Our time in Brazil is flying by! It is hard to believe that we are over half-way done with our trip. We settled in very easily because it is the same neighborhood and church ward as last time. In fact, when we went to church, everyone remembered us and came to greet us. That made us feel pretty loved. We have quickly established a daily routine of cleaning, gym, beach, family game nights, etc.
I love being here because it is a break from the crazy busyness of home. For the last few years, I have felt like I am constantly overwhelmed and running from one thing to another. Working at the school, being the YW president, taking care of my family, cleaning the house, etc. is a lot, and I rarely feel like I have any time to relax and do things that I love. That explains why I was 2 years behind on my scrapbook and have blogged so infrequently over the last few years. Brazil has become a place of peace and relaxation for me. The pace of life is so much slower, and there are much fewer distractions that keep me away from spending time with my family. We play games every day, watch movies together, go for walks on the beach, and venture out to various places whenever possible. Oh how I love these tender moments with my boys. I will treasure them always.
All that being said, my place of relaxation is Jonathon's place of extra work and stress. He loves it too, but he is working so hard. He has his class and research here on top of trying to keep up with his two other jobs at home. It is a lot for him, and he is doing the best he can to manage all of that and still spend time with us. His class has been a success so far. He only had room for about 25 students to attend his class and then work with him to sequence their genomes. When the class registration opened up, it was so popular that it filled immediately with a long waitlist. In order to accomodate as many as possible, Jonathon opened up the lectures to some of the others who wanted to attend. He has had 46 people regulalry at his lectures and observing the processes in the lab. He wished he could help everyone, but there just isn't time, but at least they are getting some exposure to Nanopore and genomic sequencing. By the end of the class, they are hoping to have many good genomes of Brazilian bacteria, plants, and animals. What a worthwhile and important work Jonathon is helping to move forward!
Before we came, we made a bucket list of things we wanted to do before we left Brazil. One of my hopes was to attend a Brazilian soccer game (football here). I missed out on the opportunity last time and wanted to experience that piece of Brazilian culture. Emilio is such a great friend and made it happen this week. He drove us there, attended with us, and helped us work through all the logistics. Trying to buy tickets through the Brazilian system was such a pain. We downloaded two different apps, made accounts, set up face id, etc, but when we tried to enter the game, we still had issues. It took a bit of finagling, but they finally let us in.
The game was held at beautiful Fonte Nova stadium, which hosted some of the World Cup games in 2014. It was Bahia against Minas Gerais. We arrived very early to beat traffic and to make sure we could get in ok. I am glad we did because of our ticket issues. After we got through the gates, we chose our seats, bought some coxinhas for dinner, and enjoyed watching the pre-game warmups.
When the game started, the energy escalated and the fans were all in. They stood the entire game, participated in coordinated cheers, yelled at the refs on seemingly every play, and went crazy when Bahia scored about 50 minutes into the match.
The experience was exactly what I expected, and I loved it for that reason. The fans were insane, the game was close and low scoring, the players were flopping all over the field, and the atmosphere was electric... The perfect cultural experience! And for once in my life, I was so glad that I don't speak Portuguese. Haha! I am positive the swear words were flying all around me by the diehard fans. I just got to laugh and enjoy the game.
The match was 1-0 with just seconds left when MG scored a goal. That sent the match into stoppage time tied at 1. Finally, with less than a minute left, Bahia scored a beautiful goal, and the stadium erupted. Fans all around me were cheering, giving high fives, and going wild. The man behind me patted my shoulders enthusiastically and cheered with me. Suddenly, the whole stadium was full of best friends cheering on their team! That goal essentially ended the game and completed a perfect experience. So fun!
Another fun thing we got to do this week was visit the Salvador zoo. It is a small zoo with a limited number of animals, but they are very different animals than we generally see in the U.S. They are mostly native animals to Brazil and included lots of wild cats, tons of birds, many types of monkeys, huge alligagtors/crocodiles, and the chunkiest hippopotomus you ever did see. We enjoyed walking around, watching the interesting animals, seeing the beautiful native plants and flowers, and interacting with the monkeys and birds. The cute little monkeys that live at the zoo (not part of the zoo) are always our favorites. They run and play everywhere. Hyrum always gets a kick out of them!
The other thing that we have really been enjoying is the Brazilian food! We do miss a lot of American food when we are here because the grocery stores are definitely lacking variety, but they have some things that are just so delicious that we can't find back home. One night we went to the orla (boardwalk by the ocean) and got tapiocas. We each got a savory tapioca and a dessert one. They were so good! Another night we ordered Dominos pizza and got the most amazing dessert pizza with the order. It was a pizza crust, vanilla pudding mixture, brigadeiro chocolate topping, and m and m's. Yum! Not sure why that hasn't caught on in the U.S. We also live across the street from The Best Acai... that is the name of the place, but it is also amazing! You can serve yourself as much acai or ice cream as you want and then add whatever toppings you desire. We have been twice now. Acai is just so much better here. And of course, coxinhas (like a chicken dumpling) and pao de queijo (cheese bread) are always favorites, and we have them for lunch several times a week. I'm glad we have a gym so we don't gain too much weight while we are here. :)
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