Connections

Connections here are like the wind -
-- they come and go, sometimes with ferocity, always with a lot of pollution....
We lost all communication with the world beyond the immediate reach of my cell phone (which then promptly ran out of credits), about 8 days ago. The connection remained down for nearly 5 days, and then came back only intermittently.
The phone was easy to remedy. The internet was not. It took this luxury palace of a place 6 days to restore all connections. No explanation.
Much like the laundry here.... no knows why there are black smears on Alex's white business shirts- not even me and I put them in the drier!
Mind you, no other piece of clothing got the smears. Just the white business shirts.... ARGH!!! I could not of the life of me explain to the laundry lady what I wanted her to do. I kept saying something akin to 'boil the nuts' instead of wash in warm water please... because she gave me such a look! Anyway, the problem is now solved.
We are getting ready to move - finally!!!! In 2 weeks I get to try it all over again in my own apartment.

While a fine residence hotel is nothing to sneeze at- the experience of making a temporary home out of one for 2 months is challenging nonetheless.

Try playing soccer in the "courtyard" and not kick one of the many decorative lights, crush the withering plants, or mangle the droopy red flowers. And don't forge to tell your children NOT to pick up the left over cigareet butts in the grass.
Ohh- but we have fun, and usually get a couple other kids from the hotel to join in.

I can say we have some very interesting neighbors. So when all else fails, I turn my attention to them:
Neighbor A) right across the hall: young and hip. big bank roll. lots and lots of really potent ganja. In fact it is often so strong at 9 AM that it floats or clings rather to me as I pass through it to open our apartment door.

Neighbor B) diagonally across from us does lots of singing, chanting and occasionally, screaming. They also burn a lot of incense. The combination of smells on some mornings is like a momentary transport to another place altogether. The maids posted to these rooms would have something else to say, I am sure. But I don't understand enough Portuguese to listen in their conversations.

School is going really well. Tobias and Zachary have made a few friends. Tobias belongs to a posse, Zachary is still working on one. They paint and sing, read and write to various degrees. Zachary now experiments with foods- "but only at school", he explains to me when I try to get him to eat salad at dinner.
Tobias is picking up the language mostly by repeating words over and over and over again. It is a little like have a walking parrot around.
According to Tobias we " do NOT live in Brazil, mommy. we LIVE in New York."
Well, in fact we often think of ourselves as very temporary.

There are so many differences to absorb. One forgets sometimes to just be- I forget to stop trying to understand, to stop cobbling words together in an effort to reach out, to stop and just be still. The stillness in body and the silence of the tongue are as important a part of this process of being here as "fitting in". In the stillness I remember me. In the silence I hear my own voice in a comforting tone, with confidence say, 'okay try again later.' And in those rare moments, I re-connect with the me I packed into 8 suitcases and brought over here.