Jundiaí

1. Shelley and Gabi at the Casa da Baile, a Neimeyer building.
2. Igreja São Francis de Assisi, another Neimeyer
3. Eating Açai with Andre. 4. Talking to Mammu and Grandad on the internet.







After having some breakfast here in Jundiaí, we took the train back into São Paulo to see Andre and to try to go to the bank. Unfortunately, banks are not open here on Saturday, so we met up with Dre downtown and went to the Mercado Municipal, a huge market, like the Mercado Central in Belo. This place is famous for Pastels, fried dough filled with delicious things like palm hearts, mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes, and other stuff. We got a couple with Andre, and some acai as well. Then we went from there to Ave. 25 de Marco, which is filled with street vendors and you can buy just about anything.
Andre invited us to spend the night at his place, and since the train is two hours back to Jundiai we decided to take him up on the offer. We had brought a few change of clothes for Gabi but Nate and I were S.O.L. but we did just fine. Acutally when we woke up in the morning we took showers and Nate got outfitted by Dre’s family, he had on an Illinois shirt from Dre but Dre’s mom thought it looked to small. She went and got a nice shirt from Dre’s father. It is a soccer polo from the Corinthians team which is one of the Sao Paulo teams that a lot of Dre’s family works for. He was quite happy about that. The night at Dre’s house we discovered that because Dre and Chris both have Mac computers we could talk online for free see each other. We talked that night for a bit and then realized we might be able to do a three way video chat with Katie too because she has a Mac also. We set up a time in the morning we could chat and all headed to bed. In the morning we tried the three way chat but Dre’s computer was too old so we first talked to Katie and then Nate’s parents again. After getting ready and having a yummy lunch we went to see Gu because Gabi kept asking about him. When we got there they didn’t even really play together but Gabi had a blast with Gu’s mothers family. We are is search for a certain type of Havaiana sandal so Dre took up to a big store with tons of Havaiana’s but we were unsuccessful, so he dropped us off at the train station and we headed off back to Jundiai.
The past few days in Jundiai have been quite dreay, lots of rain and crummy weather. It has kind of kept us inside and we’re getting a little antsy to get moving again. We did make it out to the shopping(mall that is) on our three year anniversary in hopes of seeing Ratatouille but the movie theater here only has it dubed not with subtitles, so we decided against it. We did get some delicious ice cream, and walked around the mall with Denis’ sister. Denis’ family has been incredibly nice too us while we’ve been here, feeding us all the time, and helping us get places. Denis mom doesn’t eat meat much, and cooks a lot with soy, so she has made Shelley some delicious vegetarian things, like soup and meatballs, along with rice and beans. We also read the last Harry Potter book, which was unbelievable. Now we want to read them all from the beginning when we get back.
Gabi has been really good, and she’s been eating so much all the time, that her face is getting a bit chunky. She’s been having a blast with Jenifer though, so that’s good. A new thing she has is that all tennis shoes are called Madeline shoes, because the first pair that she can remember were given to her from my cousin Eva and her daughter Maddy. Also, I had been telling her not to walk on her inflatable bed all morning, and finally I said “how many times do I have to tell you not to walk on your bed?” and she looked at me sweetly and said “Two.”
We’ve only got 3 weeks left of our trip. We’re going to go to Iguacu falls in a couple days, stay there for about two weeks, and then head back to São Paulo before going back home. It’s kind of sad that it’s almost over, but we’ve been making the best of it, and it has been a great trip. I’ve decided that I’m going to start taking classes when we get back, because I want to get a degree in Environmental Science. It’s just going to be at a community college to start off with, but we’ve been looking at other schools in places we want to live for later on. Shelley has a full time job with benefits lined up at the school district where we worked before coming here to Brasil, so she will most likely take that up. We don´t quite know what Gabriella will do, she will most likely go to preschool at Christies for a few hours during the day, and I´ll watch her the rest of the time. I don´t quite know what I´ll be doing for work yet, but we have some ideas.