A bit of culture....

This is gonna be a long one......

Before I tell you about our adventures or misadvetures the last few days I thought I would share some of my personal thoughts and insight about being a "stranger in a strange land" and the kindness of strangers in that land.

The next time you come across a person who does not speak English, and you get frustrated, I want you to think of me. Think of Mondo and I trying very hard to navigate a foregin country where most people do not speak English and where we do not speak the language. While you are thinking of us, in your moment of frustration, think about this, not a single person has gotten frustrated with our butchering (no exaggeration) the beautiful Portugese language. If anything people have been overly helpful and very willing to play the "try to understand Rennie speak broken Portugese" game. It is very scary to play this game because you never know exactly what food you are going to end up eating (especially in a country where they have two words for chicken!) or exactly where you are going to end up (a favela)!! So I ask you to please open your hearts to those people, be a bit more compassionate and think of the brave adventurous soul who is trying to make their way in a strange land.

OK...enough karmic rambilings...on to more interresting topics!

A bit about Brazilian home life. If the Braga family is representative of a traditional middle class Brazilian home, it would be the understatement of the century for me to tell you that it is similar to that of a family in the states. First of all, the two maids are a trip. They put everything away faster than you can blink, and they are constantly talking at us in Portugese, which is fine as long as they do not expect us to respond. Then there are the two kiddos...cute as buttons and pretty typical in most ways. Little Maria is short on words as she is only one. I have only a tiny leg up on her in the vocabulary category but she's a got me on the pronunciation and understanding category! Her brother Leo is a typical 3 year old.....he is convinced he is a superhero and his outfit of choice EVERYDAY is a superhero costume. This conviction is great since I think he is trying to use his superpowers to get me to understand Portugese. He does this by repeating himself, at least 15 times (I am not kidding) combined with brute force and pantomime to communicate. Their mother is Monica, is a very sensible, kind and helpful person. She must have an adventurous spirit because she recongnizes the simple pleasure and excitement of taking public transportation in a foregin country.

And then there's Marcelo....and I wish I had a video of him. He's a pretty unique guy. Now he is under a tremendous amount of stress at work and he does have foregin tourists LIVING on the third floor of his home but saying that he is like a absent minded professor really is not doing justice to just how out-there he seems at times. For example, once we reached the big Jesus our first day climbing, he proceeded to try to go down the up escalator. And then one night we went to get a bite to eat, a friend of his met us, we sat on the inside of a booth, he and his friend on the outside. When the check came he and his friend did not understand why there were food items on the check....well, we ate and they passed the food to us because they were on the OUTSIDE of the booth!!! He does stuff like that all the time, it makes us giggle. That said, he is somewhat of a local climbing legend, having climbed in more places in the US than I have, and is featured frequently in the Brazilian climbing magazines.

Oh, and one more thing...it seems, much to the horror of my US friends who have kids, that taking a shower and going to bed for Leo and Maria does not occur until at least 10:30pm and no one is up before 10:00am. And I have yet to see those kids taking naps!

And now for the mis-adventures (I told you this would be a long one!!).................

In the last few days we have visited the botanic gardens, the city center (including a crazy market, seen amazing architecture, and spent a day exploring the super cool Santa Teresa area.
We are now experts at using not only the buses but the metro (we still are not sure exactly how the buses work), at asking: if people speak English, for the check, menu and price (thank God the numbers are similar to Spanish) and at blindly ordering good food (Mondo can even order a dark beer!).

By far our best adventure was getting to and climbing Pao de Aucucar on our own. We took a cab there, and following vague and nondescript instructions we made our way up a trail and to the base. It was another walk through the jungle (my jungle) this time however we were on our own with no local guide. I did have a moment where I thought wearing shorts may not have been the best idea since I was sure there was some human eating snake or insect around the corner (we did see these super cute monkeys but they did not bother us). But we got to the base without incident (at the truly Brazilian start time of 11:30am) and proceeded to climb 8 pitches to the top. Again we were under the distant but watchful eye of the giant Jesus (I just love writing that), and tourists (so don't worry mom) however this time the tourists were in a sturdy (let's hope) Italian gondola making their way to the top. At the top we litterally threw ourselves over the railing onto the observation deck (at least I did) to the ooohing and aahing of tourists. We celebrated with a salgadingo (pastry) and a drink. We took the gondola down, the first one is free if you climb to the top and had our first real look at what we had just climbed! We made our way down the lazy way via the second gondola, this time we had to pay (and I had an opportunity to practice asking for directions and tickets in Portguese) and caught our first public bus (Mondo was carrying the rope on his back) back to the Braga home. It was a fantastic day complete with easily the best dinner we have had (probably because we were so hungry) at the lake close to their home!!!

We leave for Campo Grande on Friday morning, which should be an adventure in and of itself since we have to take a 6 hour bus to Sao Paulo and then make a plane, all in the same day, just so we can squeeze in one more day of climbing tomorrow!

Till our next posting, love and kisses to all of our friends and family. And please keep the comments coming we just love them.