Sao Paulo

Well, here we are in Sao Paulo. Two ants in a huge city. Apparently Sao Paulo is the largest city in the southern hemisphere and the third largest in the world. We got here yesterday afternoon after a 6-7 hour bus ride from Paraty and 2 more hours of walking around looking for a hostel. Here is a sample of the scenery we had from the bus.

We are leaving tomorrow afternoon for Iguazu. So as you can imagine anything we see in these two days is barely scratching the surface. We spent most of the day today wandering around the ´centro´ and being tourists. Sao Paulo is a very modern city that reminds us a lot of New York or Buenos Aires- completely different than Paraty.

We walked through the asian part of town and made our way to the ´mercado municipal´ which is a big indoor market where they sell all kinds of meat, cheese, fruit, etc. We ate lunch while we were there- a ham sandwich type thing and fresh mango, papaya, pineapple and kiwi.

After the market we walked a few blocks to a tower called the edificio banespa where we went to the top to get a good view of the city. Neither of us were prepared for what we saw. We knew the city was big, but this is ridiculous. There were skyscrapers and buildings as far as we could see... in every direction! I mean, this made New York look small. We tried to post a video I took so you could get the full 360 feel that we did but this computer couldn´t handle it for some reason. Hopefully the pictures will still give you a good idea.

We are back at our hostel now to rest our feet a little, but we have the address of a Starbucks near us so we might go check it out. Too bad I didn´t bring my apron...
And for those of you who are curious what a hostel looks like, here is the one we are in now. This one is nicer than most and happens to have a good view of the city :)

Hello from Brazil!

We made it into Rio de Janeiro yesterday morning with no problems and immediately caught a bus to our first stop, the little beach town of Paraty (para-chee).  It is really beautiful here but really, no really hot.  Air conditioning is hard to find.  Luckily it has rained both afternoons and cooled things down a bit. 
Paraty is a fun little place with cobblestone streets and colorful buildings.  Today we spent most of the day just wandering up and down the old colonial part of town exploring.  By far the most challenging thing so far is the language.  Brazilian Portuguese is a lot more different from Spanish than we realized.  So far everyone has been very friendly, but it´s hard to know what to order at a restaurant when you can´t understand the menu.  For example, Frango = chicken (notice this looks and sounds nothing like pollo!!!) 

Here are a few pictures from around town that we took this morning. I think we are going to head toward Sao Paulo sometime tomorrow, but we´re still not exactly sure.  That´s it for now!

The day of our trip has finally come! We can't believe it. The last few days have been filled with lots of reminders of how gracious God has been to us through all of this. God has really provided in every way, big and small, not only for this trip, but in all of our circumstances that have led us here. The best part is that we are IN NO WAY deserving of the grace we have been given. That being said, we are so excited to see what God is going to teach us during the next few months and how he might use us.
I've decided not to post our entire itinerary because its just too long. Tomorrow morning we will arrive in Rio and take a bus to Paraty, a small town on the beach south of Rio. We will be there the 22nd-25th, then in Sao Paulo from 26th-28th. After that will will head over to Iguazu Falls for a couple of days and then into Paraguay.

Here we are as we are getting ready to walk out the door. This will be the last post from the good ol' USA. Ciau!

ONE WEEK, PEOPLE!

Tomorrow we are one week away from the trip. ONE WEEK, PEOPLE! We have been super busy the past week or two so I will give a quick recap.  Last week we made the trip to Atlanta for our Brazilian visas. Turns out the people there are extremely friendly which I was not expecting at all so that was nice.

Seth played drums for the last time at church last Sunday. We are really going to miss Southside even though we're only going to be gone 3 1/2 months. We have really come to love that church. Great people.

And speaking of great people, the highlight of the week was a get together at Jim and Sarah's house for Joshua and Peli who were in town for a few days. It was so good to see everyone again. I was telling Seth as we were leaving that I felt like we had been with family. :)

Oh, and I also had a good visit with my friend Michelle and her sweet little daughter, Sophie. No pictures, though because I completely forgot to take any. You'll just have to trust me that Sophie is extremely cute!