Living in Brazil: Not bad - just different!

Here are some things that have seemed different while living here in Brazil. I am not saying they are bad - they are just different. Some are good things and others I just find interesting.

1.Everyday our garbage is collected by a man around 3:00. It's kind of funny to me because he uses a shopping cart to collect all the garbage! Ever since being married Andy has been our "garbage man". He always took all the trash out and once a week pushed our big can to the end of the driveway. But in Brazil, I am now the "garbage woman" because nobody really puts their trash out until sometime after lunch - when Andy is at work!
2. The meat is sooooooo CHEAP here. We eat fillet mignon on a weekly basis here!!
3. The fruit is sooooo tasty and extremely cheap. For example, a pineapple costs about a buck each! Not to mention they are extremely sweet here. I have never had better tasting fruit than I do here.
This is the fruit market we go to every week. This is a really nice fruit market. They just finished remodeling it. The workers are so kind to us here.
Lucy and Ethan LOVE helping! Limes are lucy's favorite! She loves making lime juice.

This is the owner of the fruit store with his sister. Every week he helps me load my fruit into the car while I get the kids in. He is the kindest man!!
4. You use squigees for everything. You mop your floor with them, wipe down the showers, dry off the sink area.....It's not brazil unless you have a squigee, blender, and pressure cooker in a house. Those are the essentials!

5. All of the cars are tiny. You don't see big SUV's and vans like you do in the states. All the cars look about the same here. Funny though - the cars are smaller but hold more people. Hmmmm- how does that work? Let's just say there are no seatbelt laws here. I've never seen so many people crammed into one car at a time!! (this is no joke - they really crammed in the car and this little boy sat in the trunk!!)
6. RAIN!!! I LOVE the rainstorms here. It'll be a beautiful sunny day and all of a sudden the clouds roll in and there's a giant down poor. If you are out in it driving becomes nearly impossible due to poor drainage in the city. Once I was at a friends house and tried to get home and had to wait a couple of hours for the water to go down so my car wouldn't float away!!

7. Recycling. They have these really intense recycle bins here which is good. But funny thing is they make you seperate everything out - glass in one can, paper in another, plastic in another, etc. However, one day andy saw them collect the recycling and they dumped all the seperated stuff all into one can!! Hmmmm?!??!8. You can swim almost year round. In the summer it's hot all day and night. People don't usually start swimming until the sun goes down and they swim late into the night.It has been so nice to be able to swim just about everyday and sometimes twice a day. (Our house is the one in the corner on the left.)
9. Exercise. I have been shocked at how much people exercise here. When I lived in Venezuela I never saw people out exercising. However, we have an exercise path here that is filled with walkers and runners throughout the day but especially around 6:00 p.m. Here is our exercise path.
10. Full service gas stations. You don't even have the option to pump your own gas.
11. Driving is CRAZY. The streets aren't very wide and yet you find anything and everything in them - like horses, motorcycles, cars (of course), bikers who seem to think they own the road, giant trycicles stacked sky high with garbage....There are no laws here except for no turning on red and there are lots of speed bumps to slow people down a bit. When you drive here it's like driving in one of those video games - constantly having to avoid random things in the road. Oh and they rarely have parking lots so any parking is parallel parking!! I'm sooooo bad at it!
This is downtown taken from inside our car. There are not 3 lanes of traffic as it might appear here. The cars on each side are parked (parallel parked - I'm terrible at it!!)leaving very little space to drive down the road. It is an especially small space to drive down when you consider the bikers and motorcycles that are all over the place too. And when you park you have to wait for a break in the cars so you can run to the side of the car and get the car seat out!! It's all very comical.

12. Housekeeper! We had the luxury of having a housekeeper come in 2 times a week. Most people in our neighborhood have a housekeeper 6 days a week and a nanny to watch their kids. It's really different. It was really nice to have help when I was pregnant but after I had Lucas I felt better just doing the work on my own and with the kids. Here is Vera - our housekeeper.

13. They use tons of water here. People don't start their day without hosing down the sidewalk in front of their house and sometimes even the street. There is no shortage of water here. I don't know how they'd survive without being able to hose everything down.

14. Once a week Andy buys about 3 of these giant bottles of water. They cost about $1.50 each!!
15. Car window opens in the car when you shut the door. They say it's to let out the puff of air so the window won't burst and crack. Strange!
16. Kid Friendly - but not safe! Most places you go have stuff for kids to do. However, it is obvious that they are not worried about lawsuits here. For example this play ground equipment is on tile floor-including the ball pit which doesn't have very many balls in it!
17. Everywhere you go there is a garbage can by the toilet specifically for toilet paper. You are not supposed to flush any t.p. down the toilet! Still not sure why!
18. BAD street signs! Can you tell me what street we are on? Usually there are no street signs on a pole and when there are signs they are on small plaques that are hard to read.
This is zoomed in - it's still hard to read!!
19. Everyone eats their big meal at lunch time

20.Most kids go to bed late.

21. No air conditioning anywhere - except our house where it seems to run nonstop.

22. Services are CHEAP!!! I have taken advantage of having pedicures and manicures for $6 and one hour full body back massages for $12!!!! I am going to miss these luxuries!!

23. We've never had so many phones in our life!! We have 3 different phones in our house and 2 cel phones.

24. The people here don't drink cold water when it is hot out. They claim it will make them sick and they never use ice. It's WAY too cold for them.

25. It's really hard to get into the doctor. If you call with a sick child you will be lucky to get in 2 days later. It's better to just find out when your doctor is working in the hospital and go down when she is there. Although it's hard to get into the doctor it is easy to be in touch. Every doctor gives their office phone number, cell number, and home phone!!!

26. They eat rice and beans almost every meal.

27. Best BREAD stores ever. They serve hot french breads every hour. This is the bread store close to our house that we really like.
28. When you go to places like a mall (where there is actually a parking lot) you need to get a ticket and you can't leave the parking lot without presenting the ticket to someone to prove it is your car and you are not stealing it. You even have to do it when you go to the temple.

29. Toys are expensive. For example, a $20 barbie in the States costs anywhere from $80-$120!!

30. Food - No mexican food, no syrup, no crisco, no powdered sugar....these are just a few of the things I can't buy here. However, when you can buy "american food" here, it is EXPENSIVE!! This box of cheez-its is more than $9!!
31. Porteiro. In order to get in and out of our neighborhood we have to go through a gate where a guard let's us in. It's kind of funny though because whether you are coming or going they won't open both gates at one time. They wait for you to drive through the first one, close that gate, then open the next one.

32. SUGAR CANE - They burn sugar cane for about 9 months out of the year. The air is filled with smoke and we get ash all over our back patio. Everyone seems to walk around with horrilbe coughs and they all know it's because of the sugar cane that is burning but they just accept it as a way of life. A law has been passed that will not allow them to burn the fields anymore but that won't happen for another 10 years or so! (I'm especially bugged by it because shortly after moving here I got the horrible cough. I was up all night long coughing and throwing up because I was coughing so hard. It lingered for probably 2 months!!)
On the other hand....because of the sugar cane there are vans found throughout the city that look just like this. They are filled with sugar cane which looks kind of bamboo. They take it and run it through a press and collect the drippings and serve it as a drink. It's OK. It's really sweet but was a fun experience.




(check out the smoke from a small sugar cane field that is being burned!)

(This is a strange picture but I was trying to show the ash that is EVERYWHERE from the burning. We wake up to new ash all over everyday!!)33. BUGS!!! They are plentiful here - in and out of the house!!



34. Everyone buys their milk warm in a box. Once it's opened it lasts only 3 days. I'm not really sure what it is but it grosses me out. We did happened to find pasteurized milk which is a luxury and costs a lot of money!
35. There are speed bumps everywhere - a lombado every 300 feet! This is their way of controlling speed along with some secret cameras with radar guns. The ticket just shows up in the mail - we know because Andy got one!!
36. If you think gas is expensive in the United States you should check out these prices. This is the price per liter. So, the gas is about $5 a gallon!! It is cool though because most of the cars can run on any mixture of ethanol or gasoline! (see sugar cane burning section!!Ha!)

37. There is always a reason to get together for a churrasco! Yummmmm!! The food is sooooo good. If you don't like meat than you shouldn't live in Brazil!!

38. All the playgrounds look the same here!! This happens to be the one in our neighborhood but anywhere we have gone in Brazil the swing sets are exactly like this!

39. Our church here is BEAUTIFUL!!It's Huge - especially compared to the tiny building we have back home.
The cultural hall is giant!!

40. They have the best juice bars here. We meet up with Andy for lunch fairly often.
41. Along with the juice we eat lanches. This is soooo typical. It's bread filled with ham/cheese or chicken, or beef. They are really good but the juice is the best.
42. The eggs are not refrigerated here.
43. I will NOT miss these at all!! Most everything is located downtown. Once you are parked downtown you have to find a parking meter, buy a ticket (50 cents) and, then go back to your car and put the ticket in the front window. Doesn't sound too bad but doing it with 3 kids is a pain. I have to cross one or two blocks of traffic - carrying the car seat and holding Lucy and Ethan's hand. Then we cross traffic again to get back to the car and then walk another few blocks to our original destination. Ughhhhh! It is such a pain. There is NO such thing as a quick errand. I miss the good old parking lots that are free and where I DON'T have to parallel park. Like I said - I will not miss this aspect of Brazil on bit!!
44. You can get ANYTHING delivered to you and it doesn't cost any extra. For example, if we need medicine from the drug store down the street we can call and they will deliver it. Or if I run out of diapers they can deliver them. It has come in handy on several occasions! You see people riding these motorcycles all over town!
45.Lava Rapidos!!! Seems on every corner they have a lava rapido. It's called a fast car wash but they really aren't so fast. However, they do a fabulous job cleaning in and out of your car. They even clean the carseats!! Pretty nice!
46. Often I see random things like this! Unfortunately I didn't get the horse that is attached to this cart in the picture. Anyway, I see people - these ladies specifically- with their cart and horse pulled off to the side of the road. It looks like they are sifting through the garbage. I've never really seen what they are actually collecting.
47. I know I have talked a lot about food but this is very typical along with rice and meat. This happens to be at our favorite resturaunt - Panchecos. It is sooooo good!
48. The ambulances are different looking. These actually look fancy compared to the ones I've seen at our hospital in Rio Claro. I'm just glad we have never had to ride in one!

49. The video stores crack us up. Let's just say it's not exactly like Block Buster or Hollywood Video. Nothing is organized. For example they are not in alphabetical order and under "New Releases" you'll find movies like "Oliver Twist". Andy asked once why they don't alphabetize and they said it'd be to hard to keep them in order. We've been to several video stores and they are all the same. There is no rhyme or reason. I really do think people open up a shop and use their own personal collection. Videos are very cheap though. It is only $1.50 to rent a movie.
50. This is one of the few parking lots in Rio Claro. It happens to be at our grocery store. However, it is so tiny that this sign - "lotado" is always up. It's always full. I usually sit in a line and wait to park just to avoid parallel parking!!
51. Pizza is quite a bit different here. They put lots of interesting things like corn and eggs on their pizza.
52. When it comes to buying meat it is so wonderful. You just tell the butcher what you want and exactly how you want it cut and he'll do it. You can tell him to cut your chicken in strips for fajitas and he'll do it or in chunks for stroganauf and it's done! What a great service!

53. You find people selling fruit on the street all the time.
54. We LOVE this town!!
This is the name of our neighborhood.