QUICK POST

Hello from Brazil! Becca and I are alive and well here in São Paulo. Our plane got in at a little after 6:30am on Saturday morning after a little less than nine hours of travel from Atlanta. We hardly slept at all. Nevertheless, yesterday being A Festa Junina (Saint John’s Party Day), we went to a church potluck where everybody was really nice and the food was great.

I tried to hook up our IP phone, but couldn’t get it to work so it doesn’t seem like I’m going to be able to call as much as I would’ve liked. That’s okay, we’ll be buying a phone card soon and I’m sure that the mothers will be the first to know when that will be. Writing with a keyboard that has been designed for Portuguese speakers is tougher than you’d think.

I’m writing from the Souza family’s house. They, and Grandma Maria, are absolutely wonderful people. Gadevam, the dad, took us to a local mall that has a Wal-Mart type store in it where I bought a few things that accidentally got packed in storage instead of in my suitcase. São Paulo is a very racially diverse city, which is a switch for me being used to Chile where most people look quite similar. It has the biggest Japanese community in the world, outside of Japan of course, and lot’s of European, and African looking-people, making São Paulo look, at least to me, like L.A. but in Portuguese.

The weather is perfect! It may rain a little bit today but the weather overall is forecast to be wonderful. I’ll write more when I’m in a cyber café where I can take more time and can hopefully upload pictures. I’d like to take just a moment to thank my wonder mother and brother who came and helped us get our things ready for Brazil.