Campos do Jordao

Saturday we went to Campos do Jordao with our friends, Shawn & Nancy, and their dog, Kona.  Kona is a Bernese, and is huge.  Campos do Jordao was very nice (as you will see in the photos), but Kona was the star of the day.  Everyone stopped to look at, talk about, or pet Kona.  She probably had her picture taken about 50 times. 
Campos is about 2 1/2 hours from here and is in the mountains. Originally, we thought that the weather was not going to be very good, but we were pleasantly surprised.  It wasn't too warm (approx 68-70 degrees), but it was beautiful.

Good news!

Our friend, Gary, went to our house and found the beaters for my KitchenAid mixer.  Yippee!!  Now we are working on getting them here.

Sunday - The Beach

We got up early today and went to 8:00 mass at the Portuguese church a few blocks from here.  We came home and had breakfast and then went to the beach in Guaruja.  It is about one hour and twenty minutes from here.  It was a very nice day.  It was warm, but the breeze was cool, so it was very comfortable.  There was plenty of beach there.  Since it's fall here, the beach was not too crowded.  There were very large waves, and the tide was strong.  Standing in the water, the sand quickly disappeared under our feet. The beach is deep and very flat and when the waves crashed in, the water flowed about 100 feet onto the beach.

Video from the beach:

Saturday

So, since we finally got our air shipments, we now have more kitchen supplies.  This morning I made another batch of muffins (with measuring cups and measuring spoons - yippeee!!!!).  They turned out quite well (although I haven't tasted one yet).  The recipe calls for sour cream, which isn't available here.  The past batches were made with plain yogurt as a sour cream substitute.  For this batch I used a recipe given to me by my portuguese teacher for making sour cream - crème de leite fresco (heavy whipped cream) and lime juice.  So, we'll see how good these muffins are.
We went shopping at Casa Santa Luzia again, trying to fill our refrigerator, now that it will be easier to cook.
After we came back, I made bread.  I have missed my homemade bread for two months, and now that we have kitchen equipment, I couldn't wait to make it.  So, I started putting the dough together, and got my KitchenAid mixer out (I gave up kneading by hand a long time ago).  When I got ready to start up the mixer, I realized that we have the mixer but not the beaters!!!!   We don't know where they are, but they are not with us!!!!   So,  I had to knead by hand!  But the bread appears to have turned out well.
In our air shipments, we had two oven thermometers, which I used for both baking projects.  It seems that no matter how you set the oven, it just keeps getting hotter and hotter.  The oven was set to approximately 350 degrees F (which is the lowest it can be set), but both times the temperature reached 450 degrees F.
We had dinner with our friends Shawn & Nancy tonight and we talked about the oven.  Nancy said her oven does the same and she has just given up on baking. I just can't give up baking, so I'm just going to have to figure out how to manage it.

We got our air shipments!!!

Finally, we got our air shipments!!! 

Charlie helped with the unpacking.

Look carefully for Charlie in the above photo!

Tidbits from Brazil

Just thought I'd show you a couple of interesting things from our Brazilian life...

This is one set of our keys.  We have two sets of keys, one set for the service door and one set for the social door.  The service door and elevator are for getting deliveries and where you come up from the garage with your shopping bags.  Also, garbage is collected from a little room on the other side of the elevator lobby (which is right outside of the service door).  The social door and elevator are for company and just generally coming and going.  Both doors go to a little lobby for the elevator which goes to all floors, including the three underground floors of the garage.  Our mail and sometimes advertisements get delivered to the social elevator lobby.

This is the service door:

With interesting locks:

This lock is for the funky looking key.

This lock is more traditional key.

This is the social door:

With the same type of key/lock setup:

By the way these photos are from inside the apartment.  You have to use the keys on the inside of the door to lock it.

Another interesting thing is that fresh milk is difficult to find.  Some days the store has several bottles and other days they don't have any.  Most of the milk is box milk that doesn't have to be refrigerated.  (For the Strysik cousins, it reminds me of staying at Grandma Strysik's.)

Anyway, we buy fresh milk even though sometimes it's hard to find.  It doesn't have the length of freshness that we're used to in Michigan.  It typically expires within a few days.  These are the milk containers here (1 Litre), oh how I miss the 2 gallon milk bottles!!  Each one of these bottles are about $3.

Some views from Michigan

Courtesy of our next-door neighbors, John & Sandy.....

Spring is in bloom at our house in Michigan!  The deer are really going to miss our garden this year.  No breaking in and eating our veggies!!!

Saturday

Saturday morning we decided to go to Parque da Cantareira.  It's about 45 minutes from here.  We parked the car and then had to pay to walk into the park.  The guy in the booth spoke English and seemed very enthusiastic to explain everything about the park to us.  We went in, and there was a map of the park and we were looking at it.  He came out of the booth and into the park to tell us that if we looked at the back of the map it was in English!!!  So we walked up the trail for a while.  It was nice, but after a while it was just seeing more trees!  We could have walked 6 miles to get to an overlook of Sao Paulo, but after a while, we decided to turn around. 
We went back to the booth and asked the guy about one trail that we couldn't find.  He showed us where it was.  It was a short trail (just over a mile), but again it was not very scenic... just trees.

This view was supposed to be a view of Sao Paulo (through the trees).  We could see Sao Paulo (barely), but it definitely doesn't show up in this photo. 

We also asked about the other entrance to the park that we passed on our way in.  He told us that that was a different park (and free to enter) - Parque de Capital-Horto Floristal.  This park was full of people, whereas in Parque da Cantareira we saw only a few people.

These are tree roots.  There are some humongous trees here.  The trunks are probably 5ft in diameter.

This guy was having a great time playing in the water.  There didn't seem to be an owner around, so I hope he has a home!

These are views from the car on the way home.

Another picture of Charlie

On a warm day, this is what Charlie likes to do: