We’re back… for a while

~Posted by Josh

Five months is a long time to be away.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the States, but we were ready to jump back into our lives in Brazil.  After being away for so long some things stood out much more starkly and will take some time to getting used to.

We soon realized that we are all out of practice with the portuguese language and find ourselves stumbling over words that would usually come naturally.  The younger girls especially have forgotten a lot, but I’m sure in no time they’ll be jabbering with their friends.  Speaking of jabbering, it’s election time in Brazil and for some reason the candidates think it’s helpful to hire people to drive around blaring advertisements from cars and bicycles.  Less annoying are the people that walk around dressed in their candidates colors and waving flags.  Mia calls it flag day.  The other night we caught ourselves in a procession of the red candidate, between the blaring radios, shouting people and fireworks, we couldn’t even hear each other inside the car.

The girls seem to be adjusting well.  But we were a bit worried at first.  When we first arrived at our house, our rat-dog… I mean our beautiful pet Beanie, growled and barked incessantly at the girls.  They had ran to him as soon as getting in the house, but probably a combination of not recognizing them and the fear of being attacked by a pack of wild girls had put him over the edge.  Mia immediately decided to give up on Beanie and go say hi to their friends, the neighbor girls.  Mia was crushed again to learn that they had moved to another city while we were gone.

So we’re back in Brazil.  In some ways it’s just how we left it.  But it’s also different this time.  We’re here in Altamira only for a couple of months and then will be moving on to Manaus. 

[Note: I originally wrote this blog last week.  We’ve been out of internet, and we still struggling with it.  We hope to begin posting more often as we get things functioning.  Thanks for your patience!]