So this is more of a catch-up post, as I've had a number of loyal followers ask me to post again. To be exact, three of them. I told Shaun that was probably the extent of my followers, but to appease the masses I will oblige with this post of hodge-podge items.
A few weeks ago we had a Fiat Dublo rented, which has seven seats. As you may remember, we have had difficulty finding a car that will fit us all. We went up to Recife to apply for our permanent residency, based on the fact that Jonas is a little brasileiro. We had to go to the Federal Police for Foreigners (In Brazil there are a number of types of police, such as military and civil police). We had tried once before, but needed to have certified copies of every single page of our passport as well as our children's. We had been told by our lawyers that the kids didn't need this done, and also had relied on someone's information that you only had to get certified copies of the pages with the actual passport information. We also needed two passport type pictures of all of us. So we headed back up to Recife once we had that all together. The Federal Police offices we have been using are at the airport. One is for Foreigners, and issues visas, the other is for Brazilians, and issues passports and certificates of legal status, once you get your visa from the foreigner side. We've dealt with the Brazilian one when we applied for Jonas' passport, and surprisingly we got his passport within a week. These police in the same way as Canada has police. The Federal Police are more a paperwork processing for visas, passports, etc. They make sure that you submit all the right documents, and then they issue you the certificates. We are getting really familiar with some of the government employees there. Anyways, it took around three hours to wait for our turn and then process everything at the Federal Police for Foreigners. Unfortunately we had a fee because we had stayed in the country without extending our visa. This was super irritating because when we were there the week before we were still within our time limit, but when we didn't have all the right documents for our permanent visa we didn't think about extending our tourist visas, which would have been legitimate to do and quite easy. Our tourist visas (and I think most tourist visas) state we can stay in the country for 90 days and extend for a further 90 days, up to 180 days in a calendar year. There is apparently no problem with extending it. We just didn't think of it because we knew we were legally in the country because we have a Brazilian child. So we got charged for 5 days x 5 people. Fortunately for us, we don't have to pay the charge until we leave Brazil and then want to return. And although it is a lot of money for us to in terms of it being unnecessary, relatively speaking it is very cheap to stay in Brazil illegally. It costs R$8.50/day up to a maximum of R$850.
The road to Recife from Maragogi is really windy for the first 45 minutes (of a 2 to 2 1/2 hour drive). We have discovered that Lyla has a tendency to get carsick...notice the grey pallor. The way back is better because it is the end of the journey that she gets sick. She doesn't throw up often, but just feels terrible.
In general everyone else does fine on the drive.
Okay, maybe not Seth. He sometimes gets a little squirrelly.
Here's a picture of sugar cane fields on fire when we were driving home at night. The terrain here is hectares and hectares of rolling hills, and from what we see, the sugar cane is harvested by hand. I missed the picture of that during the daylight, but there are dozens of workers in the field hacking away at the burnt sugar cane.
We got the kids a decent soccer ball, and Hazel had to put on her soccer socks and shoes. It totally went with the little skirt she had on.
Oh no! A soccer injury!
She truly is a futebol player already....
Because you haven't seen Jonas for around three weeks, I tried to pick out a picture for each week. This would be Week 7. Let me tell you, it is hard to pick out a picture looking through all my files, and now that I see this one I think I could have found something better. But I guess you need to see him in all lights, so I'm not going to look through them again. Way too much like work.
My attempt at artistic.
My dear friend Bel did Profession of Faith two weeks ago.
In the same service the church that we attend ordained a missionary to the south of Brazil.
Week 8
No one is sick of this yet.
He will be her size before we know it. Right now she can only carry him a minute or two at a time before she's exhausted.
One of the many moments of overwhelming love coming from Lyla. Typically it comes in the form of a song "Jonas I love you. Jonas I love you." Also every single day her prayer sounds something like this: "Thank you for Jonas. Thank you for mommy loving Jonas. Thank you for Jonas could be healthy and thirsty. Thank you that Jonas can have yummy milk from mommy. Thank you for that we could all love Jonas. Thank you that God the Holy Spirit. Thank you that Jesus could die on the cross for our sins. Amen."
Jonas and Daddy talking to Uncle Randy.
Just a picture to demonstrate his chub.
Seth's idea of a relaxing way to read books. I don't remember if I've written that we don't have a couch, so we have this mattress set up in the living room to sit on and we have six kitchen chairs that came with the house that are literally falling apart. They have foam coming out the bottom or the side, and are wobbling like crazy. But we make do.
In other news we also have finally figured out a school schedule that seems to work for everyone. We have school from 9:30-10:30, have a half hour recess (in which I can start making lunch, which is the hot meal of the day). Then school from 11:00-12:00. Then lunch until 1:30. We spend a lot of that time doing devotions and singing, the kids have memory work each week and they pick songs they want to sing. Then from 1:30-2:00 Seth and Hazel rotate each day doing Rosetta Stone. Then from 2:00-3:00 they watch Backyardigans and Dora in Portuguese on TV. This is a work in progress, but everyone seems to feel this is an acceptable schedule, although Jonas sometimes gets hungry at the wrong times. Even then, we have been working with the same books long enough that I can direct them through the distractions.
Aren't they adorable? The other day they called each other best friends... music to a mama's ears. And of course they have little fights daily, but the amount they play together and that they play so well is really a blessing.
Well, I think that you are all caught up in general. Stay tuned, I have a couple posts planned regarding Hazel's birthday week, Shaun's foray into making coconut oil at home, and our neighbourhood and neighbourhood kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment