So the plan was that the car would be on a ship and we would be flying to Brazil once that happened.
Ha! Pure hubris; the car is sitting on a dock in New Jersey. Well, so be it. We’re in Brazil anyway. The car will arrive when it arrives, and until then we’ll be figuring out fun things to do without her.
We’ve been in Atlanta visiting family since we dropped the car off in New Jersey two weeks ago. There was some excitement about getting the right paperwork for the car, but that seems to be resolved. The kids spent time with grandparents and cousins and we made some progress on making school a bit more a routine exercise. The kids figured out that if they did their assigned work for the day we would mostly leave them alone the rest of the day. Most days they would get up and do what they could first thing and then we’d help them with math after breakfast. School still is a challenge, in particular getting Syd to write anything is has been difficult.
Brazil has been exciting and different. We’ve spent the first couple of days in Sao Paulo while we figure out the place. This morning it occurred to me that although the kids have travelled all over, this is the first time they’re going into a place where Jessie and I haven’t been before and where neither one of us speaks the language. They’re coming to terms with the fact we don’t know what’s going on any more than they do. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I don’t know what’s going on most of the time and I’m generally happy wandering around Asia without having a clue about where I am going or what I am eating. The kids are just getting started on the journey to acceptance.
So we’ve been taking it pretty easy. We spent a day in Ibirapuera Park yesterday drinking from coconuts and riding bikes. The park was big and beautiful and it was nice to swing from autumn in Georgia to spring in the southern hemisphere over 48 hours. We finished the day with a sushi dinner, as Sao Paulo is home to the largest population of people of Japanese descent outside of Japan. The waiter spoke some Spanish, so we were able to order in broken Spanish. It wasn’t perfect, but it was probably better than if we’d tried Portuguese!
Today we awoke to find that the main road outside our hotel was shut for some sort of holiday. Why? See note above about just accepting things. It was nice. There were bands, families, vendors, protestors, riot police mostly just hanging out, bicyclists. It made for a nice walk down to the Sao Paulo Museum of Art. The story of the museum is pretty interesting: much of the collection seems to have been assembled from Europe after World War Two without much concern for provenance but they did have great pieces, including a Bosch and several Impressionists. I had been expecting the European pieces, but the gallery started off with Brazilian artists, with Black and women artists front and center when coming in to the space.
And tomorrow it’s on to the Amazon.
2 Responses
Tell Sydney that we love his blog posts! It is so fun to get his impression of the places you see and things you do!
How are you getting from place to place with no vehicle? I understand around the area on foot. Is there good public transportation? How will you get to where your vehicle is arriving? And what about money? Do you get local currency in each country? Are you finding much tourist activity, people who speak English? Hug each other for me! I love you all!
Mostly we are getting around on foot or in Uber, which is a great option because using the app we don’t have to explain where we are going or deal with money, and most trips under 20 minutes are about $3. Between cities we have been flying, but we now have an overnight bus trip planned between Foz do Iguaçu and Florianopolis in a few weeks.