(Dis)Connected

Is checking post marks one of your favorite pastimes?  It’s a new favorite for me.  Whether mail is delivered here from the US or from within Brazil, I have seen absolutely no consistency in the delivery time. We have, in the same week, received 2 pieces of mail from the US postmarked 8 days and 32 days prior.  That is, one letter took only 8 days to arrive and the other 32.  They were both just letters, nothing fancy or special about them.  In another instance, Grammy sent all 3 kids their own valentines (obviously, she mailed them all on the same day).  Two of them arrived within a week of each other.  The last one  arrived almost 2 weeks later. Why the inconsistency? 

The problem also exists with our Brazilian mail as well.  We have more than once received a bill due in 3 days or less.  No wonder auto-debit is so popular here.

Last week I made a profound conclusion.  We have lived in this house for 3 months now, and have only received mail about 10 times.  (boy, aren’t we popular?!)  But here is what I finally realized.  When we do receive mail, we tend to receive a lot of it.  On Tuesday of this week, we received 7 pieces of mail. Of those 7 pieces, 1 was a bill, 2 were letters from the US, 2 were for the homeowner and 1 was for an American ex-pat who rented this house 7 years ago.   But the strange thing is it’s been more than 2 weeks since we’ve had any mail at all.  They must be holding our mail until they feel they have enough to bother with delivering!  It’s the only conclusion I can draw.  So, if you’ve ever written me a letter, and waited and waited and waited for a reply, this is my excuse.

We’ve had a similar situation with packages (or, more commonly, large padded envelopes), which are delivered by a different mail carrier.  Nothing for 2 months, then 3 in one day.  It is unlikely a coincidence.   Yesterday takes the cake, though, we received a package of our US mail that Grammy sent to us on February 10.  We received it on April 26.  Well, I guess that’s only, what, 75 days….

I also should share the interesting bit about packages.  Brazil has high import taxes on goods not produced in the country.  It is in some ways a very wise action to promote manufacturers to set up their South American operations in Brazil, creating jobs, tax revenue and so on.  Auto manufacturers, agricultural and construction equipment manufacturers, toy makers, furniture, appliances….almost all the products you can buy here are made here.  If you desire to buy, say, a Samsung TV made in Korea, you will probably pay 60% of the product price in taxes.  Imported goods are very, very, very expensive.  Because there is not much I need to buy here, I didn’t know that mattered to me, until Christmas grew near and I was warned by a seasoned expat to be wary to relatives sending packages.  The postal agency reserves the right to open packages and verify contents, and then charge a duty or import tax on goods, to make them comparable to purchasing the item in Brazil.  For interest I checked Amazon for a $15 See & Say toy.  (Do you remember these? Pull the string, the arrow goes around and stops…”A Cow Says Moooo…” )  The website estimated $35 on shipping and another $50 for import taxes.  Luckily we’ve received a precious few packages without incident, but we know many a family who have received a notice in lieu of the package, asking them to come to the post office to pay the taxes in order to pick up the package.  Typically, the taxes have amounted to 2-3 times the US value of the item sent. 

I feel so blessed to have the internet.  I could not imagine doing this assignment 10 or 15 years ago, with such long stretches between letters and contact with home.  We can email every day, I can blog our happenings for everyone to read, we can call our friends or relatives over the internet just like dialing a local number.  Hey, I can even see what is on sale at Target this week, if I just really want to know. :)

Friends and Foes

One of the best parts about Iguaçu was spending time in the jungle.  Where we live in Horizontina is not all that different from where we've lived in the US....wheat fields, soybean fields, apple orchards, forests, logging, etc.  As I've mentioned before, this is not the Brazil that makes the US news for Carnival, or on the Discovery Channel about diminishing acres of the Amazon Rainforest.

The Brazilian Iguaçu National Park is almost 460,000 acres, that's roughly 700 square miles of protected jungle flora, wildlife and water.  It takes 15 minutes by state run busses to get from the park entrance to the falls.  What an awesome site. 

So when we weren't mesmerized by the rushing water, we were entertained by the butterflies, birds, monkeys and coatis, a cousin to raccoons, also known as the mascot of Iguaçu. 

They look cute and innocent, don't they?  The first 5 or 6 we saw we thought were adorable.  We oohed over how cute they were, we took pictures, and eventually we realized they were never going to leave us alone.  They followed people everywhere.  At the picnic tables at the end of the trail they hopped up onto tables swiping food.  They snagged a pack of cookies out of the side pocket of my backpack.  By the end of the first day, we'd seen enough of them.  By the end of the second day we never wanted to see one of the mangy creatures again. 

This monkey came our way after a bag of doritos.  We'd grabbed a snack at the bottom of the lower falls trail and were being stalked by 3 very determined coatis, looking for a hand out.  They followed us up flights of stairs as fast as we could move with a 4 and 6 year old in tow.  We saw the monkey from a distance and as I was grabbing for the camera, I realized I was not going to have to try to get close enough for a shot....the trees rustled and the next thing I know he was right in front of us considering his move to relieve us of our doritos as well. 

Bilingual

One thing I really love about this age is when they really start talking. Suddenly they are adding a new word every day and before you know it, it's a dozen new words a day. For Baby H the word of the day was "pigtails." She followed me around for 20 minutes saying "pigtails, pigtails por favor. pigtails."
It was too cute, and so, she got her pigtails. When I held her up the mirror she grinned at her reflection like it was Mickey Mouse smiling back at her.

It will be interesting to see how she develops as a bilingual baby. Right now she is probably 90% English and 10% Portuguese. But I know she understands Portuguese (probably better than me!) because she responds appropriately to what the Brazilians ask, suggest and say to her. Now that we have a maid here 5 days a week, I am curious how that will grow and develop.

Because I find it interesting, here are some of the words she chooses to say in Portuguese.

• tchau-tchau = bye-bye (she stopped saying bye-bye about a week after we arrived)
• agua = water
• por favor = please
• pipoca = popcorn
• oi = hi
• sometimes she uses mamãe = mommy
• balão = balloon
• flor = flower
• sometimes cachorro = dog
• ropa = clothes
• opa! = oops!

It seems she picks and chooses which language is easier for each word.

He's Got the Whole World....

This is by no means the best picture we took at Iguaçu, but I think it says the most. D & M spent a lot of time just looking up, and down, and up, and down. They loved standing out there at the end of the platform, getting sprinkled with water. I wondered what they were thinking. I wondered if it was anything about how lucky we are to have this experience, how few peers have ever done anything this cool. When we finally drug them away, D was humming "He's got the whole world in his hands..." The answer to my question.

More on Iguaçu

Here are a few more pictures to share from Iguaçu.

This is a really good shot of the walk ways that took you to the edges of the falls. Both Brazil and Argentina took you up close, where you could feel the water spray, and the intensity of it all. The whole trail has outcroppings like this.

This was taken from the Argentina side. It was an amazing site. It was a deliciously green valley, separated by crystal, forceful rushing water decorated with a vibrant rainbow. Amazing. More than once on this trip I just had to stop and gawk. Not because I couldn't believe God could create something so amazing, but you have to pause and really appreciate it, be grateful, and make a memory.

This spot is called The Devil's Throat. It's amazing......massive amounts of rushing water. You can feel it in your chest several hundred feet before you get to this overlook.

The kids and I at the overlook for The Devil's Throat. It was built literally over the waterfalls. If you look straight down anywhere on the platform, you saw water plunging below you.Some of us who still had energy after two solid days of walking ventured the trails below the falls and the 300+ steps to go with them. New and amazing views. We were not disappointed. It reminded me so much of Hawaii. And then, not at all.

Just to prove that we were all there:

Travel Warriors

I think my kids are pretty good travelers. They sometimes fare better than their parents. But they've had a lot of experience. In the first year of Daniel's life, he never spent 2 months straight in his own bed. We were always on the road. (I'm not talking about Mediterranean cruises and Disney World vacations here...we spent our time wisely seeing the best attractions the USA has to offer....pumpkin patches, wheat harvests, apple picking, Grandmas and cousins.)

However, since we've moved here, we've never been more than 1 hour from home. I don't know why that is exactly. We were busying settling in to our house, then settling in to our new house. We were not familiar with the language. We were not familiar with the map. We didn't even know where to go. Admittedly, it was easier for me to stay home. DaddyHealy, on the other hand, has had a bit of Horizontina-fever...ready to get out of town, and see, do, eat something different. One of the many blessings of Grammy-cation was the incentive to just get out there and do something. Before DaddyHealy left to pick them up at the airport (about a 7 hour drive), our charming mini-van had a mere 2,800KM (that's 1,740 miles) on it. When we got home from dropping them off at the end of their visit, the odometer showed 6,900 KM (4,287 miles). That's 2,500 miles in 2 1/2 weeks! Like driving from Philadelphia to Los Angeles (most of the time averaging 42 mph). We drove a lot, we saw a lot, we ate a lot, we shared a lot, and slept very little.

Well....okay, except H. She was more creative in her napping. Some expat friends loaned us this backpack carrier and it was the perfect thing for H. She was contained, safe, and could see everything. She loved it, well....as long as she was being carried by me. H is truly an extension of my own self. She likes to be held or touched constantly by Momma. We worked out a system where I'd carrier her till she fell asleep and then we'd pull a switch-er-roo on her and Daddy would carry the sleeping baby. Tricky parents.

This picture of M just cracks me up. It's as if she were trying to collect Argentinian germs for souvenirs.

H has never in her life asked to go to bed. But we completely and utterly wore her out on this trip. Every time we got to a hotel room, she'd say "bed, bed!" and reach out for it.

D & M were even more exhausted. They didn't get the benefit of daily naps. We had early mornings and late dinners. Here I think they were so tired they forgot to fight about who is touching who, or who has more share of the pillow.

Story Time

The great thing about having a Grandpapa who loves to read is that he also loves to read to you. We've never read to the girls the way we read to D....it just seems there hasn't been time. A poor excuse, but our excuse just the same. But M loves books. What child doesn't? And now that D is a very confident and able reader, he not only reads to himself, but sometimes his sisters. We also find that here there is less demand on our time, and therefore more time to read. But M has never known a lap that is always available for a snuggle and read. Bless Grandpapa, he provided that. And M was quick to catch on.