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.
Coca-Cola and the Virgin Mary...I can't think of any picture that could better sum up Latin America than this. Well, I guess a pack of flea-ridden dogs with their skin falling off digging through a pile of trash while some kids play soccer in the background would also be a good descriptive picture. Oh, and for the record I love Latin America, but it is what it is...a Coca-Cola, Virgin Mary, soccer loving continent who doesn't spay/neuter their dogs or do a very good job picking up their trash. But I love them still the same.
I took the picture at the Coca-Cola offices which are in the same building as the mission office. If the elevator stops at the 10th floor you get to pay a little homage to Mary and to Coca-Cola as the little display is right in front of the elevator doors.
And speaking of La Virgin... my mom and I came across this huge statue of Mary in a plaza in Fortaleza. We drove by it one day and then decided to stop for a picture a few days later. Unfortunately, the day we stopped they were restoring Mary to some earlier glory so there was scaffolding all around and a guy walking precariously on a bent wooden board fixing Mary up. So, maybe next time I'll get a better picture. I do actually think, as far as huge statues of Mary go, that it is a pretty cool one. And you can tell she's one big mother by the size of the guy up on the scaffolding. So, hail Mary.
so he can CORRECTLY keep track of their time left in the mission.
Starting after about Christmas, which was their six month mark, my dad was telling people back home, "Yeah, this whole mission thing isn't too bad...time is flying by...we've got the first year down...now just two more to go."
We had to keep reminding him that seven or eight months does not equal a year and that he still had about two and a HALF years left.
Well, I'm proud to say that just last month my parents actually passed their real one year mark. One-third of the way through. YAY! 398 days down and only 697 left to go (if my calculations are correct).
So in honor of their year mark I went and bought two sister missionary countdown charts and taped them together. 1095 days. So, now we can visually see the time flying by. Before I know it I will no longer have to spend all of my savings every time I want to see my parents, won't have a pile of stuff in my room awaiting the next "shipment" to Brazil, and won't have to wonder where and with whom I'll spend my holidays. And my mom and I can go shopping...and not Brazilian style shopping (which is a topic for a whole other post) and my dad can build me a house so I won't be homeless anymore. It will be great.
But for now we wait. And count.
Hopefully I won't forget to fill in the chart though. My family isn't too good at keeping these missionary countdown charts. I'm always impressed when people actually do stay up to date on them, like my blog leech Maggie, who is faithfully counting down the days for her special someone to get home.
When Russell went on his mission we bought one of the big poster sized charts and hung it up. The first few weeks or even months we (probably actually just me) faithfully added a sticker each day. Then we kind of forgot about it until the day Russell was coming home from his mission and in the rush of getting things at the house ready for his homecoming I remember my parents telling Lee and I to hurry and fill in all the spaces on the poster I guess so Russell wouldn't feel bad that we hadn't been counting down the every second to his return.
Then I went on a mission and we again got a big countdown poster. I think I guilted my family into filling it in because I knew that they wouldn't without a little prodding. I remember on holidays when we'd talk saying to them "Are you guys filling in my countdown poster? I bet you're not. Have you guys even noticed that I'm gone? Does anyone even miss me?" blah, blah, blah. So, they filled it in to appease me.
Then when Lee went we again bought the poster. This time we didn't even pretend that we had been counting down. Lee's poster just had a sticker on day one, and a sticker on day 730 with nothing in between filled in.
When Tyler went we didn't even bother with the poster. Sorry Ty.
We are such a loving family, aren't we?
Here's the beach looking in the other direction...
Here's a picture I took of my mom bodyboarding...
One of my great-grandpas or somebody used to say, "I just don't understand why women take perfectly good pieces of fabric, cut them all up, and then sew them back together." I'm with you grandpa (or whoever said that), I'm with you. Piecing quilts is a pain. It might be a few years before I tackle another quilting project, if ever. Besides, who will want my quilts when I'm dead and gone anyway? They'll probably just end up at DI. Sad. The end.
