SURPRISE!

Thanks to everyone (especially Grandma Fern) for keeping my surprise visit to Brazil a secret from my mom and dad. Even though so many people knew that I was planning on making a surprise visit to Brazil for my mom's birthday my parents didn't find out until I got there. So good job everyone. So why just four days home and then gone again? Well, I wanted to get to Brazil for my mom's birthday (but I couldn't because they only fly to Fortaleza a few times a week but I got there the next day) and I figured that by leaving for Brazil just four days after getting back into the US from Africa that I'd for sure be able to surprise my parents because who would be crazy enough to get back from a 40 plus hour journey home from Africa only to do laundry, celebrate the 4th of July, and fill up the suitcases again to head to Brazil? I was pretty sure that they wouldn't suspect a thing and I was right. I arrived in Fortaleza at about 6:30 in the morning on July 9th. After going through immigration and breezing through customs I grabbed a taxi and headed to my parents' house. Luckily I'm familiar enough with the city to know if the taxi driver was straying off the path to my parents' house and heading to a wooded area to kill me. Plus the taxi driver didn't seem like the rob and kill type so I knew I'd arrive safely to my parents' house and I did, so I tipped the driver for not killing me. I figured that it was the least I could do. I was a little worried about getting past the security guards at the front of their apartment building. I had a whole little thing written out about how my parents live in the building and I was trying to surprise my mom for her birthday but I didn't end up needing to use it. All I got out was "Meus Pais..." which means "My parents..." and then I was going to say "My parents live here" blah blah but after I said "My parents" they opened the gate, let me in, and helped me carry my luggage right up to my parents' door. I guess the security guards knew which house I'd be visiting since my parents are the only foreigners in the building and I guess they thought it would be easier to just let me in and take me up to the door rather than try to communicate with me, and I was glad. So I get up to the door and ring the doorbell and...NOTHING. Not a sound. I rang it a few more times. 'SHOOT,' I thought to myself, 'my plan has been foiled.' I knew that my parents weren't out of town and I thought that 7:30 in the morning would for sure be early enough that they wouldn't have gone anywhere. I guess I was wrong. Stupid me for trying to surprise them. So I sat there in the hallway sweating and thinking about where I could leave all my luggage while I went somewhere to call them on their cell phones when I hear the elevator start to move and I'm thinking to myself 'please be my parents, please be my parents.' And luckily the elevator did stop on their floor. And since there are only two apartments on each floor I just took the chance that it was my parents in the elevator and not their next door neighbors and as soon as the elevator stopped completely I opened up the swinging door thing that covers up the elevator door and said "Heeeeey!" Luckily it was my mom but I think I scared her as much as surprised her though. It took her a minute to figure out what was going on. You know when you see someone that you know but it is out of context of where you expect to see them and it is kind of weird? Well, that's how it was. My mom had gone out early to grab a few groceries and got back just in time. This is a re-enactment of how my mom looked when she came out of the elevator. Where, you ask, was my dad? Let's just say eating breakfast, not fully clothed, and thinking that the person ringing the bell was just one of their neighbors (and ignoring the door bell) because really people who don't live in the building can't come right to your door without calling you from the front gate and recieving permission to come up...usually that is. Unless you are their American, non-Portuguese fluent daughter, and the security guard somewhat recognizes you from the last time you visited. Anyway, it all turned out okay as I got into the house only about 5 minutes after arriving, and I didn't completely give my mom a heart attack. Even if I did scare her she was fast to forgive when I started pulling out all the loot I brought them. The usual candy (including Junior Mints, peanut butter m&m's, Hot Tamales, licorice, Skittles, Almond Joy, Butterfinger, etc), as well as tortillas, tomato juice, tortilla chips, rice crispies, marshmallows, dill pickles, Campbell's soup, etc. And this time I even showed up with... fresh blueberries and raspberries,

and red potatoes and petite peas (for peas and potatoes) a must-have this time of year. They don't have red potatoes here and they have peas but they are the huge, sick, puffy, green-grey, pasty type that the school lunch lady used to yell at me for not eating, and not nice green, sweet, petite peas.

So here I am again, hanging out in Brazil!

P.S. I can never get the spell check thing to work when I'm here, so I apologize in advance for any gross misspellings.