Lions and Tigers and Bears...Oh My!

Today was the last day in the Elementary school here in Brazil. Everyone was so cute! The teachers brought in a cake, and all of the fifth grades that I have worked with made little cards for me. Some of my favorite quotes from them are....

"where you pass we see flowers!" and "Mrs. Maughan you are a great helper. Because of you I am so good at maths, language, and unit!" and last but not least "Say bye for your husband for me and I hope he knows you are a lovely girl!"

It was so cute! I have a lot of mixed emotions. I am really excited to go back home and be with all of our friends and family, but it is hard for me to start closing up this chapter in our lives. There have been so many amazing people that we have met along the way, and it is sad to say goodbye to them all, realizing that probably I will never see them again. Thank heavens for technology, so we can at least keep in touch a little over the years.

Anyways, you are probably wondering what that has to do with the title of this post, and the answer is...nothing! But we did go to the zoo a little while ago, and I wanted to show some of our fun pictures!

We had a lot of fun at the zoo! We hear from the locals that normally it is really crowded. But we were lucky! The sky was threatening rain all day, so most of the people stayed home, and we stayed dry! So it worked out well, and the animals were even lively because it wasn't so hot. It was perfect! The zoo was nice, about the size of Hogle Zoo, so not huge. But I loved how many trees were all around, it was a beautiful place!

We saw some amazing tropical birds, native to Brazil and some surrounding countries...

The monkeys are always fun to watch! I love to see them jumping and swinging around, or simply grooming each other....

But I think my favorite was the smiling alligator.

In the middle of the zoo was a big pond. There were little islands on it, with different kinds of monkeys on them. It was a beautiful place!

One Year Ago...

One year ago, (from yesterday) this is what was happening....

We were married in the Salt Lake Temple on November 22, 2008.

I love you, Craig! Thanks for such an amazing year together. I am excited that I get to spend eternity with you!

Welcome to the Jungle!

Hooray for a holiday every month! Last Monday Craig had the day off again, so we went with some friends from the ward to a small town called Paranapiacaba. Try to say that 10 times in a row! It is always fun to see a more traditional Brazilian town than Sao Paulo. The town looked really cool from a distance....

...and close up too. The town and people were nice, but we were grossed out with all of the stray dogs running around, begging for people's food. Apparently, the government doesn't allow the civilians to capture or harm the dogs. So they just run around, spreading disease I guess. Gross! The dogs in this picture are strays, just 3 of the many that we saw.

But the point of going to Paranapiacaba was not to look at the stray dogs, and also not to see a mime....

...but to go up into the mountains behind the city to go on a hike! It was a lot of fun! It wasn't quite the Amazon, but it was the most jungley place I have ever been to. I thought it was beautiful! I loved all of the plants that would just grow everywhere! Everything was so green...

and then randomly in the middle of all the green, you would see a bright red, pink, or yellow flower, different kinds than I have ever seen before.

We hiked to a waterfall. It was gorgeous! It was really nice to get out of the city, too!

Carving the Pumpkin

Halloween in Brazil isn't quite the same as it is in the United States. They don't really celebrate it at all. Not really any costumes, no trick-or-treating, no jack-o-lanterns...But that didn't stop us!

We bought some delicious treats for ourselves and almost ate them all in one day! Just like the good ol' days. And we even carved our very own pumpkin.

But why carve a pumpkin when you can't share it with the world by putting it out on your front porch? So that's what we did...except for the fact that we don't have a porch, so we used our windowsill instead. This is the view from the street....you may be able to see the little speck of light from our pumpkin!

Hot Dog!

You have not experienced a hot dog until you have eaten one at Black Dog!

Picture this:

A hot dog, cut up in pieces

A bun

Add some melted cheese.

Sounds perfectly wonderful so far, right?

But it's not a Black Dog hot dog until you add mashed potatoes.

And then some corn

And some mayonaise

And a couple other unidentifiable ingredients (I think there are other things on it, but Craig says that is all)

Add some salt for extra flavor

Complete the masterpiece by grilling it closed with a cheese mixture (Requeijao)

Voila. The traditional Black Dog hot dog.

If you chose to go with the supreme hot dog, they would add pepperoni, too. We went with the traditional.

It is safest to eat only a half at one time...even better to just split one with Craig so that we don't eat the second half the next day.

Surprisingly they are very delicious! But the kind of food you should probably only eat once every 2 months...or maybe even less often...

Just Livin' the Dream

Well we are just livin' it up while we have the chance! Craig is busy with work (which is going well) and I am really enjoying being able to volunteer in the Elementary. We spend time experimenting with things to cook in the microwave (the latest two: Corn on the Cob and scrambled eggs) and we find lots of fun things to do on the weekends.

While I am at the school, I split my time with the 2 fifth grade classes there. I spend a lot of time with the kids that are struggling with math, reading, and whatever else the teachers are doing through the day, and reteach the material that they are not understanding. I do have to admit, it is a little different for me to not be in charge in the classroom anymore and just be an aid, but I am grateful for the opportunity I have to see how this school runs, and to see all of the good ideas that these teachers have. Plus, the stress load is a lot less than being a real teacher! But this way I won't miss a beat when we get back and I can start teaching again!

We were able to go again to the Sao Paulo Temple. It is so beautiful, inside and out! It is especially nice to be able to go inside and escape the hustle and bustle of the big city here in Sao Paulo. We really enjoy being able to come to the Temple while we are here.

We really enjoyed General conference last weekend, and were able to listen to it all in English! After the last session on Saturday, we met up with some of Craig's friends from the mission and went to an all-you-can-eat Pizzeria. Yum! It was so delicious! They practically had to roll us all out of there, but we enjoyed ourselves very much! It has been really fun for me to be able to meet and get to know some of Craig's good friends and companions from his mission.

One of the things we like to do is go to the park by our apartment to take a walk, read, or just relax! I love it there! One of the times we went to the park, we saw a group of old women (see photo below) doing a dance of some sort. Apparently the purpose was to unify and harmonize the world. It was an experience watching them (and slyly taking a picture).

The park is so beautiful! It makes me feel like I am in a jungle.

The other day when we were walking around the city, we looked up and this is what we saw! It made us so happy to see a jet finishing up writing "oi" in the sky! (which means hi in Portuguese)

Last but not least, we were able to go and have a BBQ with Rodrigo's family. (He was one of Craig's friends on his mission). It was a lot of fun being able to be a part of a Brazilian family. They were very generous, fun, kind, and they fed us a lot! The Grandpa even treated us to a few songs on his harmonica while the Grandma danced a little behind him. We really enjoyed ourselves!

Room for two, not three....

As most of our followers I'm sure noticed, we haven't been blogging as faithfully as we should be; we missed uploading our blog entry for last week. Really, it's a reflection of our concern for you, our reader. The way it works is pretty simple actually; the more comments you post, the better and more frequently we blog...

JUST KIDDING!!!

Here is last week's update.

Becca and I went to the Parque Villa Lobos. It was a super nice park, not quite as much shade as Ibirapuera though. We rented a tandem bike...

which turned out to be a lot of fun! The seats kept falling down at random times during our trip which made for a mega-exciting ride. Not only did we have to worry about staying balanced, we also had to worry about the impact landings on our back ends.

Later on we found a drum playing stand. They had cut up metal barrels and stuck them to a wall. I played until there was a line built up behind me (a little kid and his mom).

Then we moved on and found a little bell set, even better...

This is what the shady part of the park looked like.
This was a sweet ampitheater that we saw. Note the concrete block extending over the theater without any support. An ingenious bit of architecture.
End.

The Lookrooms

We were reading about the amenities offered by our hotel, notice the "Lookrooms." It is actually "locker rooms" in Portuguese, kind of ironic isn't it? Bad translations are always a funny thing to us!

It was even funnier when we went to see the locker rooms though, they were complete with a toilet, sink, shower, and...window?
Maybe it wasn't a bad translation after all... as you can see from the picture, it actually was a "look room!" The window opens right up to a patio area where groups of people gather to hang out. Oh no! I guess these are two rooms that we won't be using while we are here! Ha Ha
And this is the swimming pool on our roof... Awesome! We'll get a great workout swimming laps in this pool.

"Museu dos Oculos" and "Parque Ibirapuera"

Things are going well here in Brasil. Craig is enjoying work, and being given more and more projects to do. His boss has been impressed with the projects that he has done, which is really good! My Portuguese is coming slowly, but I am still progressing and picking up a little more of it every day. I finally have a volunteer position at an Englisk speaking Elementary school! Hooray! Now I can leave the wonderful world of our hotel and surrounding neighborhood. Instead of reading, being crafty, online scrapbooking, etc. all day, now I get to ride on the bus with Craig to go volunteer at the Elementary which happens to be really close to his work! I am really excited! I didn't realize that I would miss teaching as much as I have been. So I am excited to be back in the school soon.

Even though Craig is working all day and I am staying home, we have a blast together when he comes home at night and on the weekends. This past weekend was exceptionally long because of the Brazillian Independence Day on Monday. It was fantastic!

Sao Paulo has a museum for just about anything you want to see...so on Saturday we found a museum we could walk to that was all about glasses! It was kind of random, but really fun! They had glasses from the 15th century on up. Here are some of the crazy ones we saw....

Yes, the ones you see here do have "shades" like on a window!

Here we are outside of the museum. We thought the building even looked fun!

While walking back home, we saw a little neighborhood that had strung these green, white, and red strands down the street. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but the strands are made from little windmills! It was fun to see them all spinning! It was like a little Italian part of the city!

Saturday night, we got to be part of the huge Brazillain -Argentine rivalry and watch the big soccer game. One of Craig's co-workers invited us over to watch it. It was a lot of fun seing how dedicated Brazillians are to their team. It wasn't as intense as it could have been....the Brazillian team won an easy game of 3-1, so I don't think we really experienced what these games could really be. Our hosts even made Mexican food for us, which turned out very delicious, even though they said it was their first time trying to cook it. (Side note: it is hard to find the right spices and ingredients for Mexican food, and impossible to find tortillas down here, so we were really happy that they made it for us!)

On Monday, we walked to the big futbol (soccer in the U.S.) stadium, and stopped by the Museum there. It was closed, so we didn't get to go in, but it was a beautiful building, in a beautiful part of town.

This shows the neighborhoods surrounding the stadium. It turns out Sao Paulo actually has some houses, not just apartment buildings! The parkinglot by the museum was huge! There were people there playing with remote control cars, longboarding, learning how to ride a bike, etc. It was fun to see this big open space for people to just have fun!
In the afternoon, we went to Parque Ibirapuera. I would compare this park in Sao Paulo to hold as much significance to the people here as does Central Park to the people in NYC. It is a pretty big deal. But we loved it just as much as everyone else! Who wouldn't when you can buy a popsicle, toss a frisbee around, play on one of the many basketball courts, play a pick up game of volleyball, or rollerblade along the sidewalks? It was a HUGE, beautiful park with lots of trees, grass space, and even a little lake. And yes, we did buy popsicles (Graviola...my new favorite flavor of fruit!) and toss a frisbee around, which was a lot of fun.

I couldn't believe how big the leaves were on this tree!

This is the lake in the park, it was really pretty.

To top the day off, we had "acai na tigela" which is frozen acai berries blended up with guarana, topped with granola. It is so delicious! Probably one of my favorites!

Sao Paulo has so many differnet parts of town. This is just the little place we buy the acai treat from. I love all of the fun colors on the buildings, so I took a picture.

The Metro

This weekend, I experienced the metro for the first time. Craig and I went on a little ride to another part of the city. It was actually pretty fun! It turns out the ride on the subway is a hundred times smoother than the crazy busses in the city. But, they are both pretty exciting.

While we were walking back to our apartment after the metro, we passed by a construction zone. Instead of just plain walls that separated the sidewalk from the construction project, the walls were covered with paintings of people! And instead of faces, mirrors! I guess this is where people go if they want to pretend to be someone else. We decided these people were probably the closest to us, since Craig is black, and my hair is long.

This is the Av. Paulista (a big road right by our apartment). At one time, this road was called the "Wall Street of Brazil," but the big financial disricts have since moved down to another place (where Craig works now).

This is the building that Craig works in. It is a super nice building, located in a really nice part of town. The grounds around it are beautiful, even with fountains that run during the week.

This is for Mitch...it comes in 2.5 liter bottles! Next week...3 liters.