Patricia has a new bike!!!

I have been encouraging to her to do more exercise, and a good way would be to ride her bike to school with me. She accepted the idea, and yesterday we finally found her a bike. Of course, finding a bike for her is not simple because it has to be the right size, a woman's bike, and most importantly the right colors. We went to a three or four different places with no luck. On the way home from school I saw a bike store that I'd never seen before and found a bike that fit at least the first two criteria. yesterday we went there to check them out. After looking at a few different bikes, Patricia was only considering one of the bikes. The bike was not the right size, so the salesman had to go get another bite that was 2 inches larger. When Patricia asked him to go get the other bike she said that if it fit well she just go ahead and get that bike, though she showed no enthusiasm for the bike. The poor salesman was rather discouraged with Patricia and her apparent lack of enthusiasm. He didn't even want to go get the bike because he is so accustomed to people coming in so excited to buy a bike. He went and got the boss who turned out to be Brazilian. He was a great guy and quickly Patricia started to show more interest. Also the larger by turned out to be gray and white instead of black and gray, which Patricia liked a lot better. By the time we left Patricia was so excited about her new bike.

Of course, we had one more task to do. We had to find the right helmet, which meant the right colors and small enough to fit her head. We ended up buying a pretty pink and gray helmet that was made for an eight year old. So now Patricia is ready to bike to her heart's content (I hope it's a lot).

Life in a Married Ward

The last time that I was in a married Ward was when I was 18, living in Yuma. Patricia, of course, has never experienced anything other than our YSA branch. So in reality it is a new experience for both of us. I like having a complete Ward with children, youth, and old people. We have an excellent Ward. Patricia loves having children around. Today was fast and testimony meeting (because stake conferences next week) and Patricia loved hearing the three little girls and a boy who bore their testimony today. Even the mother with the three psychotic young boys who never stopped going crazy during sacrament didn't affect Patricia's opinion that children are all darling. this lady went up to bare her testimony, which meant two of her boys came with her. They were running around screaming, while the bishopric was trying to calm them down and in reality catch them first then try to call them. Patricia just thought that they were funny and cute. The rest of the church wanted to strangle them. It must be nice to be a new member of the church when everything is new and lovely. Everyone is so impressed with Patricia and her vibrant testimony.

I also enjoy not having a calling. In my previous YSA branch I was a clerk for the last 2 1/2 years and a teacher for 1 1/2 of those years, so church meetings were always very busy. An average Sunday was eight to nine hours at the church, but now I go for three hours only. Unfortunately but happily our Bishop has been prompt to give us new callings after only two weeks. Patricia is the Young Women's secretary. She accepted the callings promptly without even knowing what exactly she was accepting. However, today the Young Women's president explained the responsibilities of her calling, and luckily she is still excited. One of the young women is Brazilian and does not know English well. She is so self-conscious that she feels embarrassed to come to church. Patricia will be a big help to this Brazilian girl especially, but I think she will be an excellent secretary and an asset to the entire program. The Primary and the Young Women's organization duke it out for her, and I guess the Young Women's organization won.

I am the assistant clerk, which I think is an ideal calling, because I do not have the early-morning meetings and the responsibility of doing all of the reports. My principal responsibility will be maintaining the membership records, which is a large task in itself. The Ward clerk Has no assistant clerks, so he does as much as he can do himself, which is basically to take care of the financial records. I'm excited to be in the clerk's office again.

Patricia's two little kids

A fellow grad student decided to get rid of his bearded dragons, so he sent out an e-mail to the grad students offering them to whoever wanted them. Patricia got excited about the prospect of owning these lizards, so I sent him an e-mail right back. However, another grad student had already claimed them after just 10 minutes! Patricia was already excited about getting bearded dragon, so we looked into buying one. Then Patricia changed her mind and wanted to buy her own snake. This plan was short-lived after she saw my snake eat a rat. Normally my snake quickly kills the rat, but this time it took about five minutes. It was rather gruesome because the rat was bleeding through its mouth and nose, while it was gasping for air. After that traumatizing experience she no longer wanted her own snake.

Fortunately today I was talking to the grad student to claim them, and told her that she was just a few minutes faster than us. Now Patricia is going to buy one. She then said that we could have them if we wanted them still. She is the type that has many turtles, lizards, dogs, and many other types of animals, so she could do without two bearded dragons. Patricia was so excited.

Now Patricia has two new little amusements. They receive a mixture of love and torment or what Patricia calls kindness. As soon as we got them home, Patricia gave them both a bath in warm water. The female (on the right) was calmly sitting in the tub of water, but Patricia thought she wasn't moving around because the water was too hot and she was dying. She got so worried that she already killed her lizard. However, these lizards spend most of their time motionless, and the female was just relaxing and enjoying the bath. Thanks to Patricia they have a nice clean cage with a heat lamp and a UV lamp, and a little perch ... everything they need.

They produced a clutch of eggs last year, so I am hoping they will produce another clutch of eggs this year. Maybe in the next six months we will have another 20 dragons.

Part 1: Meeting the in-laws

(I placed the Botucatu and Avaré pictures on Picasa.)

The last few weeks before going to Brazil we spent all our time outside of work moving into our new apartment. The morning of the day we were supposed to leave for Brazil, we left the house at 7am to wash clothes and my car was missing! I could not find my car anywhere. Finally I found it parked blocking the entrance to the condo complex. The car was still warm meaning that at most a few hours before someone took the car for a spin and ditched it blocking the entrance. Thank goodness nothing was wrong with the ca, except the spare change container was missing. We counted our blessing that nothing happened. We then went to the school to wash 13 loads of laundry. Yes, nearly everything we owned was dirty. Fortunately were able use all the washing machines at the dorms, so 13 loads only took a few hours.

We packed for Brazil a few hours before catching our plane. Needless to say it was a frantic dash to get everything done. We did not have time to finish straightening the house or finish unpacking before leaving for Brazil. Thank goodness were able to get everything done the first week we were back in Miami.

I got to know another part of Brazil. Before I was in relatively small city of 750,000 people in Florianopolis compared to 20,000,000 people that call São Paulo home. We stayed in São Paulo from Saturday July 19 until Tuesday July 22. We were able go to church because it was conveniently ~10 blocks from the Vendramini's apartment.

On Monday Marlene (Patrícia's mother), Patricia, and I went shopping. To arrive at the shopping center required taking 3 subways. The subway was not that full of people because it was the winter holidays. If it had been a normal working day there would no room to stand let alone stand. Thank goodness because I wouldn't have liked to be packed in there like sardines without even space to raise my hand to my head. Shopping does not mean going to the mall and idly checking out the goods. Shopping in downtown São Paulo is outdoor mall of sorts. Each side of the road is lined with 100's of small shops, selling jewelry, tools, shoes, every type of pirated goods from clothes, glasses, and a myriad of other useless things. The streets are so full of people that we could barely move our arms let alone walk down the street. Marlene said that it is so nice to go shopping during the holidays and during the week because the place is nearly empty. I couldn't imagine how it would be if the place was actually full. I was holding the bags of goods with a death grip because the place is full thieves that can steal practically anything without any chance of being caught. For this reason I didn't take my wallet or camera (for this reason I do not have photos of the shopping area). Marlene was the only one with money, and she put it in a little pocket in the front of her pants.

The purpose of our trip was to buy shoes, belt, and tie for me and earings for Patricia. The earings are to be used with her wedding dress, so they were the most important item. We went to about 10 jewelry stores on one street before we arrived at a shoe store where I bought 2 pairs of shoes. Then we were off again looking for more jewelry stores. Most of the stores stuff for women (makes sense, considering who it is that goes shopping). The place was full of jewelry stores. We went to all of them trying to find one pair of earings! After going to 60 jewelry stores (60, no joke), we didn't find the special pair of earings. I thought that she was going to start all over again. I almost died because I was already so tired from walking and carrying bags the whole day, and I was sure Patricia was going to say that we would have to return to all the stores. Luckily she had bought one that she liked but wanted to still try to find one she wanted more. Thanks goodness we were able to go home finally. By the end of the day, I only wanted to sleep. While I slept, Patricia had to fix her dress. I was so happy to not be the bride.

The next day we went to Botucatu where Patricia's family lives. On the way we stopped at a place that makes everything out of corn. They had soup, ice cream, juice, and pie all made from corn. The ice cream was not bad.

The first thing we did was introduce me to Thor their dog. He is a massive English mastiff that is friendly to family and hates strangers. Luckily we adopted me into the family (I gave him frequent snacks to bribe him). Believe it or not, he loves fruits. I fed him papaya, watermellon, oranges, and bananas. I was hoping to have some relaxing days, but that was not on the agenda. There was still numerous things to resolve, people to talk to, and appointments to go to. Finally Friday we all went to Averé where Patricia's family has a vacation house on a reservoir. Unlike the West it is hydroelectric power that is the principal purpose of the reservoir and not water.

The first day we took the boat to explore part of the reservior, which is extensive. The temperature was around 70°F and Patricia and Marlene were wearing jackets and were wrapped in a blanket. On the way back the wind nearly froze them to death. The water was, of course, too cold for swimming (70-75°F). I don't like the cold, but Brazilians who don't have cold weather cannot tolerate the cold not even a cool breeze.

The next day most of her aunts, uncles, and cousins on her mom's side (total 8) came. I'm not accustomed to small families, but it is nice because the house wasn't too loaded with people. Patricia's family likes to eat, so I haven't felt hunger (or anything less than full) in 2 weeks. In Averé we ate so much that I began to think that I better start eating less or I wouldn’t be able to button my tux pants. Patricia's family is really cool and fun to be around. Of course, on Saturday we had a churrasco (Brazilian barbeque) with all the fixings.

I brought my camera and took ~850 pictures...mostly of birds. I took a few pictures of people, too. I was so excited at the variety of birds that I was able to see. I took pictures of probably 15 species of highly colorful birds. I spent 3.5 hours looking at birds in a small patch of trees next to the neighborhood. I had no need to go further because I didn't even see all the species there.

As soon as I can I'll talk about the wedding (Part II) and our honeymoon (Part III).