Frickin' Finally

Mr. Potato Head, Baby Natalie, Mickey and the gang finally were released from captivity along with pretty much everything else we own. As the boxes were opened, their joyous cheers were audible. Oh wait, that was me.
Yep, last week the movers arrived with our household goods. Everything was packed up in California at the end of May. What happened in June, July, August and half of September? As far as I can tell, a workers' strike at the arrival port in Brazil and sheer incompetence. Quite frustratingly, our household goods sat one hour from here for a month prior to delivery. I nearly went to the loading dock myself, but they still had our car, too.
We are now happily unpacking and Eri, who asked almost daily where the movers were, is feasting on Cheerios and Goldfish crackers once again and we're using non-plastic cutlery and sleeping on beds that don't inflate. Yay.
I took some pix of the chaos, but they're not so interesting. Photos to follow when the dust settles (and is swept up and Swiffered sufficiently.) Meanwhile, here are a few from the last couple weeks.

At school.
Learning Portuguese and to be sure-footed.

A little light reading.

FYI, she washed her hands in between pictures two and three.

I never knew Brazil had so many kayak-able rivers.
Turns out Geoff had a pretty good idea this was the case.

Looks like he's do pretty well on Eri's playground toy pictured above.

Conquered another one!

Tidbits

Even the animals are beautiful: People here adorn their little dogs with bows, not unlike the ones Eri wore as a baby, as well as little jewel stickers on the dogs' ears, like earrings, and between the dogs' eyes, like a Bindi, presumably to represent marital status.

Everything is slow: After two and a half months, the plumber is still coming back again next week to fix one of our bathroom sinks. It took two weeks for the locksmith to change out and add more locks, probably because he did just one per day, each of which took half a day. And, we still don't have our household goods. Sigh.

Most things are inefficient: Per consulate rules, we had to upgrade one of our apartment's external doors. Our "custom door" was delivered by two guys with backpacks and a saw. Unfortunately it was unpainted, which meant two more guys came to stain it and then sat for half a day and literally watched the paint dry before adding a second coat. They did multitask by drinking crappy instant coffee with me and helping me practice my portuguese.

People are so nice: One of my big pre-move worries was we'd have trouble making friends. I thought for sure we'd be thought of as those stinky foreigners in the computer lab, probably because Americans are so impatient with foreigners. However, we love the celebrity status we have here. We already have lots of friends, who invite as over and out-and-about and even drive us around town as we wait for our car (yep, still).

Brazilians love the United States: Whenever people find out we're Americans, they immediately tell us the list of U.S. cities they've visited (usually New York, Miami and San Francisco) and ask us if we've ever been to an amazing restaurant called The Cheesecake Factory.

Accents: Geoff and I take a language class for foreigners at the university. Interestingly, I think I understand better when a non-native speaks portuguese than when natives speak. Their accents are also very distinct, i.e. we can easily identify the Germans, Italians, etc., which explains how people know we're English speakers when we talk in portuguese.

Everyone is always on strike: That's all.