Under that helmet is a huge grin and a loud, “Wooooohooooo!”
Elbow deep in it
August 20, 2009 at 10:45 am (My new life, quantum leaps)
That’s me and my girl, learning how to fix things. It’s so much less of a mystery than I thought and I’m feeling so much more confident, and less intimidated now.
Next up, replace the widshield wipers, remaining 3 spark plugs and all 4 ignition wires this weekend.
Meadow
August 11, 2009 at 8:36 am (Photos, Seeing the world, life is short, quantum leaps)
Floating over the meadow, smelling the sage brush, seeing the ducks swimming in the stream below us, the mountains ahead of us, the sun risen behind us, the lake shining just over there, feeling the air warming around us, and hearing ourselves laughing because it was just that beautiful.
Turning 40 in the UK
June 27, 2009 at 7:42 am (Seeing the world, international relationship, life is short, quantum leaps)
Better late than never?
I tried to embed them right into this blog post, but it didn’t work so let me know if the clicky linky thing doesn’t work either.
In the mean time, I’ll be over here remembering every minute of this trip with a smile and looking forward to the next one very soon.
Arraial do Cabo
May 11, 2009 at 11:07 am (Brazil, Seeing the world, quantum leaps)
The original intention was to see Buzios again, but instead the plan was switched to head over to Arraial do Cabo and I’m so glad. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I only knew there would be at least one beach.
And what a beach it was. When we came around the bend and saw this cove with its crystal blue/green water we all smiled. The only trick was finding our way down there. With dividers in the road that didn’t allow a left turn, we had to keep driving and ended up in the middle of the village on the other side of that hill. A tiny, twisty little village full of crowds, shops, docks, dogs, traffic and chaos.
We did manage to find a good dive shop where we picked up a mask and snorkel. After twisting and turning and dodging all imaginable kinds of road traffice we found ourselves on this beach, with the softest sand I think I’ve ever experienced.
We swam, we lounged, we ate shrimp and drank Caipirinhas. We snorkeled, we played football in the water, we found the coolest fish with bright blue spots. We people-watched, we played and we relaxed and enjoyed each other for hours.
When we’d had our fill of sun and sand, we headed over to Buzios to find a late lunch. This is where the GPS tried to kill us.
It seems the most direct route from Arraial do Cabo to Buzios is down through a part of the area that is a little scary. We went from 4 lane boulevard to 2 lane partially paved road, to narrow 2 lane dirt road and then finally a 1 lane, very narrow, very bad dirt alleyway with local residents who looked at us like we were either crazy, or…well, just crazy. We all looked at each other and said, “Hell no”. Back to the main road and the long way around was just fine with us thank you. We’re pretty sure it’s a bad idea to take the kids through short-cuts into areas where you can just disappear without a trace.
That was fun.
Back in Buzios we made our way down to Geriba beach.
We loved this beach last time, even though it was the most crowded, and wanted to show my Mom and the kids. It was just as beautiful this time, and a very good spot to take a much needed break after all the swimming and sun.
Teenage boys most definitely need food for refeuling after a long swim.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the beach while the Boy swam again, playing in the waves. We made our way back to the car through the nearby neighborhood which was really pretty, and very peaceful. We were all tired, but the good kind of tired you get after a long, enjoyable day.
Back home in the apartment, as we were getting ready for bed, I found this in my hair:
I wonder how long he was there?
Quiet yet full days
April 25, 2009 at 11:59 am (Brazil, Kids, Seeing the world, life is short, quantum leaps)
We left Rio de Janeiro late in the morning on Sunday to start the 3+ hour drive that takes us about 100 miles east to get home. The GPS really proved its worth by getting us out of Rio and over the Niteroi bridge in record time. It’s easy to miss turns, exits and roads since there is no main highway and I don’t think any single road goes in a straight line. Traffic runs fast, with just inches (literally!) between cars, buses, bikes, motorcycles and pedestrians. Fairly large roads dump you on to tiny crooked roads that seem to double back to where you came from, and you really can’t just look at the part of town where you need to be and head towards it.
The only thing better than our British accented GPS telling us where to turn would have been a New York City accented GPS ripping into us every time we took a wrong turn or missed an exit.
Once on the bridge it was smooth sailing all the way out. At least the Brazilian equivalent of smooth, which means we didn’t crash into any other cars, people, animals or road construction workers. The road itself? Not smooth. Not even close.
The scenery quickly changes from the favelas of Niteroi to the fields of the coast road where the vacas and goats graze as you drive by. Mom had her camera going like mad but mostly ended up with shots of the inside of the car and some blurry buildings whizzing by. She was fascinated with the image of the square, unfinished cinderblock houses with their grubby water tanks on the roof, right next to the satellite TV dish.
Our stay in Rio das Ostras (River of Oysters) was going to be much more domestic and relaxed than our one-and-two-halfs days in Rio de Janeiro (River of January). We had 3 days to stroll the town, swim the beach, try the food, shop the shops and speak the language. Since B was at work those first three days, we were on our own with all of it. I was a little nervous about the language thing, since I am getting much better at reading and writing Portuguese, but not very good at understanding it when I hear it. That is my own fault since I haven’t made a big effort to get out to the Brazilian meet-ups in Houston to practice.
So, we suited up and headed out each day. One day it was the beach where we had the most beautiful pre-storm clouds and a really nice swim. Another day it was walking the main street to take a peek at at every day life, and maybe find some souvenirs for my Mom’s friends back home.
Another day hanging out at home watching movies with subtitles and strolling the neighborhood to take pictures. Mostly just soaking up the feel of another country, and enjoying ourselves.
Even things so simple as a meal became an adventure when we really had no idea what kind of food we were ordering sometimes.
We all agree, the food was great!
Not to say we didn’t have a hard time with some of it. Rio das Ostras is much, much safer than Rio de Janeiro, but still too dangerous to let the kids roam around by themselves, even if there hadn’t been the added obstacle of the language for them. Have you ever spent 9 days in close quarters with teenagers who can’t leave your side? Um… It was hard sometimes, on all of us. By the end of the trip The Boy and I were having some serious issues, but we got quite a lot of them sorted out and settled in the airport waiting for our flight home.
I’d still do it again, in a heartbeat. Even with the stress of consentrated family time, I’m still so glad they came. They saw so much, opened their eyes to so much more than they knew, had some amazing experiences that are just not possible here, and now have the memories for a lifetime.
Taking teens and their Grandma half way around the world
April 10, 2009 at 10:20 am (Brazil, Kids, Seeing the world, international relationship, life is short, quantum leaps)
What a hectic two days. More realistically, what an insanely hectic week or two. Between buying everything I needed to bring, packing for 3 people, plus gifts, arranging rides to and from the airport, checking and double checking paperwork, passports, tickets and lists, worrying about forgetting something, the overwhelming impatience and excitement of seeing him again, and oh yeah, that 50 hour a week job, I got a little worked up.
The day we left, somebody should have slapped me for scheduling such a day.
5am, pick up Mom at the Houston airport, take her home and threaten to eat the kids if they don’t let her sleep. 6:30 go to work and prepare everything for my absence. Every 20 minutes, tap feet and stare at clock, then panic because I have way too much to do and can. not. leave. late. 4pm, shut down and tear out of there at a half run. Don’t make eye contact or answer questions in case someone asks me to do something else.
4:30 start re-organizing suitcases (again) adding in the 265lbs of stuff my mom brought with her in two suitcases that needs to be consolidated into one. 5pm somehow wedge two full-sized teenagers, two full sized women, 3 big suitcases and 4 carry-ons into a pint sized Jeep Wrangler. That right there was funny. We must have looked like a circus clown car when we all poured out of it later. 5:15pm start driving and stop in the middle of the road because I’m convinced we forgot something.
Hmm. Nope, can’t think of anything. Keep driving.
6pm, park and get a shuttle to the airport and start getting really nervous because holycowIcan’tbelieveitsfinallyhere!
6:30 spend a half hour getting all checked in, passports swiped, visas verified, luggage checked, shoes bomb-sniffed, and finally waved through.
7pm dinner, and start hearing endless rounds of “what time is it?” from the Boy. 8:30 board the plane and finally, finally breathe. We’re here, on the plane, on the way, and finally off the ground.
Did I mention that I put the boy 8 rows in front of us? On purpose? He is a really good traveler, but he does. not. stop. talking. or moving. He was happy anyway because he had a window seat with an empty seat next to him.
I slept about half the flight. My girl told me in the morning that as we were flying over a small city in Mexico, she looked out the window and could see the lights of the little town in the distance, and the sky absolutely full of stars above it. Beautiful.
The last 3 hours of the 12 hour flight are the worst. I’m so impatient, and now rested and antsy from sleeping in my seat all night. By the time we finally flew out of Sao Paulo I was chattering and excited and annoying the hell out of my sleepy daughter. She had stayed up most of the night and was now out cold. I kept trying to wake her up to see our approach into Rio and she was having none of it. I think that was as close as she has ever come to actually giving me a dirty look.
Rio is much cleaner this time. It has rained lately and scrubbed the smog out a bit. I could see the now familiar sights while I get my bearings. Maracana, Pao d’Acucar, Copacabana, the Lagoa, the favelas, the bay. Somehow I missed the Christo statue this time. Still, with every sight my smile got bigger. This time it felt like coming home, and all I could think of was “he’s there, right there, right now”.
Immigration, luggage, and customs was smooth. I think my Mom and the kids were nervous about this part, but we had no problem and I was already starting to switch into Portuguese mode. Once we got our bags and were waved through the bag search area I handed my suitcase to the Boy, and my backpack to the girl. I had better use for my arms waiting just around the corner from me.
And there he was.
I ran.
The rest of the afternoon is a blur. Packing ourselves and our luggage into the car, setting up the GPS, driving through the city and the tunnel, around the lagoa, throught the back streets of Copacabana. Playing bumper cars and chicken with the busses, old men in speedos, barefoot dirty kids, the hotel, the beach. All of that was overwhelming for my Mom and the kids, but background noise for me. I was just happy.
We got settled in the hotel and rested for a couple of hours before walking down the beach on the famous sidewalks. My Mom telling us over and over how she was pinching herself because she coudn’t believe she was actually there. The kids starting to realize nobody here, really nobody, is speaking English. On the way back we walked near the waves and let the Boy jump in. He battled the waves for an hour or so, working out all the wiggles and kinks from the flight. It was a cool moment for me to see him there, swimming in the same Atlantic he swam in New Jersey but 6000 miles south.
I was loving it. My kids with me, eyes opening to a new world. My Mom with me, so incredibly excited. My heart right next to me, holding my hand.
Dinner of picanha with farofa, calamari, and pizza with mustard made us all very happy and a little sleepy. When we got back to the hotel just at dusk, we were done. We had safely spent our first day in Brazil. It was a good feeling to get in the room and relax, after spending the day on high emotion and high alert. I knew we were not in the safest part of the world, but with our eyes open and some passable Portuguese we were just fine.
Unfortunately, I got a reminder a few minutes later of just how dangerous it was there, and how close we could be to real trouble. While down in the lobby checking on internet service just after dark, an american guest in his 20’s came in yelling about an emergency, and police, and they couldn’t find their girlfriends. He and a buddy and their two girls had been walking on the beach after dark (a very stupid idea) and were robbed. They told the girls to run, then they were attacked with a knife and their wallets and ID were taken. He had pretty serious cuts all over his right hand, with blood everywhere, and a deep scratch on his back. He and his friend were panicked because the girls had not come back to the hotel yet.
I saw them all the next morning, and everyone was safe and fine other than his bandaged hand. The ID and credit cards can be replaced with a bit of hassle, but they were OK.
You can bet my eyes were wide open after that.
The kids, they travel
January 30, 2009 at 11:15 am (Kids, Seeing the world, life is short, quantum leaps)
They’ve lived in 5 states, and will visit their third country, second continent and cross the equator for the first time in less than 2 months. It’s planned and possible they will visit our ancestral home by the end of this year too, while visiting their third continent. They have passports.
They are lucky. They have these opportunities that the vast majority of the world does not. Eye opening. Life exposing. Educational. Global citizens. New view of their world. New feel for reality. New perspective on their own lives, their own country, their own goals, their own incredible good fortune. Broaden their horizons, and all that.
Or maybe they’ll be those ugly Americans. Maybe they’ll complain about everything. Maybe they won’t see what I see. Maybe they’ll only learn that they like their little world and the rest of the world can stuff it.
I don’t know. All I can do is try. Give them the chance. Bring them out in the world. Doesn’t every parent want to give their kids the world? I’m SO grateful for the chance. I believe they won’t waste it. I believe this will be great for them, even if they find it hard. Especially if they find it hard.
I admit I’m a little impatient to see how they’ll turn out. To listen in on that conversation 20 years from now when they’re telling their own kids about their memories of their childhood and all they did. To see them then, and know if I did my job well enough. But I’ll wait. I’ll hang on to these times, these trips, these days because I know how fast they go by. How fast they are going by.
Today they are in Colorado, hanging out with cousins and playing in the snow. Last week they were in California with Grandparents and cousins and family, celebrating the Girl’s 15th birthday. (Fifteen!) Next week they’ll be back here in Texas. Their world is small, and huge.
In which we play tourist in Rio
August 4, 2008 at 3:32 am (Brazil, Seeing the world, life is short, quantum leaps)
Ketchup. On pizza. They put mustard on the sausage pizza. Seriously. There are so many reminders in every little way that things are different here. I don’t think Brazil is a place you can enjoy if you’re looking at it with the expectation of finding it similar to America. It is not. Reminders small and huge are everywhere, including the food. They eat ketchup and mustard on pizza, and my friend’s daughter loves fried cinnamon bananas with mayonnaise on top, but they looked at me like I had crossed a serious line into gross-ness when I put sliced pears on the same plate with scrambled eggs for breakfast. Go figure.
We spent the first weekend in Rio de Janeiro on Copacabana beach. Right smack in the middle of the most typically tourist spot in all of Brazil. Actually, it was a very good place to start and with limited time to experience the city it gave us a good jumping-off place to get our feet wet in the whole experience. Even my friends who live there had never spent much time in Rio except to fly in and out, so it worked well for us.
I highly recommend getting to know Brazil with a native Brazilian friend. My 5 months of Portuguese classes had helped quite a lot, but to have a native speaker, and native Brazilian with us opened doors for us that we never would have even known were there. Besides all of that, she and her daughter are now people I am lucky enough to have as real friends.
We decided to take a guided bus tour that spent the day taking us to all the hot spots of the city. This definitely had it’s drawbacks, like the screaming-into-the-microphone tour guide that gave every detail in 4 different languages. I don’t think she actually spoke any English, Spanish or French, and her accent was so strong that I couldn’t tell much of a difference between them, but she was very enthusiastic about it anyway.
The good part was that we now have a semi-familiar grasp of what the city has to offer that we wouldn’t have gotten on our own. Now when I go back we’ll know where to go and what to see, and how not to do it.
Spots on the tour: The lagoa (drive by), Maracana (5 minutes parked outside), the Sambadrome (with costumes!), Sao Sabastiao Cathedral, Sugarloaf mountain (with monkeys!), and Christo Redentor. Of all of it, I was most impressed with the statue. I have seen pictures and known about that statue all my life, but never thought I might actually see it. To be standing there looking up the nose of this icon was one of those moments when I had to stretch out my arms and smile at where life had taken me. That I got to share it with people I care so much about made it even better than I could have hoped for.
Our tour was supposed to have us back at the hotel by 5pm, and we had theater tickets for 8pm. Has anyone ever told you about Brazilian time? Well, Brazilian time does not take stock in such annoying things as schedules. We were “on our way” to the hotel for 2 hours. We stopped at just about every street corner and cafe along the way to drop people off, including doubling back almost 10 miles because they forgot someone, and finally got back to our own hotel at 7:10pm. 50 minutes to get cleaned up, changed into girl clothes, get a cab and get to the theater downtown. Somehow, thanks to the insane lack of traffic rules and some driving on the sidewalk (really) we actually made it on time.
If you have a chance to see a show at the Municipal Theater, do! We saw a fun, and incredibly well performed modern dance show. The theater itself was beautiful, and the restoration work they are still doing looks fantastic.
To cap off the night, our cab on the way back got a flat tire. What is it the guide books say? Don’t walk around Rio at night? Especially Copacabana? Especially dressed up? Pshaw. We laugh at your silly notions.
We were fine, except for the 3 very large, raw blisters on my toes from my very sexy girl-shoes.
A wonderful day.
Start at the beginning
August 2, 2008 at 11:07 am (Brazil, Seeing the world, life is short, quantum leaps)
Seeing a famous landmark to me is like seeing a movie star, or a famous historical figure that I’ve only read about before. I know they exist. I know they’re out there. Still, it is such a geeky thrill to actually see with my own eyes, and feel with my bare feet.
Oh yes I did walk barefoot on that sidewalk. It’s all part of the experience and there is medication for the ringworm.
So, back to the beginning. I left straight from work for the airport where I had a 3 hour wait for my flight. I browsed. I ate a snack. I bought duty free whiskey. I talked on the phone. I eavesdropped on all the Portuguese speakers. I spied the identical twin of someone I know (really) but was too nervous to speak Portuguese and actually introduce myself. Hi Mauricio’s brother!!
The flight was long and boring, but overnight and I tried to sleep. Two hits of dramamine really help with that. Every time I woke up I’d check the overhead screen and see that we were over the Carribean, or the Amazon. Really, there is nowhere good to crash between here and Rio. If you survive the crash you’re still screwed.
Finally, a long night and a two hour time change and we landed in Sao Paulo. Sat on the runway for an hour while I dozed some more, then a short hop to Rio. Landing in Rio was about what I expected, but holy smog! Ew. It was way worse than LA on a bad day and it never let up the whole weekend. I was a bit disappointed that I never really had a very clear view of Corcovado Mountain while I was there unless I was standing directly under Jesus’ nose.
I saw mountains, buildings, the famous favelas, soccer pitches, the bay, Corcovado, Sugarloaf, the bridge to Niteroi, smog, traffic and many, many beaches. Wow! I’m actually in Rio.
A very cheerful welcome at the airport had me smiling, and meeting new friends whom I’d only spoken to on the phone was great. After we wandered all over the airport and finally found the dang car, it was off for a very educational drive to Copacabana beach. A word of advice…if you’re going to drive in Rio, get a GPS!
So much happened, I’ll be adding more as I go. This was the beginning, and a great beginning to a great trip it was. I wish I was still there.
Wait.
I just read back over that post and there is no feeling of the excitement I felt. The anticipation, the fun, the awe and the feeling of such gratitude that I was there. I’ll get better at this. Just know I loved every minute of it and would happily go back in a heartbeat.
Greg, it was an “Arms Wide Open” experience.
