It’s been another great week in São Paulo!  Michael has been staying very busy with work and I am staying busy with fun.  🙂  This week I went to lunch with 8 other ex-pat ladies — a couple of whom I had met before and some new friends too.  We tried out a new spot, D’olivino which is participating in SP’s Restaurant Week and I think I was literally there for almost 4 hours, doing lunch the Brazilian way and enjoying getting to know new friends.

I also had another fun day with my Brazilian friend, Fernanda, and her kids.  We drove out to São Bernardo do Campo, where she and her husband used to live, to go furniture shopping, but stopped first to drop the kids off at her in-law’s home.  Her mother in-law made us a great lunch of feijoada, rice, beans, chicken and salad.  It was so fun getting to see their home and have a meal together.  Then Fernanda and I hit the stores in search of a guarda-roupa (wardrobe).  After some serious shopping, Fernanda found the right one, and then she showed me around some other parts of the town.  We went into one store that was particularly overwhelming – it had EVERYTHING from toys & games, to pots & pans, to craft supplies & toiletries – but it was all crammed into a small space.  The photo below doesn’t do it justice, but suffice it to say that I got a little claustrophobic.  But, the prices are cheaper there so…

Just a glimpse

This weekend, Michael and I went to our first movie here at the Kinoplex in our neighborhood.  We saw Drive, which Michael was pretty fired up about (and I can watch just about anything with Ryan Gosling in it).  Somehow we got tickets for R $13 each (about USD $7.50) which is SUPER cheap here.  We had to choose between “Meia” tickets (which means, “Half”) and “Inteira” (which means, “Entire”) and the only difference we could detect was the price.  Meia tickets were half the price of Inteira.  We walked in and I was completely convinced that we were going to get kicked out half-way through the movie.  Shockingly, this didn’t happen, and we got the inteira movie for meia the price.  Still a total mystery, but we’re fine with how it turned out.  (If anyone has any insight into this, by all means, please share the wisdom.  We thought it may have to do with seat selection since you select your seats in advance, but our seats were completely normal so I don’t think that was it…)

Drinks after the movie. Big fan of the Original (Brazilian Beer).

Today we checked out our fifth church here.  Their morning service is traditional and in English and then they have an evening, contemporary service in Portuguese.  We went this morning and really enjoyed it.  Then we met up with friends after to check out the markets in Bixiga – a cool little Italian neighborhood that has a great antique, flea market every Sunday.

Bixiga

Stands at the market

Coco water from the coco!

We also had lunch in Bixiga and experienced the LARGEST filet parmesan EVER.  It easily fed our table of 6.  And please notice how the meats come with rice & fries.  We tried desperately to substitue fries for veggies but…it didn’t really translate.  For some reason rice & fries are the normal sides.

Largest filet parm EVER. Seriously -- that thing is all ONE piece of meat.

All in all it was a great week, and each day, slowly but surely, we are feeling more and more comfortable here.  More and more at home.

View from our balcony.