Weekend Retreat and São João

This past weekend was spent at a youth camp hosted at a ranch out in the countryside. Here “youth” ranges from 13 to 35, so it was a great time for “young people” of all ages! The topic was “faith and reason” and the sessions were great Portuguese practice for Kasey and I. The weekend was also great time to get to know the young people from Sao Lourenco as well as meet others from churches in other cities.

The camp also fell on the weekend of one of the most extensively celebrated holidays here in the northeast, the celebration of Saint John or São João. With origins as a catholic holiday, it has grown into a celebration of the “matuto,” the people who live in the interior of the country and are not up with the times . . . If we were speaking in American terms the closest word would probably be a hillbilly! To celebrate people dress up in “matuto” fashion. For girls it’s bright, ruffled, and beribboned dresses with hair in braids. For guys it’s plaid shirts with straw hats and drawn on moustaches or beards.

São João decorations of colored flags and paper lanterns 

For our celebration there was:

a huge bonfire to dance around and roast ears of corn (yummy!).  

the bonfire . . . all ready for the big night!

lots of other tasty foods, all made from corn including Canjica, Pamonha and Bolo de Milho 

(follow the link for info and recipes :)

and finally... the holiday wouldn’t be complete without the Quadrilha and Forró... traditional northeastern dances!

our group dancing the Quadrilha

Aaaand here's a super fun Quadrilha song for your enjoyment! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj5p4gvIre8

Another wonderful part of the retreat was the location in beautiful Aldeia, a natural area of green loveliness. On Saturday, a group went for a walk on the trail down into the forested valley below. It was a gorgeous jungle hike that went on and on through the lush greenery until the trail turned a corner and you suddenly come upon a little piece of paradise.

A long winding stair leads down into a quiet and sheltered hollow, with large paving stones, a pavilion, a natural spring, and a swimming pool fed by the ice cold spring water. It was the most beautiful and mysterious place imaginable, as if it had been lost out in the jungle for a long, long, time, and we were the first to discover its existence. We had tons of fun swimming and exploring the little valley and the surrounding mata (jungle in Portuguese!).

Food!

While I am missing certain foods from back home, I've been able to find substitutes for almost everything.  I've even found a few new things to add to the list that I'll have to figure out a way to re-create when I get back home.

First and foremost is pancakes:
The entire time I was in college we made pancakes at least once a month--usually more.  These weren't any normal pancakes, but pancakes with weird combinations of stuff inside that made them DELICIOUS.  For example: a banana, blueberry, chocolate chip pancake, a chocolate batter, chocolate chip, with peanut butter topping pancake, or a chocolate chip and sprinkle pancake. However, Brazilians don't eat pancakes for breakfast, let alone pancakes with so much sugar in them that they will make your teeth rot.  So we've just begun sharing our delicious pancake secrets with some friends and neighbors and we get really excited when they tell us that they like them :)

Second is muffins:
I love muffins.  I'm pretty sure we all love muffins.  But the muffin culture here is just beginning so they're pretty hard to find.  We've made them a few times at home, but I was SO EXCITED when we stumbled upon this coffee shop that we'd been hearing so much about and saw these little beauties...

Third is Oreo's:
Oreo's might be my favorite food in the world.  I brought a ton with me in the hopes that I would never have to go without them, however, my supply is starting to dwindle and they are nearing their expiration date so I'm eating them a little more liberally than I was when we first arrived.  On my birthday Annika and Alisha made me hold a package of Oreo's and blow out a match...it was pretty special.

Now onto the things we've discovered here that we won't be able to live without...

Hot Chocolate:
Ok, I know you're thinking, "Kasey, there's hot chocolate in the states...have you forgotten?"  No, I have not forgotten, this is just a whole other kind of hot chocolate that is more like they took a brick of chocolate, melted it and poured it into a cup with just a little bit of milk.  It's delicious.  The cup is pretty tiny, but it's super rich so you don't need very much.

Juice:
This is no 'go to Walmart and buy a jug of cran-apple-grape juice.' This is the real thing.  We've personally picked fruit or gone down the street to the fruit guy to find the most beautiful fruits to make our yummy juice. Then it's literally just fruit, water, and sugar into the blender and Voila--DELICIOUSNESS. This picture is of our strawberry juice one day.  Strawberry juice is usually made out of frozen pulp because strawberries aren't very common here so our juices are very different colors even though they are the same flavor.

Espetinho:
This word literally means "skewer." Basically it is any kind of meat on a skewer and grilled.  There's chicken, sausage, chicken wrapped in bacon, beef, and a few others.  There's a lady about a 2 minute walk from our house that has delicious espetinho.  It's a good thing she's not there very often because we love it!  And it's super cheap--what could be better?

Pizza:
There are a few major differences in the pizza here and from the states.  One, the crust does not have garlic butter brushed on it.  Two, the flavors are pretty much completely different.  Three, it's always eaten with a fork and a knife.  We've been rebels a few times and eaten it with our hands, but generally you don't eat food with your hands.  Four, if you order it to be delivered, a guy on a motorcycle with a box on the back delivers it to your door.   Five, the typical condiments of choice for topping are ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise--the ketchup is actually pretty good, I'm not so convinced about the other two.

Popcorn:
We don't have a microwave here.  I was pretty concerned about how we were going to make popcorn because I was unaware that there was another way to make popcorn.  (Alisha and Annika were both better prepared in the ways of popcorn and were not only completely aware that there was another way, but had even grown up eating popcorn made this 'special other way.')  One day we were at some people's house from the church and she started making popcorn on the stove and I was entranced.  They all thought I was pretty weird.  When she finished, she poured condensed milk all over it and let me tell you...it is delicious.

Tapioca:
Even though this has the same name as that nasty pudding that your grandma used to eat--rest assured it's completely different.  This is a powder that comes from a root and is completely white.  You put it in a skillet with no oil or butter or anything and it just sticks together.  Weird, right?  Then you can put coconut powder, condensed milk, queijo coalho, or really anything inside and flip it like an omelette and then eat it! Yummy!

(This one actually has a little bit of melted cheese on the bottom just to make it pretty, but most of them are completely white)  o

Poetry

Our little neighbor, Valeska, has proved herself quite the poet! The following verses were composed about/for us on the occasion of Kasey's 23rd birthday! In the poem our names are switched for Brazilian ones: Kasey is Anabela, Annika is Carolina, and Alisha is Julia. We love this poem and find it so subtly beautiful, both in Portuguese and in English. It feels like a moment in time . . . delicately captured. We think her writing is so talented and mature for a nine-year-old!

As Tres Meninas

Arabela abri a janela 

Carolina erguia a curtina 

Julia apenas sorri. 

Arabella foi sempre a mais bela 

Carolina sempre a mais sabida 

Julia, apenas ela sorri.

As translated by Annika:

The Three Girls

Arabela opens the window
Carolina draws the curtain
Julia just smiles.

Arabela has always been the most beautiful
Carolina always the smartest
Julia, she just smiles.

Valeska with a drawing she did of "as tres meninas" . . .!

A few things around Recife and São Lourenço

Just a few of our pictures of this beautiful city we're living in...

This is a picture of Marco Zero in Recife Antigo.  It's a beautiful historical part of the city with a lot of really beautiful buildings.

This is a little view of São Lourenço from a different part of the city than where we live.  We actually live around the top right corner, but were out visiting some other people who had a great view of the city from their roof.  The blue church in the middle is a really old Catholic church in the center of town.

 Another part of Recife Antigo with an awesome bookstore and shopping mall.

 Olinda! And all the pretty colorful houses.  Who wants to paint their house like these?

 There's a huge market in downtown Recife where you can buy just about anything.  There are lots and lots of fruit vendors, spice vendors, and random craft vendors.  It's a pretty fun place to look around.

The beautiful beach at Boa Viagem.  You can sit under the umbrellas and order agua de coco (the water that's inside the coconut).  Most of those buildings are residential.  

Defrosting the Freezer...

Well, we all defrosted freezers at the end of each semester in college, but that consisted of taking everything out, unplugging it, opening the door, putting a towel underneath, walking away, and coming back to a mildly damp towel and a clean fridge.  It was a little bit of a different experience when we had to do it last week...

It all started when Annika called me to tell me that the door to the freezer had popped off and wouldn't go back on.  The ice had been building up for almost three months and I guess the door had finally just had it.  It wasn't a huge deal because the freezer is just in the top section of the fridge, so everything would stay cold...just maybe a little too cold with the freezer being open to the fridge.  So we chose not to deal with it for a few days.

(It was actually way worse than this...this is after a few hours of defrosting and Alisha chipping away at it with a knife.)

We finally got brave enough to deal with it, and after asking the advice of our wonderful neighbor, moved all of our food that had to be refrigerated to her fridge, and unplugged our silly little fridge.  We were home for a few hours after unplugging it and didn't see much progress so we weren't too worried when Alzenira told us that it was time to leave for a church event (she was walking with us so we could learn a new part of the city...it resulted in us walking almost 2 miles up hill).  When we got back, there was water EVERYWHERE.  The freezer was almost completely defrosted, the drawer that was supposed to catch the water was completely full, and there was water spilling onto the floor.

We froze our hands trying to get the rest of it off and empty out the drawer and clean everything that was being dripped on.  But, eventually, the defrosting was over, everything was clean, we could turn our fridge back on and collect our food from our neighbor's fridge.

(Our mess of stuff that used to be in our fridge..and if you look closely you can see lots of ice chunks in the sink.)

A few days later we decided it was time to put the freezer door back on.  I have NO IDEA how that door popped off because we had to get a screwdriver, develop a strategy and spend almost 20 minutes trying to get it back on.

One week later: There is a fresh layer of ice in the freezer and we're about to defrost again (because apparently once every 3 months isn't going to cut it)

Language Mishaps

A few more language blunders for your enjoyment :)

A little over a month ago I was trying to distinguish between two different past tense ways of saying "I wanted" to figure out which was correct for the sentence that I was trying to say.  So I asked someone across from me how to say "I wanted" and he replied "Queria" to which I replied "Ok, well, what does 'Quis' mean?" That word sounds an awful lot like the word 'Kiss' (Beijo) and with me switching from English to Portuguese he didn't realize that I had switched to Portuguese and told me that "Quis" meant "Beijo."  We all laughed for a while because I had essentially just told him that "I wanted a kiss."

The next story needs a little bit of explanation.  Whenever we are taken off guard, surprised, or just trying to talk too fast we sometimes switch into English mode.  This results in us saying "thank you," "sorry," or other random bursts of explanation at times.

So, last week, Annika was trying to order espetinho (delicious meat on a stick) from a street vendor, and she said "Queiro two" (I want two), but the word 'two' sounds like 'tu' which is another way for saying 'you'.  So pretty much, Annika told the street vendor "I want you."

The Blessings of Visiting

We have been going with a woman from our church, Marilia, on visits to the houses of other members of the church every once in a while. We are wanting to do this on our own someday, but are still trying to learn the city and figure out how to get around a little better.

On Tuesday, we were blessed to be able to meet a woman from the church named, Ligia ,who has some problems hearing and seeing.  We arrived at her house just to say "hi" and see how she was doing because she hadn't been to church recently, but immediately saw an opportunity to serve.  She lives alone and had just spent the last five days or so with her sister in another part of town.  While she was gone, her power had been turned off and all of the food in her fridge had spoiled.  As she was trying to clean, water had gotten everywhere and everything was just dirty.

As an older woman without children to be there to help her, we felt called to serve her and help her clean her house.  We stayed for a while just scrubbing, helping her put things back where they belonged and talking with her about her life.

It was a huge blessing to all of us to be able to be part of that day, and has really reminded us why we are here.  There are so many people that God puts in our path who are simply in need of a friend or someone just to come along and pause long enough to see a way to help.