How and what are we doing?! A view from the third story...

So here is the update. We are doing fine. Sometimes great. Sometimes not so great. As you can image it has been and continues to be a transition. We arrived here at the end of September after months of selling everything we owned and saying our goodbyes. And we were exhausted in every way possible. We had anticipated our beloved dog  departing SFO the day before us and arriving the day after us. I will dedicate a full story post to this, but a last minute major fuck up on the part of the super expensive service we had to hire to transport him caused us to have to leave him behind for nearly a month! So that was incredibly stressful. Our cars didn’t sell until the last minute, for far less than we hoped…. No big surprise, despite our careful planning it was a bit of a shit show. Luckily our actual traveling with six suitcases (thanks to you all who donated some!) and kiddo went relatively smoothly.  We moved very slowly through several days of jet lag. Myself and Rio (the son, not the place) are a favorite delicacy of the mosquitos, and the first few days are always the worst… 

September in Brazil is the spring time. This was my first time being here during this season. I was surprised how cool some of the days were and was glad I had brought the sweaters I had at one point left behind. The weather was all over the place. Cold days, warm days, sunny days, grey days, and lots of rain in between. I must admit, this was so welcome after the last few years of battling drought and wild fires in CA. As we head into summer at the end of November (how crazy is that?) the cool days aren’t on the spectrum, but rainy days are. We have had some very intense rain storms. Lat night’s thunder storm gave us a very impressive light show of lightning over the bay. Last week, Ingo got stuck at band practice for several hours before it let up enough to walk home and he had to take the back way because the main drag near us floods in these deluges. Luckily we live at the very top of a giant hill, as floods are the biggest danger in these parts.

This hill is positioned between the Catete and Gloria neighborhoods. The name of our street is so long and tricky to say that I have yet to muster the courage to take a taxi to the top. I get quite a workout carrying the groceries up. There are an innumerable amount of stairs involved in the process. And when we arrive at the house we are on the third floor. The first set are huge and marble, the next are a teeny tiny wood spiral set. The number of times I go up and down these forgetting keys, getting the phone, shlepping the laundry (which is down an extra set of cement stairs to the basement) is ridiculous. The house we live in is beautiful and old and full of character. It would essentially be a mansion for a single family to live in. These days it is a bit run down and inhabited by 12 people. Ingo’s best friend Giovanni owns the house. They were roommates in this house before Gio bought it 15 years ago. He and his son (who is also 6 years old) live here with us and the remaining 7 roommates. Gio is half French and Brazilian and grew up in France. I would say French is the dominant language of the house. Our roommates are from Brazil, France, Italy, Uragua and Senegal. All of them speak at least 2 languages. Most of them speak at least some English. The house has 4 bathrooms. We share 1 with 3 other people. We have a communal kitchen with 2 stoves and 3 refrigerators.

I am 44 years old. I generally have a very specific way I do things around the house. I may be a little bit OCD. I get annoyed with my husband if he crowds me while I am cooking in the kitchen.  I hate cleaning up other peoples messes. I am not particularly social. To have 1 roommate living with my family at this point in my life would be hard. That is all I will say on the subject for now. But I sometimes flee the kitchen mid project. I am fairly certain that one of our roommates doesn’t know where to buy toilet paper. And extreme anxiety is now a daily occurrence for me… 

But if we moved to another country to have a cultural experience, we are definitely having that. I am diligently studying Portuguese. I take a class 2 times a week in addition to studying on my own. I understand a fair amount of basic stuff. I am not great at speaking. Right now it feels like my middle aged brain will never fully grasp the language. But I haven’t lost hope. I tell myself that it may just take me longer, but it will happen eventually. One day at a time.

Rio starts school in February, that’s when the school year here starts. Along with his two summers in a row, he is getting a very very long summer vacation. We decided to give him a few months to acclimate and start fresh, rather than joining mid school year in a language he doesn’t know very well. He sees a tutor 2 times a week to start reading in Portuguese. He spends lots of time playing with Sam, Gio’s son who speaks Portuguese and French only and is picking up a lot. Although children are indeed sponges, it is hard for him. He gets frustrated when he doesn’t understand what is happening or he can’t convey what he wants. He is a super social guy, so I know he will prevail. But right now he is used to impressing people with his huge vocabulary  for his age in English or his general wit and charm and it just doesn’t have the same effect here…

One of our roommates is a dancer and has asked me to do flexibility training with her twice a week.  She wants to learn English, but doesn’t speak any. I demonstrate everything and somehow we manage. It has been good for me to have a schedule to stretch myself and stay in the flow of teaching. I have to take it easy, as I am still recovering from a hip injury from my last performances before I left. I got excited about taking an online course to train handstands, but before I got to far into it my elbow got so inflamed I had to take a break. Hopefully it will chill out soon and I can try again with more attention to my hyperextension… On the upside these things have gotten me inspired to start taking on some online strength and flexibility clients and create a site with training videos for purchase. So I look forward to getting those up and running soon. I have not explored the aerial world here as of yet, I’ll have to be in better shape before I venture into that.

Ingo got a three month notice from his online job the week before we left the US. Which sent us into a complete panic as this had been our plan to live comfortably by making dollars which are very strong here. But we had to trust that something else would come along. Through his sisters connections, he was able to nail down work translating Brazilian art books to English. He is finishing up the last week of the old job and has edited his first book with the new company and is fully translating the 2nd. He loves it. Not only does he enjoy the translating work, the subject matter is things he is really interest in. So it is a win win. He is drumming with a percussion group once a week and had his first live playing gig yesterday. He is in heaven. Coming home has been really great for him in so many ways.

Ollie finally arrived! We are forever indebted to our friend Juice and her dad that looked over him, and took him to his vet appointments to redo the entire foreign travel process.  Her dad was so in love with I’m, that he offered to keep him if we were having second thoughts of brining him with us. Juice drove him the 3 hours to SFO with his giant crate and all his paper work. He flew to Amsterdam, stayed a day in a doggie hotel there, and then flew to Brazil. I am sure getting back in that crate was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. But he was brave and a good boy with all. He got delivered to the house and was so so happy. There is a 14 year old lady dog that lives in the house and they are fast friends. She now sleeps in our room and goes on walks with us. There is only one brand of dog food in all of Brazil that does not have chicken in it. He is allergic to chicken. He had some very itchy first few days while we finally tracked down this illusive food, but all is well now, Ollie is not a fan of the extreme heat and thunder storms. But he is a huge fan of going to the beach and chasing his ball!

So that’s the general surface of things. I will keep you posted here and share more did bits of how things evolve, our impressions of our new home and the day to day…