The outside

Once again I'm tempted to just go to bed, but they say it takes 21 days to form a habit and I'm not yet in the habit of uploading all my photos the day I take them, so here I am.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by homesickness and culture shock this evening.  I haven't met many people here so far and it's a holiday weekend so they are all off doing their own thing.  Walking around I found myself reluctant to try to even buy an ice cream due to my lack of Portuguese.  Missing my family and my friends and my cat.  I know that this will pass - I will learn Portuguese, I will make new friends, and there is even a cat here that seems to think the cottage belongs to her.  But just now, nothing here is "mine" yet and I'm feeling lonesome.  

I will be teaching every day from tomorrow (Tuesday) through Saturday, with a total of 11 hours this week, so there will no time to feel sorry for myself after tonight.  That will also help, as part of my blues is due to the "newbie jitters".  Once I've had my first few lessons that feeling should ease off. 

Today was warmer, the temperature got up to 27 C / 80 F and it was a little breezy, so I did laundry.  The "normal" setting took over an hour, my poor clothes!  Next time I must use the "rapido 30 minutos" setting.  There is no dryer, so I hung all the clothing out to dry around 12:30 and it was just enough time to barely get dried by dusk. 

While waiting for the laundry, I took some pictures of the outside of the cottage and the grounds. 

This is the shutter holder I described in yesterday's post.  You flip up the little man's head to hold the shutters in place.  Kind of cool and yet slightly creepy at the same time.  I crush your head in my fingers, I crush it!

 The side patio view of my little cottage, with the freestanding classroom visible in the background.

 Now the other side - the classroom is in the foreground and my cottage in the background.

Turning right from that point to look at the main house.

Standing in the middle of the open area, I took a 360 degree video starting and ending with my cottage.

This was taken from the front driveway of the school.  No, the buildings are not tilted; I had to put several photos together into a panorama in order to have a wide enough image to show it all. The end result is slightly distorted, but you can get the general idea.

This gate is on the lower corner of the property, which sits on the corner of the block.  In the above panorama view it would be off the left side of the picture and slightly downhill.  The turret can be seen in the below pics.

 Views of the street taken from the driveway where I took the panorama shots.  The corner gate is down the block to the right in the below photo.

 Looking left.  I haven't explored in this direction yet.

Walking around town a little.  Many of the streets are cobblestone but some are asphalt.

"Pizza you"!  I'm not sure whether this is an insult or a compliment - I guess it depends on whether the pizza is good or not. 

 The bus system is called "Stadtbus" - clearly, the German-Brazilians were instrumental in setting up this town's public transportation. 

 This was in the late afternoon on a day that was 27 C / 80 F, sunny and breezy.  The moisture on the ground from the rain the night before last did not evaporate in the areas that were in deep shade, despite two warm sunny days.

Saving the best for last: the food pictures y'all keep asking for.  

Bacon pate!  How could I possibly not buy this?  NOM!!!! 

Jelly and jam as we know it in the USA is horribly expensive here, as is peanut butter, so I decided to try the Brazilian style jam instead, which has a consistency more like a sticky paste.  It comes in all kinds of interesting flavors.  Shown below are banana and pumpkin-coconut.  I also saw doce de leite (caramel), sugarcane, fig, guava, strawberry, blueberry, and peach, to name a few.

My work here is done.  Boa noite!