Feliz Natal/Merry Christmas!
I almost forgot again that it's Monday. This was my first Christmas in summer weather, and it was strange but good. I'm a big fan of summer.
Christmas here is celebrated on Christmas Eve. Late yesterday afternoon, I went to my supervisors' country house to spend the holiday with their family. They invited a few people that didn't have family here, so there was one other non-family-member there in addition to me. She and I actually bumped into each other at the bus stop yesterday afternoon on the way there. It's a beautiful place about 45 minutes outside the city, with gorgeous landscaping and lots of wildlife. It was a very peaceful place to spend the holiday, and one special touch was that they were playing English Christmas songs on the stereo when we arrived. We ate Christmas dinner at 9:00 at night, and then some played games and others watched movies until midnight, when everybody gathered around the artifical Christmas tree and exchanged hugs and then opened presents. I actually didn't stay up much later than that, and we were warned not to be up and moving around before 10 the next morning, which was not a problem for me.
Other than my family, the one thing that was really missing from Christmas for me was church. That was largely due to laziness on my part--I could have gone by myself to a service at my roommate's church downtown on Sunday morning or gone to the evening service at my church, but it would have caused me to be waiting a long time for a bus downtown in the dark. My parents called me today, so I got to catch up with them and hear how they're spending the holiday. Pretty much everybody I've heard from in North America (including Canada) has remarked on their lack of snow and higher temperatures than normal.
Yesterday afternoon, I went with my roommate and her daughter and son-in-law to eat lunch at her family's house nearby. It was one of the "unofficial" events for their multi-day holiday celebrations. I got to see her two brothers and one sister from out-of-town and a few of her other relatives. Because it wasn't one of the "official" gatherings, only a small fraction of the huge family was present. I also was the object of teasing when one of the great-nephews started to imitate me ordering a pizza over the phone from the family pizza business last week. Apparently, my grammar wasn't exactly correct (the word "pizza" is feminine, not masculine--who knew??).
Saturday morning, I went downtown to the Central Market to buy the ingredients for a fruit basket to take to my supervisors' house. Talk about crowded! Lots of people doing lots of last-minute shopping...this is, after all, a last-minute country.
Friday night was our employee Christmas party for the projects in Liberdade and São Gabriel. Due to limited funds this year, it was held in the party room of my supervisors' apartment building. My secret assignment was to take individual photos of each employee and volunteer over the past few weeks. When I was the first to arrive at 7:45 (and to think that I was worried about being late; it was supposed to start at 7:00...), I went up to her apartment to mount the pictures in the magnetic picture frames she bought and put them in special gift bags. As I've previously mentioned on the blog, wrapping and presentation are a VERY big deal here. By the time I finished that task and returned to the party room, most of my colleagues had arrived. We had a very nice dinner and a gift exchange, and everybody received their framed picture and a pannettone (Italian fruit cake), which seems to be a popular gift here.
Thursday morning on a hunch, I called a real estate agency again that had advertised a nice looking, inexpensive apartment on the internet. When I'd called them about the apartment the first time, they told me it was already rented. I thought I'd call back to confirm, and this time they said it was available again. I made an appointment to see it that afternoon, but it turns out that just means you go to the real estate office and leave your identity document in exchange for getting the keys to the place you want to see, then you take yourself there and back. I was hoping (ha!) that a real estate agent would accompany me and drive me there, but instead, I had to take the two buses to the real estate office, one taxi and one bus to get to the apartment, two more buses to get back to the real estate office, and two more buses to get home. Whew!
I'm catching myself getting very culturally agravated at the non-user-friendliness of the Brazilian rental economy. To sign an apartment lease, you have to produce an inane amount of documentation (e.g. proof that you earn a salary at least three times the rent, proof of previous residency, etc.) for yourself and two co-signers, who are financially responsible if you don't pay your rent. That's if you don't qualify for one of the other rental mechanisms--leaving a huge deposit or using property that you already own as collateral and leaving a smaller deposit. "Unfurnished" apartments really mean COMPLETELY unfurnished--no appliances, toilet seats, lightbulbs, curtains, etc. I'm lucky that this place has cupboards in the bedroom and kitchen. I'm going tomorrow with one of my supervisors to try to sign the contract, so we'll see if it works out.
Last year, I missed out on summer, but this year, I'm experiencing my first Belo Horizonte summer. Now I understand why Brazilians take so many showers every day. If the sun is shining, you walk outside and immediately start to sweat (that's before walking up and down any of the monstrous hills). It's one thing to experience 95 degree weather when you are moving from one air-conditioned environment to another, but without the air-conditioning, it can get a little steamy.
Time to get this posted before the laptop juice runs out. Wishing you all the best of holidays and a great 2007! Thanks again for all of your support.
Christmas here is celebrated on Christmas Eve. Late yesterday afternoon, I went to my supervisors' country house to spend the holiday with their family. They invited a few people that didn't have family here, so there was one other non-family-member there in addition to me. She and I actually bumped into each other at the bus stop yesterday afternoon on the way there. It's a beautiful place about 45 minutes outside the city, with gorgeous landscaping and lots of wildlife. It was a very peaceful place to spend the holiday, and one special touch was that they were playing English Christmas songs on the stereo when we arrived. We ate Christmas dinner at 9:00 at night, and then some played games and others watched movies until midnight, when everybody gathered around the artifical Christmas tree and exchanged hugs and then opened presents. I actually didn't stay up much later than that, and we were warned not to be up and moving around before 10 the next morning, which was not a problem for me.
Other than my family, the one thing that was really missing from Christmas for me was church. That was largely due to laziness on my part--I could have gone by myself to a service at my roommate's church downtown on Sunday morning or gone to the evening service at my church, but it would have caused me to be waiting a long time for a bus downtown in the dark. My parents called me today, so I got to catch up with them and hear how they're spending the holiday. Pretty much everybody I've heard from in North America (including Canada) has remarked on their lack of snow and higher temperatures than normal.
Yesterday afternoon, I went with my roommate and her daughter and son-in-law to eat lunch at her family's house nearby. It was one of the "unofficial" events for their multi-day holiday celebrations. I got to see her two brothers and one sister from out-of-town and a few of her other relatives. Because it wasn't one of the "official" gatherings, only a small fraction of the huge family was present. I also was the object of teasing when one of the great-nephews started to imitate me ordering a pizza over the phone from the family pizza business last week. Apparently, my grammar wasn't exactly correct (the word "pizza" is feminine, not masculine--who knew??).
Saturday morning, I went downtown to the Central Market to buy the ingredients for a fruit basket to take to my supervisors' house. Talk about crowded! Lots of people doing lots of last-minute shopping...this is, after all, a last-minute country.
Friday night was our employee Christmas party for the projects in Liberdade and São Gabriel. Due to limited funds this year, it was held in the party room of my supervisors' apartment building. My secret assignment was to take individual photos of each employee and volunteer over the past few weeks. When I was the first to arrive at 7:45 (and to think that I was worried about being late; it was supposed to start at 7:00...), I went up to her apartment to mount the pictures in the magnetic picture frames she bought and put them in special gift bags. As I've previously mentioned on the blog, wrapping and presentation are a VERY big deal here. By the time I finished that task and returned to the party room, most of my colleagues had arrived. We had a very nice dinner and a gift exchange, and everybody received their framed picture and a pannettone (Italian fruit cake), which seems to be a popular gift here.
Thursday morning on a hunch, I called a real estate agency again that had advertised a nice looking, inexpensive apartment on the internet. When I'd called them about the apartment the first time, they told me it was already rented. I thought I'd call back to confirm, and this time they said it was available again. I made an appointment to see it that afternoon, but it turns out that just means you go to the real estate office and leave your identity document in exchange for getting the keys to the place you want to see, then you take yourself there and back. I was hoping (ha!) that a real estate agent would accompany me and drive me there, but instead, I had to take the two buses to the real estate office, one taxi and one bus to get to the apartment, two more buses to get back to the real estate office, and two more buses to get home. Whew!
I'm catching myself getting very culturally agravated at the non-user-friendliness of the Brazilian rental economy. To sign an apartment lease, you have to produce an inane amount of documentation (e.g. proof that you earn a salary at least three times the rent, proof of previous residency, etc.) for yourself and two co-signers, who are financially responsible if you don't pay your rent. That's if you don't qualify for one of the other rental mechanisms--leaving a huge deposit or using property that you already own as collateral and leaving a smaller deposit. "Unfurnished" apartments really mean COMPLETELY unfurnished--no appliances, toilet seats, lightbulbs, curtains, etc. I'm lucky that this place has cupboards in the bedroom and kitchen. I'm going tomorrow with one of my supervisors to try to sign the contract, so we'll see if it works out.
Last year, I missed out on summer, but this year, I'm experiencing my first Belo Horizonte summer. Now I understand why Brazilians take so many showers every day. If the sun is shining, you walk outside and immediately start to sweat (that's before walking up and down any of the monstrous hills). It's one thing to experience 95 degree weather when you are moving from one air-conditioned environment to another, but without the air-conditioning, it can get a little steamy.
Time to get this posted before the laptop juice runs out. Wishing you all the best of holidays and a great 2007! Thanks again for all of your support.
posted by Christine Piggee at
6:24 PM
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