Our New City

The City Park- Saturday, 30 May 2009

We spent a wonderful day at the Parque da Cidade with new Brazilian friends from USAID.  It is a park at least 5 miles long with a lake, bridges, carnival rides, a kid’s size palace and playgrounds galore.  We bought popcorn (pipoca) to feed the ducks and played with the kids for most of the morning.  We will certainly frequent that place often, as there is a paved path through the park with a bike lane.  Many people were there working out and enjoying another sunny day!  We had agua de coco that you sip right out of green coconuts and then went to a restaurant for some local fare- fresh juice, meat, beans, rice, mandioca!  YUM.  We are getting to know the city little by little but new friends here have been so gracious about coming to our apartment to escort us places.  There are many loops and curves to the roads here and traffic moves at a well measured pace.  I will certainly need to become a more aggressive driver to keep up with the flow.  Though we don’t expect our car here for at least another month or 2, so I’ve plenty of time to get mentally prepared for that!  Today was a day when I wished many times that I had packed our camera with us.  We are in a nice place with great people.  Lucky us. 

Quiet Moments- 5 June 2009

I was watching the kids play today and they were oddly quiet considering that they were on a playground.  It is common for them to talk to each other, or sing randomly, it is not common for them to explore a playground in silence.  Seeing this side of them and realizing that they are picking up on my outdoor behavior of talking less and more quietly cast a light on the guilt I feel for the challenges they have ahead of them.  Talk about being on someone else’s ride (I’ve described the past year that way more than once)!  They are going to have a language challenge that most kids (even here) don’t.  We have chosen a school that has a majority of Brazilian students and therefore the playground language will be Portuguese.   A few months into everything, they’ll be just fine right?  Today was just one of those days when I realized again that this is all a big deal, that we are far from what we know and the many, many people that we love.  Oddly enough, it still feels like we’re where we ought to be.