The Brazilian Schedule

Last weekend we got to stay at a beach house that belongs to my friend's in-laws.  There we got a taste of a real Brazilian lifestyle. 

Before we left the States I was doing some internet "research" about Brazil and I found a business man's blog talking about life in Brazil as a foreigner.  I can't remember if the guy was American or not but he really reamed Brazilians and their parenting skills saying that they let their kids run wild well after 9pm and they let their kids eat candy before dinner and other such ridiculous and rude, judgmental things.  I served a mission in Brazil 12 years ago and I love these people and was kind of shocked and offended by the blog post.  The funny thing is, after staying several days with my friend and her family, I started to see where the guy was coming from.  What he said was still rude but I began to see just how different the American schedule is from the Brazilian schedule.  As a missionary and single person 12 years ago, I had my day already pretty scheduled for me and I adjusted pretty easily (as far as I remember that is!).  But as a parent with children, I found I have had a much harder time adjusting.

Their schedule goes something like this:
Wake up--many people do not bother with breakfast but the families with kids seem to.
11:30-2pm cook and eat lunch--the biggest meal of the day
8 pm eat dinner--more like a small snack--not necessary a whole meal.  On my mission it was really common to see people eating a salad and a roll with some ham and cheese for dinner.
10pm bedtime for kids???

I can't really say on kid's bedtimes.  With dinner so late, my kids stayed up so late each night that we all took naps after lunch for at least a couple of hours.  In my head they were getting the extra sleep they needed from going to bed so late the night before.  In my friend's head, she seemed to feel that since the kids took a nap that meant they could stay up even later.  I tried to at least start bedtime at 10pm and usually my kids were asleep by 11pm.  Hers (9 and 7 years old) were up until at least midnight every night.  Granted, we were all on vacation together so that definitely changes a bedtime routine, but when I asked her about it later she indicated that in general her kids stayed up much later than mine.  She was shocked to hear that mine go to bed at 8pm usually.

At our apartment we stick close to our regular schedule--except that it's summer here which means it's light until later so it's pretty tough to get the kids to bed before 9pm.  But this weekend at the beach house we really struggled.  So many things about it were super fun and awesome but we definitely struggled with the schedule.  My kids were hungry at 11am right when we started cooking lunch even on the days we started cooking it earlier to prevent that.  When it was finally all ready in a couple hours they were falling apart and didn't want anything that was served.  Safari Girl in particular had some particularly nasty meltdowns.  Then there were 9 of us in a small house with no air conditioning and a heat and humidity that we were just not used to.  Add in exhaustion from late nights, and some particularly rambunctious boys that just loved my kids and couldn't leave them alone and I think my kids were just completely overwhelmed.  They NEEDED their sleep!  I needed them to take those naps in the afternoon! 

Certainly though, there is nothing wrong with the Brazilian schedule--it is just different than ours, and my kids had different needs than my friends.  My kids were adjusting to a new place, a new climate, new food, new people in a language they didn't understand, and a new schedule all at once!  It's no wonder they were overwhelmed.  I was overwhelmed myself.  So the week at the beach house was a bit complicated but still so fun.  I wouldn't trade it for anything!  Also, I have to say my friend was so wonderful at trying to accommodate us and make us feel comfortable.  She taught me to cook some Brazilian food, tried to find something (anything!) my kids would eat, made sure we said some prayers in English so they would understand.  She was really patient with us and what might have felt like to her our "high needs".  I love her and appreciate her for it. 

More on our weekend at the beach coming up (all the good parts)!

Food and Grocery Shopping

Less than a mile from our apartment there is a big grocery store called BIG.  It has a huge parking lot outside and one underground as well.  Like many city parking lots in the states, you drive up, push a button and get a card (instead of a ticket) and then a bar lifts up so you can drive in.  The funny thing is that when you leave, you just return the card.  You don't have to actually pay anything.  We're still trying to figure out why they even do the cards. For security?  To keep track of traffic?



The BIG has a shopping cart escalator that's pretty cool.  Inside all the colors, symbols, and signs look just like Walmart, and guess what?  It has the Great Value brand in English!  I've heard there are actual Walmarts here and also Sam's Club.  No Costco though.  BIG carries lots of brands from the States.  You can always tell which ones are imported and which ones actually have factories here.  If they are imported they cost 2-5 times more.  I found a bottle of Cattlemen's BBQ sauce for $14 reais where a Brazilian brand might cost $5 or $6 reias.  I found Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup for $6 reais, which is the equivalent of several dollars--for ONE can!  In general, a lot of the brands from the State made in Brazil are still fairly expensive by Brazilian standards even though they are cheaper than things imported from the States.  Here are a just few of the brands you probably recognize:

• shampoo--Pantene, Dove, Aussie
• diapers--Huggies, Pampers
• food-Great Value, Campbell's, Heinz, Hellman's, Fleischmann, Knorr
• drinks-Coca Cola (I've heard it tastes different here though.), Tang (these drink packets are BIG here!)
• cleaning supplies--Scotch Brite, Downy, Ajax

This cleaner has a different name but it looks like Mr. Clean.  The name translates to Mr. Muscle.

That said, the majority of food really is brands you wouldn't recognize.  

One thing I found surprising was the lack of exotic produce.  They have large and small papayas and chu chu (a green squash like vegetable) but most of the produce is familiar--carrots, potatoes, apples, pears, pineapple, bell peppers, watermelon, corn, lettuce, watermelon, beets, cucumbers, tomatoes.  Some of the varieties are slightly different textures or shapes than we are used to-potatoes and bell peppers.  The most common type of banana is a smaller, sweeter variety than typical in the state (I think my friend here called it the apple banana), but they do have the bananas we recognize as well.

A few things they DO have that are not as common in the States is really GOOD mango (two types), maracuja (passion fruit), and palmitas (the inside of palm trees--it's pretty yummy)!

Passion fruit and melons, I think those white carrots are parsnips, right?  But palmitos look similar-round, white, about that length and cylindrical.


MEALS

I think a lot of people know that beans and rice make up a typical meal here.  The meal often include spaghetti noodles or macaroni noodles with a sauce similar to spaghetti sauce.  They seem to use less sauce than us though.  It's very common to have juice or soda with lunch and dinner and a salad is made of lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes with some salt and vinegar on top.  So much of the food is cooked with garlic and oil.  In Portuguese the two words sound so close, it's funny to me that they are the companionship in seasoning almost everything here (aleo e oleo).  The most common rice is parboiled rice so first they fry it in a bit in garlic and oil and then they add hot water to the rice to finish cooking it.  The beans also have oil and garlic added as does the macaroni a lot of times!  They fry chicken in aleo and oleo, too!  We learned very quickly that Safari Girl does not like garlic!

Lunch at Carla's our first Saturday--rice, beans, noodles, and lasagna (a bit different than ours)

**The plate in this picture is typical Brazil.  Almost everyone has the exact same ones or clear glass ones.

Fast food at Giraffas at the food court in the mall--rice, beans, fried chicken, and french fries.  The only reason the kids chose this over Burger King and McDonald's (both options at the mall, as is Subway) is because the kids meal toys were awesome!  They each got a game.


I was surprised to find out how much of the food here is fried and cooked in oil.  I've had stomach issues every day getting used to the greasiness. At home, I usually bake or boil things.  With the help of my former mission companion Dani, I've learned to make a few things Brazilian style.

• popcorn--old fashioned style with some oil and kernels in a pot on the stove.  Here they like to put something very similar to sweetened condensed milk on it for a special treat.
• fried chicken-thaw it in a pot of warm water, cut into pieces, rub with garlic and oil, fry it up
• stroganaff-use fried chicken add it to a pot of something similar (I think) to evaporated milk, put corn in a blender for a bit and the blended sauce to the milk, add a bit of ketchup and heat it up over the stove.  Put this mixture on rice and add some shoestring potatoes on top. YUM!  This is a favorite for me and Papai.
• pastel/pasteis-You can buy ready made dough for this here.  It's thin and cut into 4 inch diameter circles.  Fry up some meat (they don't drain it the grease), add in a bit of corn, and some beef broth seasoning and you've got your filling (though there are many more options than beef and corn for these).  Put a couple spoonfuls of that in the center of the circle of dough and fold in have and pinch the edges.  Flip it over and pinch the edges again on the other side and then fry it up until it's golden in some oil.

Pasteis (plural of pastel)

 

Back at home I've given myself a pat on the back feeling like I cook dinner most of the time and we rarely go out to eat.  But here, I've had a wake up call.  I don't know how to cook anything from scratch, and certainly not from memory!  I use recipes for everything and just about everything has at least a can or two of something that is not available here (or that is really expensive here).  It seems like the general population here cooks everything from scratch!  I keep thinking my mom would be able to handle this a lot better than me!  But I'm learning.  I did hear Papai's co-worker say that she buys canned beans because she doesn't have a pressure cooker, which is how they cook their beans here.  But I have not been able to find canned beans anywhere!  I don't have a pressure cooker either. I have actually successfully cooked dried beans at home before (you know, after soaking them overnight) but so far I haven't had luck here.  I've heard of a baking soda solution that softens them up faster.  I'll have to try that next.   

So far I've made mashed potatoes from scratch (fancy, yummy ones for Thanksgiving), a pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin (my first time ever--It's Costco all the way for us!), and this Crockpot Hawaiian Meatball recipe that is one of two recipes that I'm sure Safari Girl will eat every time.  That one failed because I used "kibe" as the meatballs, which I think is more like meatLOAF balls.  They fell apart and turned to mush when I cooked them in the recipe.  Safari Girl was not a fan but Papai still ate them.  I liked that I got to use FRESH pineapple in the recipe!!  My mission companion keeps requesting a meal that I'd make at home but I have found it much easier to just cook what Brazilians cook.  That's my homework this week--find one of my usual recipes that we can make here.

It's been tough to find healthy food that Safari Girl will eat.  Or anything that she will eat.  We do have a bakery on our street that is well known in the city for being really good.  It's called Panificadora Da Villa II and the kids love to go there and get these little pigs-in-a-blanket things called doghinos.  We've been trying other things there little by little.  Sure enough, this town really does have some German influence--I found our German Christmas fruitcake there called Stollen (here they spell it Shtolen).  We've also tried their French Rolls (a common thing for dinner here-French Rolls with mayo, ham and cheese), coxhinas (tear drop shaped, breaded things with meat filling), quiche, pizza, and a mini doce de leite pie.  Everything is so yummy!

 

Yummy bakery on our street

Stollen--a German fruitcake we eat on Christmas morning, Mini Dolce de Leite pie

 Doghina, Quiche (it was too greasy for my taste!), and pizza (SO GOOD!)

A Sandwich I tried. It's pretty good.

Anyway, that's a little bit about the food here.  I could definitely post a lot more and maybe I will another day.  If you have any questions, please comment.  I would love to hear your thoughts and questions!

***Update:  We've visited a couple other grocery stores now and they work very similar to BIG with a parking lot beneath the building, a gated entry, and a shopping cart escalator!  These are the big city kind of grocery stores.  Other places we've been in Brazil have stores with regular parking lots and no escalators.

Our Apartment

We live right in the Centro of Joinville, the downtown area in a tall apartment complex.  We are on the tenth floor and we have three bedrooms and three bathrooms, a kitchen with a breakfast bar area and a separate dining area, a living/family room and a laundry room with a decent size storage room off the laundry room.  We also have a little balcony. 

Here's our view of the city from our balcony

There's a net covering the entire outer edges of the balcony.  I like it--tI put an extra clothesline out there and it's nice to know my clothes won't fall away.  Plus, Jason likes to kick a soccer ball around out there and we know it won't fall!

We have one parking space in the parking lot under the building.  The building is gated and has guard/door person at the gate at all times.  If someone comes to visit, the door person calls us to get permission to let them up.  We learned from Papai's co-worker that in Sao Paulo, at least, apartments are hot commodities (over houses) because of the safety and security of these gates and guards.  It probably doesn't really matter for us since Joinville is pretty safe overall but it's still nice.

The front and back of our building

Walking into the building there's a nice entry way all decorated for Christmas.  Past that are the two elevators.  Yes, they work! (Someone asked me).  You have to actually open a door to get to them and then the elevator door slides open. But on this level there is also a game with a pool table, a newly renovated party room with lots of tables, a kitchen bar, and churrascurias (built in indoor BBQs).  Past that and outside there's a pool, a basketball court with soccer goals on either end and tucked into a back corner in the opposite direction from the soccer/basketball court (quintal is what they call it here) there's a playground. We've seen quite a few playgrounds here and they all look very similar--made of painted metal and painted wood, they have teeter-totters, merry-go-rounds, swings, and slides and another type of swing that I keep calling a see-saw (except, I think a see-saw is the same thing as a teeter-totter, right?).  My kids love the playground.



My kitchen has a window into the laundry room area.  There's a bathroom to the right of the laundry area and the storage room is to the left in the laundry room.   I just found out today that I DO have hot running water in the kitchen sink if I turn on the "hot" knob and wait long enough.  I never did have hot water in the kitchen sink on my mission and we've been to several houses here that don't have it at all.  I've been boiling water to wash dishes when I cook with meat.  The rest I just figured, oh, well!  I survived my mission without it.  Plus, my sister who went into public health told me once that studies have shown that unless the water is scalding hot, it doesn't really make a difference to the cleanliness of the dishes whether it's hot or cold water.   But now I don't have to worry one way or another because I DO have hot water!  My oven/stove are electric gas (I mean, I don't have to light a match to start it up).  We don't drink water from the tap.  There is a filter but it looks really old.  My mission companion said the water is safe to drink but Dan's co-worker said it isn't so we're playing it safe.  We were buying mineral water (without carbonation-because you have to differentiate here) in 6 pacs of 1.5 L bottles but that was about 12 reais per pack-almost a dollar per bottle.  Now we buy 20L bottles and we have a little tabletop water dispenser.  We had to actually buy the bottle (20 reais) and then buy the water 5-10 reais depending on the brand.  Now that we bought the first bottle, we just return the empty one and get a full one in exchange and just pay for the water.  This has been helpful for emergency preparedness.  With a family of four we go through 20L every 3-4 days, using it just to drink and cook with, and we're probably not drinking how much we should for how hot and humid it is.

Panorama of the kitchen/breakfast bar area.  The brown door goes out to the area with the elevators.

Here's the laundry room looking through the kitchen window.  The plumber came the first week we were here and it turns out the owner of our apartment/condo accidentally screwed a screw right into the pipe.  So the plumber had to take out the tile, break the wall and fix it.  Our pipes are just plastic and the whole building is brick.

There are several things I love about the apartment and one of them is the closet space!  I've never seen a closet built into the room the way we have them in the States.  Instead, they have closets like the ones in our pictures.  We have tons of shelves, rods to hold shirts, pull out sock drawers, and pull out pants hangers.  Katelyn's room and Jason's room both have similar closets, plus they have desks, which they love so they don't have to play with their toys on the floor.  It's fabulous!  The other thing I love about our room is that we have a light switch at the door but also right above our pillows so we can turn out the light while in bed.  Awesome!  Each room has a ceiling fan but ours doesn't work right now.  After a couple of miserably hot nights this past week, we are buying a portable fan.

The bathrooms are very European.  Mostly I say that because each one has a bidet.  It's not a full toilet bidet--instead it's a sprayer with two knobs to control the water temperature.  I think you just stretch the sprayer over to the toilet to use it.  I have not tried it and probably won't, although now that we've been here three weeks I am beginning to understand why someone might want to "freshen up" that area since it is just so hot and humid.  Other cool things about our bathroom--the counters are high.  Great for us, a pain for the kids.  They have to use a chair to reach the sinks.  The bathroom cabinets have a huge pull out drawer to put your laundry in, and two cupboard/drawer things under the sink.  The kitchen is the same under the sink.  I love it.  Finally, we have have a glass shelf under the mirror about 6 inches off the counter that runs the entire length of the bathroom counter.  I can put all my makeup and stuff on it and still wipe down the sink every day.  I love it!

The shower has an electric shower head plugged right into the wall.  The one in our bathroom isn't working great-it gets burning hot really fast and despite all our attempts to adjust the temperature it doesn't work.  I like to joke that everything's the opposite here.  People use up all the cold water so we're stuck with the hot!  But really, the electric shower head probably just needs some adjusting.

Here's our family/living room (sala de estar in Portuguese)

The apartment was supposed to come furnished.  It came with all the furniture you see in the above picture and a dining room table and chairs and one bed.  Luckily, it was a queen size bed so the first week two of us slept on the bed and two of us slept on the couch, until we were able to buy the bed for Papai and me.  Safari Girl has been sleeping on a mattress that Papai's co-working Rodrigo loaned us and this week we're getting a frame because she doesn't want to sleep on the floor anymore.

Decorated for Christmas.  I brought the advent calendars and the stockings.  We bought the TV here.  The kids toys all fit in two drawers behind the bottom cupboard on the right.  It's awesome!!

I'll update this a little later with some more pictures of our place.

Joinville-Our New City

We are living in Joinville in the state of Santa Catarina, which is only one state up from the very bottom of Brazil.  Florianopolis is the capital of Santa Catarina but Joinville is the largest city in the state with nearly 600,000 people.  It's about  a 1 hour flight or a 9 hour bus ride south of Sao Paulo and about a 30-40 minute drive from the beach.  As big as the city supposedly is, it doesn't feel that big to me and we are living right in the downtown area.  I guess I mean that it doesn't feel totally crowded and as hustling and bustling as cities in the US to me.  But most days I don't get farther than a 1 mile radius from our apartment so maybe that's why it doesn't feel very big to me.  Or maybe it's the relaxed Brazilian way of life that makes it feel not so hustling and bustling.  I'm not sure. Anyway, here's a little more about this fun city we are living in.

 

Joinville has one of the highest standards of living in Brazil.  It's very industrial with some big name companies like GM and Whirlpool.  Papai's work is located in this huge industrial park with a gated entry.  The city was settled by the Germans and it is where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was introduced to Brazil.   Missionaries came to teach the Germans.  On that note, there is a bakery right on our street that is well known enough that Papai's co-workers who moved here from São Paulo last month have already heard about how great it is and guess what I found there?!?!?  STOLLEN--a type of German breakfast fruitcake that is my family's German Christmas tradition on Christmas morning.  I don't know that I've actually seen that in a store anywhere!  My grandparents always say it's never as good from a store as it is homemade but from this bakery I'll happily chance it since it will save me the effort of having to find the ingredients here and make it myself.



Other cool things about Joinville:

• It has a huge Orchid festival we just missed in the beginning of November.
• It has a zoo and botanical garden all rolled into one.
• There's one well-known street downtown that just has restaurant after restaurant of any type of food you could want.
• There's a cool German inspired gate entrance at the beginning of the city and a Holland looking windmill.  
• It has at least three huge malls that I know about just in the downtown area--Shopping Mueller, Shopping Casa das Flores, and one more. 
• It's very European.  Not that I've been to Europe, so I guess I wouldn't really know, but Joinville has very nice, well marked bike lanes on the roads everywhere, very nice public exercise parks, and the buses even have their own lanes.
• Joinville is the only city outside of Moscow to have a school of the Bolshoi Ballet, the renowned Russian Ballet Company.  We've walked passed the building and seen the ballerinas on their way to class.  Joinville hosts one of the biggest Dance Festivals in July.

Above:  The kids outside the Bolshoi Ballet 

 

• There's a real circus going on right now--with the tents and everything you see in the movies!  It's live from....Las Vegas.

• Surprise!  90% of the population is white!  As I walk around it doesn't feel like the percentage is quite that high but it is definitely MUCH higher than it was in Recife.
• It's home to some very random museums--a bicycle museum and a clothes iron museum, plus some normal ones--an art museum, one dedicated to Fritz Alt a famous writer, I think, and one dedicated to the Sambaquis, the homes of an ancient people that use to live here to name a few.
• It's full of one way streets so I know how to get to a few places walking but I would have no idea in a car.  Papai's co-worker Rodrigo loves it because he says it's way safer.
• Technically, Joinville falls in the sub-tropical climate-it is NOT a rain forest (but don't tell Safari Girl that!) It has a warm humid temperate climate with hot summers and no dry season.  There's a 53-63 percent chance that it will rain on any given day ALL YEAR.  That said, in the last three weeks we've only had one day that it really rained quite a lot.  The rest of the time it rains and then is all clear in less than an hour.  And no, it does NOT cool the place off.  This region really only has two seasons--warm (with temps averaging between 73 and 87 degrees) and "cold" (temps between 57 and 71 degrees).  It very rarely gets below 50 or above 92 (according to a local weather site).  We have just melted in the heat the first two weeks.  I thought I might never get cold or be dry again--the humidity makes the heat so much more intense, but this last week has been much more pleasant.  

Some pictures of the city:

 

 

 

McDonald's and Diversity in Brazil

Kind of sad that my 2nd post on this travelogue is about McDonalds but oh, well!

We've been in the country about 9 days now and I'm horrified to say that we've been to McDonald's about 6 times now.  Our kids are pretty picky eaters in the States and it's been a challenge to find things that Safari Girl, in particular, will eat.  Plus, they are giving out Super Mario toys in the Happy Meals (McLaunche Feliz) and it's been fun for them to collect the toys and actually have something to play with here.  So here are some things about McDonald's in Brazil.

• When we order a cheeseburger, apparently they have no word in Portuguese for it.  For a lot of other things they just use the English word, albeit with a Portuguese accent (DVD, iPad, pickles) but in this case they don't.  We have to order "bread and meat with cheese" (pao e carne com queijo).  That's a cheeseburger.  
• But chicken nuggets are simply called nuggets.
• Their shakes are really good.  They put little round chocolate sprinkles in them that actually taste better, I think, than the chocolate sprinkles in the States. 
• They serve grape juice and Guarana in addition to orange juice.  We haven't asked about other sodas.
• I tried a "Cheddar" burger (it's Cheddar written in English here) thinking that was a cheeseburger but it most definitely is NOT the same kind of cheese burger.  They piped on enough cheese whiz that it could have been frosting on a store bought cupcake in the States.  I couldn't even stand to look at it, let alone eat it!  I posted the picture Facebook.  I will NOT be getting that again.

• The workers have to dress from head to toe in a McDonald's uniform.  Literally.  They have a hat, a shirt, jeans have have the Golden Arches embroidered near the back pocket and even their shoes have the Golden Arches on them!  I have to laugh every time at that little Golden Arch embroidered near their back pants pocket. 

 

Make sure to zoom in so you can see that embroidered Golden Arches!

 

We are quite the attraction when we go.  The teen workers all oogle us and families watch us and tell their children that we are speaking English.  It's a weird sensation to be the center of so much attention.  There are a lot more people of European descent in Southern Brazil where we are, and there's more diversity in general (Chinese, Japanese, etc) but I still haven't seen that many really blonde people the way our kids are blonde.  Also, I catch people staring at my blue eyes.  In Northern Brazil where I served a mission my blue eyes were even more of a rarity and they called my dark brown hair blonde!  Either way, there's something about us that screams foreigners to the Brazilians even when we aren't speaking English.  We've had to work with a plumber this week and he wanted to know if I was Argentinian based on my accent in Portuguese.  I take that as a compliment!  Also, he mentioned that Papai and I speak Portuguese better than the owner of our apartment, who he thought was Chinese.  Then we talked to a lady below us and she said he couldn't be Chinese or Japanese because those people are nice but this guy wasn't.  He must be Korean, she said.  That's another thing about Brazilians.  They tell it like it is.  If you have zits or are fat or bald or have unwanted hair on your face, it's all game for comment!  I think those who are a little more educated or have lived a  abroad (Brazilians love to travel!) are less likely to comment than others but it's pretty common. 

Anyway, there you have it--McDonald's and a few comments on the diversity in Brazil.