More Brazil

We get up early enough to go to the airport and fly to Rio. This time, Bryan calls from the airport to make sure we have a hotel to stay at. The hotel he had in mind, did have vacancy. We go on what seems like a two hour bus ride to get to the hotel in Rio, to where we're staying. I was just amazed at all the small, run down places there were. Bryan says they're called Shanty towns, and it's basically where all the poor people live, and it's a lot of places. Every single building was made out of what's called wonder brick, and most of them have just some kind of wood or sheet of metal covering the top of the building. It was an eye opening experience to see what low class/poverty really looks like (you definitely do not see a lot of it in Salt Lake City, UT).

The bus gets to our stop, and drops us off. We debate on what to do, well mostly Bryan debates on what to do :) We decide to go to sugar loaf mountain, that's where the beginning scenery and sky cable car pictures are from in the Rio section of Bryan's photo album. Before we're able to go up though, we had a hard time finding an ATM that would take our card. The bank company that usually accepts any visa card, just was not working for us, so we spent a good amount of time doing that. While we're on this little ATM hunt, Bryan got us some churros from a street vendor. I do believe this was my favorite treat/food from the entire trip of Brazil. I didn't know they filled up the center of the churros with filling. Bryan may say he has told me before, but I must have forgotten. I got mine with just plain dulce de leite flavor, and I could have had at least five more! So good! Finally, we find that sugar loaf will take visa anyway, so we go ahead and get in line.

Apparently sugar loaf is a really famous historical geological formation there. Go here for more information on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarloaf_Mountain%2C_Brazil

They have a Brazilian site for it, but no English version for it yet. Basically, it's freaking A high up, and very steep on the sides. First you are taken to a smaller mountain, and you can explore a tiny bit, then you go up to the next mountain by way of sky cable car again. My mom would have a heart attack there, I don't think she could have made up to the first mountain. I was even getting a little light headed when in the cable car, just because you could see how much higher you were getting the whole time. It was cool, but freaky.

We were there for awhile, just relaxed and watched the crowds, and the sun for awhile. It was relaxing. Then we start heading back to town. We get off where we thought we had gotten on, and see there's a mall nearby. We go to the mall, and look around a bit. We got dinner at a self service place there. I think it's the best option as you can have the most variety of foods there to try. IF you don't know what it is, it's basically a buffet, but you pay by the weight of the plate. I definitely got more for my money that way then getting a seven dollar burger from McDonald's (which is very chicy there).

Then we go to find an internet cafe to check in with my family, and check to see if we have any urgent e-mails. We saw another street vendor that sold tapioca. Now, for you Americans, this is not Tapioca pudding, but actual tapioca. Here's a little excerpt from wiki:

In Brazilian cuisine, tapioca is used for different types of meals. The tapioca is stirred, drained through a sieve, fried into a tortilla shape, and often sprinkled with coconut. Then it may be buttered and eaten as a toast (its most common use as a breakfast dish), or it may be filled or topped with either "doces" (sweet) or "salgados" (salty) ingredients, which define the kind of meal the tapioca is used for: breakfast, afternoon tea or dessert. Choices range from butter, cheese, chocolate, bananas with condensed milk, chocolate with bananas, to various forms of meats and served warm. A restaurant which specializes in tapioca-based dishes (mostly fillings) is called in Brazil a "tapiocaria"


Then we start to walk home, but as we soon discover,we were in the wrong place. We also had no idea how to get to where our hotel was. Bryan figured he had an idea, so we start walking. AFter a very very long time, we realize we don't know where we are,so we hail a taxi, and bryan gives him directions to somewhere. The taxi drops us off, and we start walking. Again, we're not sure where we are as he had dropped us off at an intersection that we didn't recognize. So we walk a little bit more, not nearly as long this time though. We hail another taxi cab, and are taken straight to our hotel. At this point, we get in the hotel and crash.

Brazil

I'm taking a lunch break from cleaning the house. Yes, it's that bad, we left it in chaos in a hurricane, and I wanted to do some moving of furniture. I've got the bathroom, bedroom and office done. I've also got most of the laundry done. I just need to do the kitchen, the frontroom and the dishes. I'm hoping to get all of this done today so that I can just focus on homework after church tomorrow.

Anyhow, the vacation continues:

Wednesday, July 16, 2008


let me go back a minute and tell you what we had for dinner last night. Apparently Arabic food is quite popular in Brazil, which is what we had. We had something called Esfihas. They were good, just not something that's familiar to me.


Now back to Wednesday. We got up and had a continental breakfast. Now, I'm American, so I'm used to muffins, bagels, jam, cereal at continental breakfasts. I knew it would be different here, and basically this is what all of them had:
Some sort of deli meat (usually ham), some kind of cheese (I think it's provolone, not sure), bread rolls, butter, fresh juice, hot milk, hot coffee, hot tea, yellow cake (no frosting, just...cake), another kind of cake that I have no way of describing, bunches of crackers, and two kinds of fruit, one of them almost always being watermelon. Interesting eh? It seems that the majority of people take the meat and cheese and roll and make a sandwich. This is what I had for breakfast every morning while I was in Brazil :) I did get to try their bananas, which I actually can eat (I hate bananas here), watermelon is great of course, papaya, and another fruit that i had no idea what it was. I didn't have the fresh juice, because most of them would have just been to acidic for me. I did have hot milk with their "nesquick" chocolate mix, which actually tastes somewhat like nutella to me.

We finish breakfast, get a taxi to go to Iguacu Falls, cross the Argentina border, and have to get money in Pesos to pay to get in, and the Taxi drops us off. We go to take the biggest most awesomest tour, and find out we can't do it because...oh yeah, I'm pregnant! It ended up being a good thign anyway, cause we saved a LOT of money. So we decided to just tour around ourselves for free. We get some 3 bucks a bottle water bottles, and some sunscreen which I swear was like 15 bucks. Though I'm glad we did that, we were out for a long time. We started walking around at 10. Refer to the link that I had posted earlier for pictures of Iguacu, and that pretty much tells the whole story. The Coati, the animal that ate our sandwich, it seriously did. We had just bought a whole sandwich to save money, and split, and I sat down, people are ooohing and aaaahing over the coati and how cute they are. I smile, start opening up the sandwhich package, and one jumps up on the table and it's HUGE fangs (ok, huge for it's size) show and it bites into the sandwich. I'm playing tug of war for it for a moment, then it gets away with half of our sandwich. It was a very scary incident, and I no longer see them as cute as all I can see now are their teeth!

There are no words to describe Iguacu Falls. You just simply must go there and see it for yourself. The pictures don't do it justice, wiki it and read about it, how big it is, etc. I was just flat out awesome.

All the hiking and walking we did took us from 10 Am to 5 PM, and we still didn't get to see every thing. It is definitely at LEAST a two day thing, but we didn't have two days, oh well. Then we went home, showered, and went to a churrasco (like Tuacnos, or Rodizios) that also provided a 3 hour show of entertainment. The pictures of all the dancing people, that was the show, so the story is told there as well. My favorite part was with the scantily clad las vegas type girls, and the guy up there. She was trying to get him to dance, and move his butt, and hips (this is where she's pulling his pants in the picture). Then they start doing a small conga line of just them two, and the brazilian guy with the corn braids was able to sneak in between them behind the dancing guy, and the girl let go. The Brazilian guy turns the other guy to kiss him, and he freaks out. It was a TON of fun. Though there were definitely a TON of DRUNK people there singing out loud and dancing along to the music. The picture with all the white napkins, that was Mexico being proud of their culture being shown in the performances.

Then we went home :)



That is all I'm doing for now as I want to get this house clean!

Brazil

I'm doing this little by little :) The first part of our vacation is very boring, but there are some stories to it, skim or don't read if you think it's boring :). I'm still quite tired from the trip, but I have to be up and have things to do, so if this doesn't make sense at parts, forgive me :)

Saturday July 12th CA

we flew to San Francisco, CA, and went to a wonderfully delicious BBQ place with Bryan's parents, then went home and crashed.

Sunday July 13th CA


we went to Pismo beach as can be seen in the photo gallery posted earlier with Bryan's family, and one of their dogs, Monty. Afterwards we went to dinner, and Bryan and I called a night early as we had to get up at 3:30 to leave at 4:00 to go to the airport (at least I think those are the times, I'm not entirely sure).


Monday July 14th, CA to Peru


Bryan's parents take us to the SFO airport (many thanks to you two for your driving and hospitality!) We have two different flights, so Bryan gets on his first, and flies down to LAX. He is able to board, fly, and unboard (is that a word?) before I even board my plane. I board, and he just does whatever in LAX, while I'm heading over. We meet up, and finish checking in. We both *HATE* the LAX airport. It's just so inconveniently built, and the international part was going through some remodeling, etc. It was just..not fun. Fortunately it was only a 4 hour layover, in which we were busy going from one ticket counter to another. This is the story time:

I had flown down on American Airlines, and they gave me boarding passes for ALL of my plane changes etc. United was who Bryan had flown, and they only gave him the boarding pass down to LAX. So we had to go check in at the counter with the LAN Peru international flight.; They take a look at our paper ticket, and cannot process it, because the person back at SFO had torn out the wrong paper ticket. We are currently in the international terminal, which is basically terminal 0, past terminal 1. So the lady tells us we need to go to the terminal with United to get them to give US a paper ticket to give to THEM (lan peru) so that we can get a boarding pass for Bryan. At this point we're tired and grumpy, and MAD because we had already had too many issues concerning our flight times and layovers that were changed at the last minute, thus ALMOST preventing us from going to Brazil.
Bryan asks if they can just call United, and they said no, it has to be on paper, and we have to go get it. So we have to go to terminal...SEVEN! we were able to catch a shuttle there, and we get in line, and the lady is confused, then she gets someone, then they don't remember how to do the specific process they're supposed to go through. Basically we were there for about 30 minutes. Finally, they figure it out, after we triple check with them that it's all done right because we don't want to have to walk back, we walk all the way back over to the international terminal. Give it to them, and it actually worked. *whew*
Then Bryan talks to them about my flight home since the layover in Peru is 13 hours, if I could get in VIP lounge for the day, or a different flight. There was a different flight, but it however went to Santiago and not Lima. Plus we didn't have time to change it then and there, so we decided to decide later, and work it out when we were in Brazil. In the end, I decided to just deal with the 13 hour layover, mostly because Bryan had to work on Monday when he dropped me off int he morning, so if my flight was later, I would just be at the airport anyway. Also because on my way there, we were going through Lima, and that way i would at least be familiar with where I was supposed to go and how it worked (this is a scary experience alone when you don't speak the language there, but add on that I'm a female traveling alone who is pregnant and deaf....it was just overwhelming). If i had gone to Santiago, I had a bigger chance of running into problems. So, boring story over, we stuck with the original revised plan (that was one of the things that was changed at the last minute).

We have an hour or so before we even board, so we get food, but because of the remodeling, everything is Hot, chaotic and just FULL. But Bryan put up with the crowd for me anyway, and went to MCD's to get something since I was a hungry/whiny/tired/preggo woman. He's a good husband :)

We board, and fly the long flight down to Peru. It was an 8 hour flight, and actually wasn't too bad since we each seat had their own individual screen, and you could watch whatever movies were available, or TV Shows, or play games, etc. Plus, there was an empty seat in our row, so we kept the middle one open to give us some room, it was nice.


Tuesday, July 15th Peru and Brazil

We land in Peru on Monday July 14th at 12:00 AM, and rush to our next flight taking in off in a half hour to go to Sao Paulo Brazil. No time to stop, just walked right through everything, but was still able to see the airport enough for me to be able to recognize where to go on my way back.

Get on the flight to Brazil, and we don't have individual screens, but they do play some tv shows. I crashed most of the way, and it was a 6 hour flight. I mostly crashed and fell asleep because we weren't sitting next to each other this time, oh well.

We land in the Sao Paulo airport, and we have a 5 1/2 hour lay over. We also had two hours before someone would come and pick up one of Bryan's bags that he wouldn't be using the week we were flying all over the country. We wait around for the guy to pick up his bag, we didn't see him, and we waited for an hour. We don't have a cell phone for him, or one for him to contact us with, so we just kept waiting. Turns out he had been waiting around upstairs while we were downstairs :) Fortunately he came to look downstairs, and took Bryan's luggage and laptop and anything else not needed. At this point we still have 3ish more hours before we leave to Iguacu Falls. So we go up, and find a quiet spot, and Bryan crashes and sleeps for an hour while I play sudoku on my phone (yes I had one, but only for time and alarm purposes, there was no network for it to work down there) for an hour. Then we go and board, and fly to Iguacu Falls, this was only about 1 1/2 hour flight.

We get to Iguacu Falls at about 3:30, and get a taxi to the hotel that bryan wanted to stay at. Keep in mind here, I had told Bryan to call ahead twice and to reserve. He always responded and said it was off season and the hotels would be available, and not worry. So you can guess what happened if I had to bring that up :) The hotel we wanted was full, fortunately there was a hotel just across the street that had vacancy, so we stayed there. We unpack, I think we showered (I'm pretty sure we did), then we go walking around town a bit to get some food. Then we get back, and basically just crash. My feet had looked like the elephant feet that I had posted earlier, so they needed a break. Especially since we had a ton of walking to do the next day. :)

That is all I'm going to write for now, things do get more exciting :) I'm mostly including details for myself, so if you get sick of them...just deal or skim :)

Home

I'm home, just missing one bag of luggage, but they said it should arrive by tomorrow, it just sucks because all of my maternity clothes are in there :)
It's great to be home, but i also hate facing harsh reality of being back in a responsible world again.
more details possibly later about the trip (I may just copy whatever bryan ends up saying if he does it before me :) and thus will cut it for those of you who are on both of our flists).

And the sun shines again

A lot of negative things have just been happening in the past couple of months.

This week we've been nervous as to whether we'd really make it to Brazil or not because they kept changing our flight itinerary, and this last change isn't still quite worked out. Bryan has been trying to work out with them over the phone for the past two days. He never ever uses up his minutes or even comes close to doing so, but these past couple of days, he went way over them, that's how much he's been on the phone. It's been insane. So far it looks like it will happen, but I haven't received a set confirmation from him yet on that, so *crosses fingers* I hope it still works out.

I didn't get the teaching job, and I think it's just hitting me now that I will NOT be teaching when August comes around. It's kind of depressing, I'm going to miss the kids a lot, HOWEVER, I do have a kid of my own coming! :)

I didn't pass my qualifying exam which truly surprised me. I have one more chance to retake it so that I can graduate with my degree and two licenses, but I have to take it in the next two semesters. Next semester is out of the question since the baby will be due in November, and he better wait until November so Bryan can be here too! So it looks like I'll be taking in Spring semester of 2009 (feels so weird to say that, just feels like yesterday people were talking about partying like it's 1999!).

I haven't been having a good week in general just due to general stress of trying to get the house organized and things cleared up to at least get some of the hard stuff done while Bryan is here to prepare the room for Kiernan (that's what we're naming our baby boy :) ). We've managed to do quite well, and I'm feeling better about it now, and finding it much more manageable. We've been able to create enough room to put the crib up already. So that's nice to see that there (and incredibly weird!).

Bryan will be gone for three months. :) He'll be back in mid-October (hence why the baby better not be early!). The thought of him being gone for that long just hasn't helped with the general stress of things that need to be done, but I'd like to *THINK* that I'm handling it pretty well, you'll have to ask Bryan though :)

The flight/air time we have is so incredibly much. We are not simply just flying there and back, but within brazil as well. We fly to CA to spend a day there, then down to sao paulo brazil, we stay at the airport as we'll be flying from there to iguazu, stay there a couple of days, then fly to rio, stay there a couple of days, then fly to sao paulo, stay there a couple of days, then i fly home. if you combine all the air time from utah to california and to brazil, and all the time back, the total air time is (as far as we know anyway): 42 hours and 10 minutes, JUST being in the air, and all that within 9 days. that's not including layovers and stops and what not. This has me concerned pregnancy wise with swelling and possible pain from sitting so much. I do plan to walk a lot if possible, but still, dang man!


On the positive side:

The crib is up, and mom bought me stuff to make baby blankets (fairly simple ones).
I get to go to Brazil with Bryan for 9 days. I didn't think this would ever happen, so I'm very excited about this.
I still have a job, so I still have something to do with my time :)
I have baby showers to look forward to, one coming up in August for my deaf friends, the one thrown by my family will be the one where all my hearing friends will be invited. I just simply do not want to play interpreter between everyone.
The pregnancy has gone by REALLY well so far. I hear horror stories from everyone, but it seems the most trouble I have is swelling (which kind of has me worried with all the traveling I do), and round ligament pains once in awhile. I can now drink water without feeling like throwing it up, so that's great :) I still prefer to suck and chew on ice instead though.
Some financial burdens were lifted today, and I just feel better about that.
I may have a chance to go teach a workshop in Washington state in August, that'll be nice to have time away from being alone at my apartment. :)
The pregnancy is becoming more real, I haven't felt any movement yet, and don't expect to anytime soon, but it's still seeming to be more real.


There, that's a long enough post :)