Our Adventures

Tuesday -  Woke up earlier than either Jon or I wanted to. Shawn was awakened by a little munchkin out playing in the hotel hallway and once he’s up, he’s not as quiet as he thinks he is. Oh well. We’re trying to help Jon safe his hard earned money for his pioneering, so we all stayed in one room. The language barrier was difficult when booking...I thought we were getting a large room with a rollaway, like in the hotel picture on the website. Nope. Standard room. Glad Jon is a good sport! He’s been so helpful, easygoing and fun. I love having a son who is also a friend.  So before breakfast we decided that we should do some laundry today before we left for the Evening Gathering at 1:45 pm. So while eating, I googled where the nearest self-service laundromat was. I now knew I had a cold and instead of the “traditional” Brazilian continental breakfast, I went to the dried oatmeal dispenser, the hot water carafe and the brown sugar bowl and made myself a comfort breakfast. It was

Monday -  We woke up about 7:15ish, went down and had breakfast at the hotel. We then needed to determine how we would get to Embu das Artes. Public transportation would’ve been a city bus, as the metro and train system don’t go out of the city that far. It would take about 90 minutes depending on traffic. An Uber would shave off about 30 minutes, so we opted for that. I had the Uber app on my phone, but had never set up an account. I thought I’d just sign in thru Facebook...that messed things up as Uber expected me to have a US phone number as part of my account set up. It wouldn’t accept my Brazilian number, so fortunately Jon had his already set up and was able to summon an Uber which arrived in a matter of minutes! As we drove through and out of São Paulo, the poverty is striking. The favelas are small houses/apartments built one on top of each other. They are shacks at best, with tarps covering roofs & huge tubs to collect rainwater for everyday activities (bathing, l