Viva Brazil!

It is honestly a bit surreal to start this post from my living room in Brazil. Jordan and I have been dreaming about this for three years and we are still a bit dazed over the reality that we are now living it.
Even though we got here on Saturday, today was the first day of reality. School started for the kiddos, I have a fix-it man fixing just about everything in my kitchen. He and I are having a heck of a time communicating, we have resorted to a lot of comical impromptu sign language and equally terrible Portuguese from me and English from him. And yet, we still manage to get the job done.

I was late picking up my children because we are having a tropical rainstorm and the power has been off and on several times. It happened to be off when I needed to take the elevator down to the lobby to meet them. I resorted to take the stairs so I wouldn't be stranded on the elevator, and while the light was on when I started my journey of five flights of stairs, the power went off half way down and I couldn't  see my hand in front of my face. I patted walls while holding Gracie and then I would set her down on the bottom of a flight of stairs and head back up for Eli in his stroller. Needless to say, after taking forever maneuvering down the stairs, there was no bus and no kiddos at the bottom. I managed to remember the word ESCOLA and communicated to the security guards that I was looking for my kids. They were found, a little annoyed/scared/crying that mom wasn't there when they got off the bus but all in once piece.

I have this nifty contraption that's a washer and dryer all in one. The dryer is a hot mess (pun totally intended) and after 5 hours of drying, the clothes were STILL damp. The directions to this machine are all in Portuguese so I thought I restarted the dryer but when I checked on the clothes at hour 6, they were soaking wet instead. Whoops!  We will definitely be trading that baby out for a separate washer and separate dryer.

Despite all of today's ' AHHHHHHHH I live in a foreign country' chaos, I can't even describe how grateful I am to be here. I feel like this is a fresh start for me. As I go through new stages in life as a wife, then a mother, then a mother of multiple kids I have to really focus on tuning into myself or sometimes I get lost. My kids and I all feel this crazy excitement to learn Portuguese and learn about this fascinating new culture. It feels good to have a new sense of purpose. I think this will be good for us all.

I need a blog to journal all of my observations, epiphanies, adventures and pics so we'll see if I can follow through.

Tchau!