and this is the feedback that I get.  We are in our third week of starting a brand new school year with brand new students completely online, and are completely overwhelmed, and that was how I ended a conference with a parent today.  To put the start of this year in perspective for those of you who know both Sara and I and our respective balances of work and life, let me describe how hard I am working right now by saying that I am working as hard as regular Sara.  Except that distance learning Sara is working twice as hard as regular Sara, which is both confusing and frightening for anyone who knows how hard regular Sara works.

I wish I could say that I’m sure it will be easier for our teacher friends who are starting soon, but I can’t.  It’s rough.  And not just a little, oh look a new reading curriculum rough, but more like a this is different than anything I have done as a teacher rough.  Everything is different.  Nothing feels familiar.  Zoom is awkward, slow, and glitchy.  Interactions and relationships feel flat and impersonal.  Ok, not quite everything is that bad. Of the the thousands of things teachers do every day, one thing is easier on Zoom, quieting your class.  You might notice I very carefully didn’t say stopping your class from talking.  That is ludicrous.  But yes, the Mute All button does make for a very quiet digital classroom when needed.  At least for the 1 and 1/2 seconds it takes them to notice and turn their microphones back on.  And sorry my K-2 friends, it is the hardest for you.  Sara’s fifth graders can already do an amazing amount of things in week three, and Hannah and Lila have transitioned to the new digital school year easier than we expected, so distance learning definitely works better in general for older kids.  But, and it is a huge but, this only works when students have the equipment, internet and family support needed to make this happen.  We are at a very affluent school and almost every child has a device, internet access, and some sort of adult by their side when needed.  That is such a luxury, and it still feels like we are swimming upstream every day, so it will be so much harder in many places.  Ok, enough teacher talk (except for the smile thing, which we will come back to).

Happy One Year in Brazil to Us!  Crazy!

It is hard for any of the four of us to believe that we have been in Brazil for a year. It has been one of those strange moments in our lives where time has at once slowed to a crawl and also moved at light speed.  We have done so much, and have had so many amazing experiences, that it feels like we must have already been here longer than a year.  And in the same breath, our time here is half over in just a blink and we feel like we are cresting a rolling wave heading towards the backside.

Interestingly, lots of people have expressed sympathy for our situation, as if somehow our experience here has been lessened by having happened in the middle of a pandemic.  While I totally understand that thinking, it is the complete opposite of how we see things.  Of course we would have liked the pandemic not to be happening, but we don’t have any monopoly on those feelings just because we are in Brazil.  In many ways, we are incredibly lucky to be doing this right now.  If we had waited and accepted jobs in Brazil starting this year, I am not sure we would have been able to come.  It was scary enough moving our family here when life was “normal”.  Sara and I don’t think we could have pulled it off, or would have wanted to, had we waited a year and been trying to move right now.  Anyone who helped us barely get out of the US under ideal conditions last year can attest to just how little room we had to spare in making that happen.  And there is no telling what the international teaching scene is going to look like in the years to come, so yes, we are still so happy that we came when we did.

And I’ll say it again.  We are lucky.  We are healthy.  We are happy, all things considered.  We live in a really cool, interesting city.  We continue to find new, beautiful places every weekend. And we aren’t suffering like so many.   Now we don’t take any of this for granted, and we are fully aware that things can change in an instant, but that is forever true for everyone.

Ok, back to the smile thing.  I have to admit that it was a strange thing to hear, especially because I so often hear from students  and families that I am always smiling, which until this moment I assumed was a good thing.  What the hell am I going to do if I smiling is no longer ok?  Mayday!  Luckily, I had a meeting with other teachers on my team right after this encounter and I shared the story with them. The rest of the story is that mom wanted me to know that her son was scared of speaking English in front of me because he thought that I was laughing at him when I smiled.  What!  That didn’t make it any clearer.  Well, thank goodness for my teaching team, because it took a Brazilian perspective to help me understand what might be going on.  One of my co-teachers explained that basically, I am not macho.  Shocking I know, but hear me out.  She thinks that this young man may only have men in his life who smile when they are making jokes at other people’s expense.  She thinks that the men in his life may all be old school Brazilian types who don’t play with kids unless it is on weekends at barbecues in between telling stories and making fun of people with other like minded men.  Basically, she is guessing that the smiles this young man sees on men’s faces are most often there when those men are laughing because they are making fun of someone.  Whoa!  Not something I had considered.  And that is where she gently explained to me that in Brazil, it is unusual for men to teach kindergarten, and so, well, I would be considered not macho.  Ok, that’s a not macho label I can live with.  Now I just have to figure out how to not smile and still connect with this young man, at least until he gets used to being taught by a not macho unicorn of a teacher.

Bend friends, and Bear Creekers especially, our hearts are hurting alongside you at what has come to our little town.  Thank you for taking a stand for those families.  Our thoughts are with you.

Be safe, be well, and be happy,

Beijos from Brazil,

Adam, Sara, Lila and Hannah