Google Translate & 6 Year Olds

Honestly, I don't know how people did this without Google Translate.  Have you ever tried it?  If not, click the link.  You just type in English (or whatever other language you want) and choose a language to translate it to.  We use it A L-O-T!  When the kids bring home notes from school...google translate.  When I'm helping D with his homework, google translate.  When DaddyHealy is headed to the hardware store for some home repair project, you guessed it, google translate.  When I need to call the bug sprayer because cockroaches are starting to climb up the kitchen sink drain, big breath, then I use google translate. We use it Portuguese-to-English and English-to-Portuguese.  Common' people, dictionaries are obsolete.  It even has a feature where you can hear how it is pronounced.  D LOVES this feature.  He'll type all kinds of things and translate them into Japanese, Arabic, Greek, Icelandic, whatever catches his attention, then push the "listen" button and crack up at how funny it is to say "My cup is green" in Macedonian.  Isn't technology amazing?

So, just the other day D & I were working through some homework, and I was on google translate to be sure I understood what the questions were asking (even though he told me he already knew and I was wasting my time), when he told me to "snicker-giggle...Google translate 'pelado' Mom. Tee-hee-hee"  Against my better judgment I typed it in, but I needed to know....it means "naked."  Really? Okay, it could be worse, but I was hoping to avoid the giggle-snicker little boy stuff for a few more years.  Ah, the joy of having peers.

The Mini

Have I told you about our car before?  This has to be the world's smallest minivan.  DaddyHealy told me it's a nice transition vehicle for a soccer mom.  I have thus far refused a mini-van in favor of an equally un-cool large family car.  He has renewed hopes for me upon our return.

This piece of work is called a Zafira, and is made by Chevy.  Not too many people around these parts drive something so big.  The Company, however, leases one of these beauties for all ex-pat families here in Brazil.  So around town, you can be almost certain someone you know is behind the wheel if you see one of these cruising along.  It's nothing special, but it gets us where we need to go.  Honestly, I think my (very large) family car back in the States had more room.  The Zafira does, however, have 7 seats, which is convenient for when Grandma & Grandpa come for a visit.  Mind you all the luggage has to go on the roof and everyone has to inhale deeply before you close the doors, but it is a great solution for us. 

It rides rough, though...or maybe it's just the roads, and it lacks some features we'd consider standard in a family vehicle.  But then again, I don't pay a penny for using it these 2 years, so I'm counting my blessings!

Getting (not too) Messy

It seems to me that finger painting is a rite of passage in toddlerhood.  There is a point in time when the child can be trusted not to taste the paint, but she still feels free enough to get her hands dirty.  This was our first such session.  One afternoon after a nice long nap, while brother and sister were at school, I pulled out the finger paints and special paper I packed in our shipment over 13 months ago....in anticipation of this day.  What a nice opportunity to experience this with her one-on-one.

What I found particularly interesting about this artistic session was that she refused to mix the colors.  She had one hand for green and one hand for yellow.  I tried to show her how to mix them, but she refused.  I tried enticing her with the magic of red + blue = purple, but she was having none of it.  When I added a third color to the mix, she used a pinkie to paint with it, so as to not mix it on her already-paint-covered fingers.

I see another type A in my future.

Tom, with a Make Over

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope you all are enjoying enough turkey and accompaniments for us.  It is just another Thursday here in Brazil.  We have work, we have school, it's 90+ degrees, and 85 degrees inside our house, so quite frankly, I'm glad I'm not baking a turkey today.

Do you remember our turkey friend Tom?  We've been sharing with him some of the many things we are thankful for over the past few weeks, and boy, what a make-over!

Here is the list: This Beautiful Day, Momma, Daddy, D & M, Our Food, All the Days of my Life, My Toys, My Family, Colors, My Barbies, "E" and "I," Red, My Jewelry, My eyelashes, Oranges, Thanksgiving, Everything I own, My Mom, Our Pool, That I Didn't Have a Bead in My Nose (that's a long story), My Home, Yellow, My Dad, Homeschool, My Paintings, My School, Purple Flowers, This World, Cousin Jesse, and Butterflies.

For these, for you, and for so much more, we are Thankful today and always.

Coconut

Coconuts are just so inviting.  They look magical all round and hairy with something wonderful hiding inside.  They've been showing up in the stores lately, fresh, relatively locally grown coconuts.  The kids have been wanting to try one.  I debated.  We did this once before, and it did not turn out well.  In the States one day a few summers ago, they managed to talk me into buying one of 3 coconuts on the shelf (first warning: They carry very little stock, meaning they don't have a high turnover of fresh coconuts on the big river.)  But it sounded like fun, and when we got home I googled how it's done....screw a hole for a straw, drink the tasty coconut milk, wrap in towel and smack with hammer and cut out tasty coconut.  Easy enough. 

So, we screwed the hole, stuck in the straw, fought about who got to go first and finally everyone had a taste, with an incredibly bad look on their face, they either spit or let the milk just fall out of their mouths. Ok, so coconut milk isn't as good as it sounds.  We wrapped it in a towel and beat the life out of it before finally getting it open to find.......the entire inside of the coconut was moldy! 

 

Fast forward 2 years and fly around the planet to a sub-tropical region.  coconuts abound, we see them on trees, and when the season is right, there are piles of them in the produce aisle (good sign).  Everyone was game, even anxious, to try again.  Surely the coconut will be as amazing as we had imagined when we have it fresh.  So, we brought one home, screwed the hole, inserted the straw, and let's just say, even the milk of coconuts that are not rotten does not appeal to D.

 

H, on the other hand, drank it dry. (naturally, my Brazilian baby)  So we cut it open, sliced out some fruit and enjoyed fresh coconut for the first time.  The overall verdict was that it was just "okay."  Apparently too many years of sweetened shredded coconut has spoiled the lot.  It was fun, though, and a bit redeeming for the coconut.

What a Mug

Because she is home with me all afternoon while the others are at school, H has become my right hand in the kitchen.  Can you blame her with rewards like chocolate spoons to lick?

Dia das Crianças

We talk a lot about how lucky we are, how much we have, how much God has blessed us.  It's one of the beauties of being here...our blessings are very visable to our children here.  There is a dirty but sweet little girl who comes to our gate regularly to ask for food.  When D played over at a friend's house, he reported that it was fun, "but she doesn't have very many toys."  We went on a visit to a nearby orphanage, and discussed anew of our blessings (a mom AND a dad!)  We are grateful that we are Americans.  While we are grateful for this experience, we are also grateful that we will someday be going home.  We are grateful for eachother, for DaddyHealy's job, for our things, our toys, our bank account, our cupboards full of food.  We try to teach the children to share what God has blessed us with.  Overall, our children are learning day by day to be more grateful. At least that is my hope.

There was one day, however, when our children think it must be the best thing in all the world to be a Brazilian child.  Dia das Crianças.  "Children's Day" is in line with Mother's Day and Father's Day, and why not?  Children are what made us mothers and fathers after all!  The whole week of Children's Day turned out to be a Children's Week of sorts.  The icecream shop had different specials each day, the schools had ongoing celebrations.  With thier classes, D & M had picinics, popsicles, and carnivals complete with rides and cotton candy!  The whole week, and maybe the whole month, were spent celebrating children.  But this all ends with the best day of all, Children's Day, on which each child recieves a present from their parents (and if they are lucky, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, Godparents, and so on.)  Besides all that, since Dia das Crianças coincides with the Catholic/National holiday of the celebration of "Our Lady of Apparations," it is a day off school and work.  Our maid told me she always took her kids out for icecream and to the park, and of course gave them a present.  Even now, she gives her grown children chocolate for the holiday.

It reminded me of Christmas in the States in a way. Every store on mainstreet painted their windows and made displays of all the newest toys, advertising how many days until the holiday, and that credit was available.  At school the kids painted pictures of what they wanted.  Naturally, as they talked about it for weeks, they changed their mind repeatedly.

We debated.  We have enough stuff.  We have more than enough toys.  But this will be their only Dia das Crianças. (We arrived the day after last year, and we will move back before it comes around again.)  Besides, when they go back to school on Monday everyone will be talking about what they got.  In the end, we went with the whole "when in Rome" thing, which resulted in 3 very excited, and very surprised kids.

Pitanga

Let me introduce you to pitanga.  Some people have told me this is the "Brazilian cherry."  They are small and have a pit.  We found them to be sour, but I have since learned the color of the fruit when picked determines how sweet or tart it is.  You can see ours are orange to red, the fruit that is darker red is sweeter.  People like them both ways.

These little treasures aren't available in the grocery store.  You've probably already guessed, but our maid brought them for us, most certainly picked from trees in front of someone else's house.  I pretend to not know and enjoy them while I can.

Cultural Hour

As a part of homeschool, we explore all types of literature, and even try our hand at different writing styles.  Last week we learned about rhyming couplets, your traditional poetry style with 2 lines that end in rhyming words.  The it was D's turn, and since he likes a challenge, we chose a topic that has no rhyming words of its own (orange) thus inspiring him to use his imagination a little more. 

His end result:

The orange is very sweet.
And it does NOT smell stinky like my feet.
It's shaped like a sphere.
And it grows right here.
It's skin is rough.
But also very tough.

Posting his work was his idea, and he even typed it himself.  Enjoy!

 

Storms

DaddyHealy is fond of photographing storms as they are moving in, and we live in just the right spot, on top of a hill.  Here are some of the neat scenes from our back yard just before the thunder started booming.

 

He got this one too, of a rainbow over the city.  That's "downtown" Horizontina you see under the arch.

A New Water Play

There is really nothing special going on here, but water play is always fun. 

 

I think I've mentioned before about the dust here, inside and outside.  Since the doors and windows don't seal tightly, dust enters at an alarming rate.  Our wonderful maid dusts the house and hand mops the floors every day (this is a norm here), and our socks still get dirty from the orange dust and dirt.

 

Needless to say, our toys get quite dusty too.  So one day we dumped a box of them into the baby bath tub, added 3 sponges and a more than adequate amount of dish detergent, and viola, 30 minutes of self-directed play combined with taking responsibility for caring for one's own things.  Lovely!

 

My Pumpkin

I am pretty sure I've mentioned before that I let her dress herself.  But just in case there was any question, she put together this ensemble.

Repair Job

So here is the end result of the broken power pole on our corner. When the truck showed up with a concrete power pole, we were excited. As it turns out, that was for another location. 

The power workers broke up the concrete sidewalk (by sledge hammer) and set a new, shorter power pole in the ground next to the broken one. Then, our old broken pole was pushed upright and essentially zip-tied to the new one. Since then, I have noticed several poles around town with a similar repair job. Apparently it is not uncommon.

Brilliant.

 

turkeys

We've been busy with our turkey crafts.  Here's a little something I dreamed up with supplies on hand on a day that needed some major distraction.  And, it doubles as a play thing! 
Turkey puppet shows: now playing all week!

H is so proud of her creation.

Different Standards

 

In September, we had a pretty significant thunder storm with high winds.  Not prairie winds, mind you, but high winds for here. I noticed blasts of sparks flying over our house and at first thought firecrackers (not uncommon here at any time of day or night).  But they were so close.  As it turns out, a power pole on our corner had blown over (or more accurately, broken off at the base) and the live power lines were sparking as they lay in a tree in front of our house. 

Not familiar with the procedure, or vocabulary, for such a situation, we called a neighbor who called the power company.  I was impressed that for a culture who doesn't put an enormous significance on promptness, the power company arrived within 10 minutes and shut off the power.  Then left.  Lucky for us, the power for our house comes in off the cross street, but this pole was servicing power down 2 legs of this corner.  Dozens or more houses were without power.  For the whole night.  And the next day.  And the next night.  And the next day.....you get the idea.  They turned off the power, and never came back.  We called neighbors, offering our fridge space to store their perishables.  They all assured us they had called "a friend at the power company" who guaranteed it would be back on by midnight, or this afternoon, or by 3 o'clock, or whatever magic time was given.  This is how things get done in this country.  A series of personal favors.  Unfortunately, it fell through this time.  DaddyHealy told his colleagues that Americans would never stand for this.  The problem was just a broken pole and it took several days to get power restored.  His colleges just shrugged.  They have to live with different standards, they are used to it.

The power company finally came out on a holiday, (naturally) with 5 guys.  One to break up the concrete, one to talk on his cell phone, and three to have a snack and a break under our tree.



DaddyHealy would call this a critical failure.  He also explained that treated wood would have prevented the pole from rotting at ground level, thus breaking in the wind.  Details.

I love this picture because it shows the extreme angle the pole sat at for several days while our neighbors waited for power to be restored.  That's our house (and the tree which sparked) on the left of the picture.

Meet Tom

Meet Tom, our very naked turkey friend.  H and I made him this afternoon.

Since Thanksgiving is most definitley an American holiday, and being on a Thursday will just be another day of school and work for us here in Brazil , I decided something needed to be done to help us remember to be thankful.  Enter Tom.  My idea is that each day the kids will decide on something they are thankful for and we will write it on a feather and help fill up Tom's plume.

In case you are wondering about the first feather, H is thankful for Mommy, M, Dada, and D.

Halloween Harrah

Here is how we finished out our Halloween celebrations (all ideas borrowed from internet websites):

The dinner plate:

Jack-o-lantern quesadilla, ant (raisin) salad, vampire mouth apples

And M trying out a new look:

Saci

Well, D came home on Halloween eve from school with some interesting information about a pesky little folkloric figure named Saci.  As it turns out, his "official" day of celebration is October 31.  The "Dia do Saci" (Day of Saci) was just instituted by the Brazilian government in 2004...perhaps in an effort to hold on to Brazilian traditions rather than import foreign ones to celebrate???

D told us Saci is a troublemaker.  He steals those missing socks you can never match, lets the cows out and hides the things you never can find.  Further internet reading confirmed that parents use Saci to motivate their children, "If you don't clean up your room, Saci will take your toys."  Handy.

He also happens to only have one leg and smokes a pipe.  And although he causes a lot of trouble, people seem to find him endearing.