easter

It's Thursday already? What happened to this week?

Here's how we celebrated Easter on Sunday.

Breakfast. American breakfast.

Breakfast here is more like our lunch. There is always bread, but not toast, it's French bread. This bread is paired with some combination of butter, cheese, jam or deli meat. Sometimes there's cake and there is usually fruit. It's tasty in it's own way but we had been missing American style french toast, hash browns and bacon. So we made some. And it was delicious.

This isn't a celebration it's more of a documentation. This is a picture of one of probably 150 Lojas Americanas stores in Rio. It translates directly to "American store" but much to our dismay upon entering it for the first time a few months ago, it contains little to no American products. What it does have is one of the largest selections of Brazilian Easter eggs. Instead of Easter baskets, Easter is celebrated by buying these large, hollow chocolate eggs that are filled with toys for children or more chocolate for adults. We noticed these displays entering area stores about a month ago and were quite confused at first. They are like giant lattices hung over the aisles of stores that these eggs hang from. It's strange because the displays block the light fixtures so the aisles become very dark and cave-like.

So after breakfast we went to Ipanema. This marked the first time I have ever been to a beach on Easter. We soaked up some sun and then walked along this section of road which is usually quite busy and free-way like but was closed off for the day for long-boarders and the like. 

Then, thanks to the wonder of technology, I was able to FaceTime during my family's Easter gathering and say hello to everyone. Seriously, I don't know what people did before the internet. It makes being away ten thousand times easier.

This week I've been full time teaching, which has been exhausting but very enjoyable. I taught a really fun lesson on Tuesday about taste that tied in Green Eggs and Ham. I read the book then asked students about how they thought Green Eggs and Ham might taste. I then explained that Sam I Am had left me a new green concoction that he wanted everyone to try. It was green-colored pudding, but boy did it look disgusting. Kudos to me for making the pudding too thick. I even brought green-colored orange juice for my lactose intolerant fella, which looked equally gross. The kids totally bought it. The majority of the class predicted that it would taste bad. They were all very surprised after trying it. We talked about what it tasted like (sweet, creamy, good) then predicted what it was that they ate. It was one of those lessons that I had a lot of fun doing.

My birthday is tomorrow and I still have no idea how I want to celebrate. Maybe something will come to me? It's so beautiful here, I think I could go anywhere and call it a celebration.