Horntoes in Brazil

Wisconsin of Brazil

Imagine Chicago is actually the biggest city in Wisconsin (it’s not hard to do, I know all your Midwest geography is so good that you know Chicago basically borders Wisconsin already). So a big city in the heart of cheese country. Sprinkle in a few West Virginia mines, and here we are. For the beginning of our first week here, I felt like all I was eating was bread and cheese – pizza, the famous pão de queijo, spaghetti (with parmesan, of course), cheese as a snack, literal bread with sliced cheese. We are two poor lactose-intolerant souls who have found ourselves in a sea of cheese!

Yesterday’s adventures started with a walk partway around Lake Pampulha, at the north side of our neighborhood, to a church of Saint Francis of Assisi. There is a walking path, and a two-way bike lane next to it, and then a two-way road next to that. We both got hungry when we were nearly to our destination and so we stopped for a lanche (snack) before continuing on. I got açai with granola and bananas, which turned out to be basically açai sorbet – YUM and hit the spot on a hot day. Duck got a chicken salad sandwich and suco verde (green juice – I’m still not sure what’s in that but he likes it. The church was small and is not a working church but rather more of a historical site that charged a few reais admission and had a gift shop.

Igreja de São Francisco de Assis: garden, from across the lake, and outside tiling; lanche!

We went downtown for a fancy dinner last night to celebrate our anniversary. Not our wedding anniversary, but the anniversary of our first date. Of course we went to Glouton, after being unable to see if we could get a reservation online or over the phone. The waitress remembered us from when we stopped in the other day and seated us right away! (I think I saw on their website or somewhere that they don’t let all their tables be reserved, but that some tables should be available for walk-ins – but it was still surprising.) The food was incredible – unique combinations of flavors that were amazing together, meat cooked to perfect tenderness, beautiful presentation. It was a lot of pork and/or other things I prefer not to eat (though I did try some of Duck’s pork neck) but Duck is excited to go back.

Before dinner, in a bid to kill time before it was late enough to eat, we sat at a wine bar and shared a half-carafe of wine. We had a hard time understanding the menu (most of the options were only available by the bottle, but there were only two of us… also all the options were available in mL sizes which we had a hard time picturing (do you know what 175 mL looks like? 350? 750?). Finally our waiter said “wait a moment” and like ten minutes later, when we were dying of embarrassment and on the verge of walking out, a guy (Tiago / James) popped up who spoke flawless English and explained it to us. I’ve started referring to him as our new best friend because he sat down and answered all our questions about himself and gave us good recommendations for other cool restaurants and places to go, which we’ve tucked away for future reference.

Today we endured the bus over to Shelby’s house, a fellow Fulbrighter who’s living in the northwestern area called Contagem. Her husband is from BH so they are staying with his parents in a house setup that very much reminds me of townie houses in the Boston, with three apartments with different combinations of family members in each apartment. I was practicing my ability to show up on Brazilian time for a hangout, so when we set the time I made sure to tell Shelby 11 Brazilian time. We left our house at 10:50, the bus was supposed to get us there around 11:30. The bus was about 15 minutes late and then where we got off turned out to be right next to a big fruit market, and we were empty-handed, plus I’ve been dying to get more fruit in my life. As we were browsing the aisles, Duck said, “Are we early?” “Nope,” I said. He was floored – another example of the complete 180 I’ve had here, and that I hoped would happen, that I would stop freaking out if we left 30 seconds late for a commitment. I have to say, it felt really good! Shelby and Daniel were gracious and relaxed and we had a great time playing games with their 8-year-old daughter and just chatting about our experiences so far and our work projects and life. They were going to the big soccer game at one of the two stadiums near our house so they gave us a ride home, which I very much appreciated!

On our walk around the lake, Duck and I brainstormed a new trivia question, so here you go: Our new Portuguese teacher used the word “hockey” in class. What does it mean?
a) Brazilian-style hockey (as different from American hockey as Brazilian football is from American football)
b) It’s a mispronunciation of hokey, or old-fashioned
c) The onomatopoeia of a hiccup in Portuguese
d) Rock music

Learning Experiences

Duck and I have discovered many things here about which we have had a 180-degree role reversal. One of these is my sudden and near-total directional challenge in our neighborhood (just our neighborhood, and really just leaving our house – I can usually get home just fine). I have no idea why this is, except that it’s something about the orientation of googlemaps? Like, when I look at googlemaps on my computer, it is oriented with south below, but our house faces south so north is behind us when we walk out the door…? I don’t really know. It’s weird and a bit jarring. When we walk out, I have to remind myself that I am facing the university and south, and that the majority of the neighborhood is behind me, aka north. Here’s hoping I get it sorted out soon!

One of the things I find most freeing about being here is that “learning experiences” (not mistakes!) are inexpensive. I order relatively freely off menus, recognizing maybe 1-2 words in a dish, and expect to figure out the rest. If it turns out I don’t like it, I can always order something else! (Fulbright gives a “settling in bonus” which I use as a cushion for most of these things, but even without it I’m not concerned.) Yesterday, Duck and I hit a downtown lunch buffet for $3.50 each. Bus rides are $1.10. We’ve seen pão de queijo for 25 cents (usually more like 75 cents or a dollar), and got ice cream bars for 75 cents (I got a kiwi flavored ice cream bar that was not bad!). At those prices, and with our wide-open schedules these days, I can take more risks than I might normally feel comfortable doing. undefined

I am also finding a lot of comfort in the Whatsapp group created by one of my fellow Fulbrighters. We’ve talked about everything from navigating getting CPF numbers and Federal Police registrations to linguistic faux pas; funny exchanges we’ve had with strangers to good tv shows to watch for improving our Portuguese; dealing with spam calls (yep, here too – I got 15 calls my first day with a Brazilian sim card) to where to spend Carnival. Everyone is so nice and supportive! Anytime I had a question while navigating a situation, I asked on Whatsapp and someone almost always responded almost immediately. Many in our cohort have lived in Brazil for some amount of time before and have worked through these same issues. I especially liked the advice to watch American tv shows dubbed into Portuguese with English subtitles, then again with Portuguese dubbing and Portuguese subtitles, and finally with no subtitles, to get the hang of things. I tried starting with Gilmore Girls but they talk way too fast, so I switched to Friends. (Someone else recommended The Good Place but we’re just watching it for the first time and a lot of it is so philosophical – maybe someday! We are loving it though.)

Tonight, after our first Portuguese tutoring session (at a school literally behind our house! so convenient) and hanging out with Marilia and her partner, we are hoping to get downtown to the synagogue (yes, singular – apparently there’s a Chabad, not to mention SO many Messianic Jewish places – but only one that feels like possibly a good fit; I’m not used to having only one option!). We still need to hear back from the synagogue as they don’t post their address or service times on the internet, and when I got in touch they asked me to send our passport pages, CPF numbers, and where we go to synagogue in the US. Going to synagogue in Guatemala prepared me for this level of security; I wish it were unreasonable but unfortunately I do understand their need for caution. Anyway, we’re waiting to hear back on that, so fingers crossed!

The best laid plans

So remember how I said we were going to try to limit our outings? Ha. Yesterday we started the CPF (like a social security number) process at the local post office (don’t ask) and then my host at UFMG, Marilia, wrote that she would be on campus in the afternoon and would I like to meet up. Would I! So we scrapped our plans to finish the CPF (involving a trip downtown, about a half-hour bus ride away) and settle up our cell phone plans, and instead walked over to the university’s School of Library Science. I introduced Marilia to Duck and she led us up to the third floor of this square building with a lovely courtyard in the middle. We all deposited our bags in a locker and went into the library, Duck settling into a carrel and Marilia and I into a room with small tables and chairs for group work and conversation. We had a lovely talk wherein I apparently agreed to give an hour-long presentation in Portuguese next month, about which I am equal parts nervous and excited, already having at least a page worth of ideas to share with her intro to library science students. I learned a lot, including how to google search for BH city library branches, which are mostly located in cultural centers, and it turns out there are about 20! So that bodes well.

This morning I went to a nearby mall to buy some clothes (I have barely a week’s worth, and no shoe options to wear with a pair of capris, my only really hot-weather professional pants). To treat myself for accomplishing this, I bought a pão de queijo (which came heated up! delish – also I am getting better at the keyboard shortcuts for the accent marks) and then headed home, where Duck had been working (writing some emails in Portuguese, looking at Portuguese classes, and some other work).

After a little lunch, we ventured back out, this time in the rain, to the drug store for some shampoo and sunscreen, and then convinced ourselves to bite the bullet and go downtown. Finishing the CPF process, which involved “triagem” (triage?) where an employee gave us a number like at the RMV and waited for half an hour to be seen. The guy gave me a hard time because I filled out the application without my middle name – oh, bureaucracy. Duck, luckily, on his own at a different window, managed beautifully. Mine took a little while longer but eventually we left with our new CPF numbers!

We rewarded ourselves with some gelato and pizza (yes, in that order) and then Duck talked me into walking over to the restaurant Glouton (if you haven’t watched the Parts Unknown episode in Minas Gerais, what are you waiting for?) which was down a very steep two blocks that we then had to walk back up. Then we made it to another mall to try to sort out our phones, for which we thought we needed the CPF but turns out we haven’t built up any credit yet, so we still needed to get pre-paid plans instead of a real plan.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll take it easier? We’ll see!

Mercado Central and Mass

If anyone out there is as into Anthony Bourdain as Duck is, you probably know that he did an episode of Parts Unknown in Minas Gerais. He spends a good long time in the Mercado Central (central market) and this episode was one of the first things Duck watched in preparation for coming here, so naturally going to the Mercado Central was high on his list of things to do. When we discovered that there was a Mass he also wanted to go to at a church not far from the market, our Sunday outing planned itself!

The first aspect of the adventure was riding the bus. I didn’t really elaborate on this in the last post, but the bus ride was its own adventure, really. I treated the whole excursion as an ever more elaborate series of accomplishments, a sort of Dayeinu if you will. That is, if we had only figured out how to ride the bus, it would have been enough. If we had figured out how to ride the bus AND arrived at our intended destination, it would have been enough for us. If we had arrived AND explored… AND arrived back home safely… etc. So: we rode the bus to church AND went to church AND went to the Mercado Central AND got home safely – Dayeinu!

Ok, so riding the bus. You get on at the front, on the right side (though sometimes if the bus stop is on an island in the street, you get on the left side). Sometimes you give the money to the driver (4.50 reais, about $1.10) and sometimes there is another bus employee sitting about 3 yards in with a turnstile (ON the bus!) and you pay that person or tap your card (we still need to figure out how to get a bus card – looks a lot like a CharlieCard). Then you go through the turnstile, or if you’re elderly/handicapped/have kids with you, you can sit in the front of the bus. When you ring the bell to get off, it buzzes really loudly and annoyingly instead of a simple ding. Sometimes the bus driver even comes to a stop BEFORE opening the doors. It seems that almost all vehicles here are manual transmissions, so in addition to the very hilly terrain and cobblestone streets makes for a very jostly ride (and a very carsick Amy). I have to say that the bus doesn’t seem to take very long here, which is good. In addition to the bumpy roads and manual transmissions, they also drive like bats out of hell. So it’s awful, and it’s more awful, but at least also it’s over sooner? I dunno.

We went to Mass at a Lebanese Maronite church, trying our best to fumble along with the congregation at the responsive readings in Portuguese. Duck and I stood across the street and tried to watch the crowd milling about outside as inconspicuously as possible. (At one point, I realized I had never taken off my Star of David necklace as I had meant to, so I ambled down the street and around the corner, popped it off and into my bag, and meandered back casually.) It looked like there was a group baptism of babies before the 10am Mass, and then about 40 people (mostly middle-aged and older – only one family with kids) stayed for the regular Mass. There’s also a 7pm Mass on Sundays, so Duck was satisfied that he would be able to do some meaningful research there.

Then we went to the Mercado Central, which was a bit overwhelming. It was sort of like a cross between Faneuil Hall and a sports stadium, but with more cheese. Like, lots of cheese. It was big, or at least we kept going around and it all looked new and at the same time the same – so many places with cheeses and salamis, or bins and bins of bulk herbs, or touristy tchotchkes, or… It’s very hard to say how much of it we saw but eventually we disentangled ourselves and made our way to the outside world and home… by Uber.

Belo Horizonte, home sweet home

Duck and I were up early this morning and headed straight from our Airbnb to the airport. It’s a quick hour-long flight from São Paulo to Belo Horizonte (which I will refer to mostly as BH: B = bay, H = ah-GAH, so bay-ah-GAH together if you want to be like the locals). Duck, in the window seat, narrated to me all the open pit mines we were flying over, and rolling hills.

Our Uber took us right to our new apartment where we met our landlords, Eda and Oscar, who are very nice. I have to remember to greet people by kissing them on the cheeks! Eda showed us all around (including many outlet adapters, bless her!) and then left us to unpack, which we have done. We are on our second load of laundry, which has to hang dry – easier said than done in the rainy season (it’s already rained about 4 times) but we are making do with indoor hanging racks and hangers.

Nossa casinha!

After lunch at a buffet place with Eda and Oscar, we came back and had a little nap to rest up for our afternoon adventure: going to the grocery store! We got some food for dinner (a little spaghetti), some eggs and cereal for breakfast tomorrow, and laundry soap. We had both been looking forward to cooking since we haven’t done it in almost two weeks! (I also brought about a week’s worth of clothes and it’s been almost two weeks so I’ll let you smell that math.)

Duck and I have agreed to try to take it easy with integrating ourselves. It reminds me of my approach to having mono: I could EITHER go to the doctor OR to the grocery store OR to the park in a day. Tomorrow we are going to go downtown to a Maranite church for mass and then to the Mercado Central, and then come back home. It’s exhausting being constantly on alert, navigating your way around an unfamiliar city, and going into social encounters where you often don’t know most of the words thrown your way (even if they do as you request and slow down!). Downtown is also where the main library is, so getting to know that bus route will be very helpful.

Next week we have a bunch of errands to run, but again, I’m going to attempt to only do 1-2 per day. We’re also looking forward to exploring the university here, looking into signing up for pool memberships so we can get more into swimming, and walking around Lake Pampulha nearby.

We settled in to write some fieldnotes (or in my case, a couple of long-overdue blog posts!). I was in the bedroom trying to drown out Duck’s background Youtube video with music (he was in the other room, the kitchen), and we were both trying to drown out the loud street music that came from one street over, a bit of a main drag (where the buffet place was). It’s still going – hopefully that will fade into the background, but Carnival will likely intensify the shenanigans!

São Paulo: Orientation

Duck and I arrived on Monday and took a cab to the hotel (Uber is about half the cost but we couldn’t get it to work for us). At Duck’s encouragement, I introduced myself to other obvious Fulbrighters also checking in. We went out into the drizzly mid-afternoon for some food where it started downpouring so hard at our open-sided restaurant that the waiter thought we ordered beer instead of more Guaraná soda. By the time we were done eating, the rain had turned back into drizzle and we made our way back to the hotel. A very enterprising soul, Juan, had gathered most of us into a Facebook group that then migrated into a Whatsapp group text and a bunch of us wandered out to another restaurant to get to know each other a bit.

Fulbrighters exploring São Paulo!
L-R: Christina, Jess, Maca, me, David, Candice, Cory, Kennedy, Alicia, Juan

Tuesday was the first of our three days of orientation, which included health and security advice which basically just scared the bejeezus out of me) plus a field trip to the Museu da Imigração. Spontaneous group excursions included walking to the nearby mall to look into getting sim cards for our phones. It turns out you need something called a CPF number in order to get an actual phone plan, so most of us ended up with a temporary pay-as-you-go card. Also plans generally work for calls within your city, so there’s yet another reason to wait until we’re in BH (but we wanted to access wifi and maps and things while out and about). Duck went back to the hotel afterwards but I stayed out with the group and had dinner (cheeseburger and a beer for $10!).

Wednesday’s orientation was in the hotel all day, with a huge group dinner out (~30 of us, plus a few scattered spouses, and Fulbright staff). The daytime sessions included a quiz about Brazil (my team came in second place after much trash talking with the first-place team) but I think they should have used my trivia questions 🙂 (Speaking of which, the answer to the last trivia question will be at the bottom of this post.) A bunch of us stayed in the conference room at lunch to work together to fill out the Federal Police registration form (you have to register within 90 days of arriving in the country and apparently the bureaucracy is pretty steep). There was also a panel of former Fulbrighters with advice for us about challenges we may face doing fieldwork and a really dull (or horribly offensive, depending on whether or not you were able to understand/pay attention and had any sort of background) economics lecture.

The whole group outside one of the museums

Thursday we went to another museum, the Museu Afro Brasil, which was cool but again I didn’t really have the background to understand it. We walked through the nearby park, Parque Ibirapuera, which features lots of Oscar Niemeyer architecture (man do they love that guy here) plus some cool art. There was also a good panel on advice about living in Brazil from the same former Fulbrighters as the day before, plus a really fantastic mental health presentation. After we finished, a big group of us utilized the Whatsapp group text to organize ourselves for dinner and then we went back to the hotel and hung out on the rooftop, watching planes nearly land on top of us (and helicopters actually land on us – there’s a helipad up there). It was a great sendoff as we all trickled out over the next 24ish hours.

Friday morning Duck and I checked out of the hotel and left our bags at the front desk and went on an adventure! We took the bus up to a small branch library of the city library and I gathered my courage to talk to the librarian, Anjelica. We ended up talking for nearly an hour! (More info in another post, this one is already long!) She is very nice and showed me all around the library. Then we went back to the hotel to meet one of my fellow Fulbrighters, Rakan, for lunch so he and Duck could talk about their overlapping research interests in the Syrian and Lebanese immigrant communities in Brazil. Finally we collected our things from the hotel and took an Uber to our overnight Airbnb (where we promptly ran into another Fulbrighter, Darlene, who is staying in the same apartment building for the first few months!). We met with Duck’s colleague (his advisor’s third cousin’s friend, if you can follow that – Duck also happens to be reviewing a book this colleague has a chapter in) and his wife for dinner, which was lovely. We did ask to meet them at 7pm, which is fine because they’re retired and eat on the early side, but no one really eats dinner that early so the restaurant was deserted until 8 and even then there was only one other table of people before we left around 8:30! We had a lovely moment of connection where Isabel started to describe Carlos’ latest subject and he butted in to take over, and we all had a good laugh as she explained that she knows the subject almost as well as he does – we find ourselves in the same boat.

Previous trivia question: Which of the following is NOT a national animal of Brazil? a) Jaguar b) Macaw c) Rufous-Bellied Thrush d) Coati

Previous trivia answer: Coati! Though they are pretty cute.

New trivia question: How many stars are on the Brazilian flag?

a. Zero
b. 12
c. 21
d. 27

Iguaçu Falls Roundup

Birds: I snapped a shot of this cheerful little (ie about the size of a starling) guy at breakfast this morning before he hopped away. There were also some birds soaring above the falls that Duck thinks were vultures – they were amazing to watch, huge wingspans and really just riding the thermals, not flapping much at all but soaring up in vast swirling columns.

Bugs: the bees (“abelhas”) here are very aggressive. We have moved inside more than once from the otherwise-lovely veranda and poolside when they came after our snacks. (Turns out they love olives as much as we do!) There are also giant flying ant-wasp things, in addition to your run-of-the-mill flies and butterflies, and we saw something the size of a June bug that a staff member told us the name of and I promptly forgot. In general there is much running away and flapping on everybody’s part, including the bugs’.

Food: I’ve taken the buffets as an opportunity to sample different foods we may be offered in the future and not have the luxury of an English translation, and try to commit their names to memory and whether or not I liked them. So far I’ve enjoyed feijoada, Tiger bread (a sweet sliced bread marbled yellow and brown that looks like tiger stripes), hash browns (unlabeled; took me a surprisingly long time to identify them), and papaya and other fruits. I did not like pão integral (whole wheat bread), their waffles and pancakes, and I still don’t like steak and filet mignon. Yesterday we tried a soda (“refrigerante” or “refri” for short) called Guaraná, which tastes sort of like cream soda with cherry (guaraná is a fruit) and which we liked a lot and have had three times already!

Guaraná on the left, Citrus Antarctica on the right (tasted like Fresca)

And now, as we prepare to leave Iguaçu Falls, your trivia for the day:

Which one is NOT a national animal of Brazil?
a. Jaguar
b. Macaw
c. Rufous-Bellied Thrush
d. Coati

Relaxication

Duck and I are really taking it easy. Yesterday consisted of lots of what our friend Jaclyn calls porch sittin’, in our case reading and enjoying beverages and more giant green olives than we could ever possibly want, sitting by the pool and going for the occasional dip, and indulging in a long massage.

Thursday afternoon we walked down to the big falls, Garganta do Diablo (Devil’s Throat). One of the perks to our hotel being inside the park is that we don’t have to leave when the park closes. The result is that we were able to wait for the crowds to dissipate a bit before having our own photo ops. I picked a person with English on her t-shirt to ask to take our photo, and we struck up a conversation. Turns out that her parents were with her and they’re from São Paulo, and her dad asked if I was Jewish (he saw my Star of David necklace). We chatted for a little while about the Jewish communities in São Paulo (where they live) and Belo Horizonte.

Small lizard friend on the way down to the big falls

Duck also actually did something yesterday, which was to go on the boat tour where they take you under the falls. Also on Duck’s boat tour (not to be confused with a duckboat) was the Jewish family from last night, whom we’ve discovered are here with their extended family for the patriarch’s 80th birthday (#lifegoals). Duck talked with them further and I’m looking forward to running into them again, hopefully, and talking more about the Jewish community in Brazil. It would be fun to meet up with them in São Paulo for a Shabbat!

Last night we were playing Bananagrams on the porch when we spilled a bunch of tiles on the floor by the table next to us (about 5 feet away). This led to a long conversation struck up with the couple there who are from Victoria, Canada, one of whom was also Jewish. Now we’re off to another hike down to the big falls to have lunch at the restaurant there!

Oh – a note about the flooding in Belo Horizonte: our landlady said our neighborhood is pretty far from the affected areas, so we are keeping our plans to head there on Friday.

Iguaçu Falls

We made it! Our first flight, Boston to DC, was very unpleasant for me, but I rallied and the long one (9 hours, DC to São Paulo) was very good. We were even both able to sleep a little. (First class helps with that!) I told Duck that we might have a problem on our hands, since I’m not sure I can do that trip in coach now that I’ve done it in first class. We both enjoyed the hell out of our journey to our honeymoon. (Except for the part where I checked the wrong bag and they confiscated our sunscreen, that part wasn’t so great.) As we deplaned in São Paulo, Duck and I turned to each other and commented on the wall of heat and humidity that greeted us! Feels good after it was snowing on us in Boston on Tuesday!

We are all settled in at our hotel, which is lovely. We got in around 2:30pm yesterday and had lunch and then went for a swim in the pool, and had also arranged for a fruit bowl to be delivered to the room, so we have already snacked on a pear-like fellow and some big, seedy red grapes (there are also bananas, apples, a mango, kiwi, and what is maybe a papaya?). We were standing there at the pool, just minding our own business, when I looked over and saw a long, ringed tail twitching not ten feet away – a coati! Our friend Denise had warned us about these bold critters who will hop up onto your table and steal your meal. Luckily, we didn’t have anything for this guy to steal, but they’re about the size of a possum and I wouldn’t want to make one mad.

The smaller falls (with some random kissy strangers in front)

We had a beverage on the porch of the hotel and enjoyed the late afternoon rain, then walked down to the end of the hotel driveway to take in the smaller falls. The big one, Devil’s Throat (Garganta do Diablo), is a bit more of a walk. We’d like to do that on a day when it’s not supposed to rain, but it might rain almost the whole time we’re here. Duck also wants to take a boat tour of the falls, where you go right under them and get totally soaked, so he could do that even if it’s raining. Boats do not agree with me, so I will have a piña colada on the front porch and read a book (now that I’ve gotten my kindle to talk to the library) while I wait for him to return.

We had a nice buffet dinner at the hotel and then I tried my hardest to stay awake until 9pm, which was only 7pm EST! I don’t think I’ve ever traveled this far to feel so much jet lag without there actually being much of a time change! I’m still trying to figure out the time zones here. According to the little map on the airplane, the time zones are all over the place and don’t make any sense. (By the way, to anyone I told that we’re only an hour ahead of EST, it turns out we’re two hours ahead, at least until Daylight Savings starts again. Sorryyyy – especially to my mom, who is especially challenged in this area.)

We fell asleep around 9pm and woke up at 8:30am feeling much more rested, even with a brief interlude of really loud thunder at 5am. After a lovely buffet breakfast (which I’m treating as a way to figure out which Brazilian pastries I like and that we’re likely to encounter at cafes), we headed to the front desk to sort out our charger/adapter situation. Turns out that I brought the wrong adapter from my set and in Duck’s international all-in-one adapter, the part that works in Brazil is broken. Our hotel here has one we can borrow, and our São Paulo hotel should also have one, but then we will need to buy something. Luckily we should be fine with just one because I brought a power strip, so we can plug in 5 devices at once.

The last thing that’s worrisome is that our future home city, Belo Horizonte, is in the midst of some serious flooding from constant rain for the past month or so. 54 people have died and the footage they showed on TV, of cars washing away and restaurants flooding, was pretty alarming. My fellow Fulbrighter is already in BH, I think, and I’m waiting to hear back from her about what things are like in the neighborhood where we’ll both be living. I also reached out to our landlady and my host at the university to see what things are like for them. Worst-case scenario is that we’ll stay in São Paulo for a little while, which means I should be able to explore the library there and learn something. Stay tuned…!

Foot Mittens

We’ve been up early every day (because moving is so fun and we can’t wait to get started!) and are pretty zonked by the end of the day. So zonked that tonight, when I noticed that Marc was only wearing one slipper, I told him that he had lost a foot mitten because I couldn’t remember the word for slipper!

The movers came today and tetrised all our stuff into a 10x10x10 storage unit. It’s really quite impressive. The walls of our apartment are all echoey and there’s just a last carload of stuff to take up there tomorrow. We’re staying with friends in Somerville until Tuesday evening, when we fly out!

Tomorrow! Busy day. So many last-minute errands to do, like buying Duck a new laptop (his computer’s period key decided to stop working tonight), doing laundry, a Goodwill dropoff run, canceling our internet service, going to the post office, etc. Our reward will be dinner with friends, which we are looking forward to!

Last night, we had a bon voyage (er, boa viagem) party, which was the most perfect sendoff I could have imagined. Two friends (one of our hosts, who is Jewish, and one of our friends who is an Episcopal priest, obviously) gave us each a lovely blessing. I got a bunch of kids’ books about Brazil from the library and put them up around the house. We also put up trivia, which reminded me of the trivia I used to put up on my blog when I lived in Australia, and it reignited my fondness for that particular aspect of my last big travel adventure.

So without further ado, here’s your first trivia question, my favorite from last night:

Marc loves Bob Dylan. Which of the following is a Brazilian folk singer said to be the Bob Dylan of Brazil?
a. Jimmy Buffett
b. Chico Buarque
c. Jair Bolsonaro
d. Giselle Bundchen