So we have finished our project. The plant is producing glass and that means we are done!!! We've packed up the house, taken care of the paperwork and moved back home to Michigan.
I've decided to start a different blog. This one is about my art, writing and volunteer adventures. You can see it when you go to burlapnbeads.com .
Thank you all for your interest in our Brasilian Adventure. We look forward to seeing you all in Michigan.
Tchau, Pam, Blake, Garrett, Tootsie and Simba.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Up and running.....
So the factory is finally running, pulling about 700 tons a day to eventually be 800 tons a day. Blake is still in the process of handing everything over to the plant, and we don't really know when we will be out of here. We would like to be home in time to enjoy Michigan summer. Boats, beer and the Sandbar. Sigh......something to look forward to.
Fall has come and gone and winter is upon us. We are now wearing long sleeves, sweaters, jeans and real shoes!! The nights get down to the low 40's and we have heaters in the bedrooms. BRRRRRR!!!!!!! Day time is usually in the hi 50's to low 70's. It rains occasionally but not usually for very long.
The sugar cane is being harvested this week. Large farm equipment collects the cane and then shoots it into massive open trailers connected to tractors. These tractors then pull the trailers over to the trucks that then transport the cane to the processing facilities. The roads are FULL of these huge, lumbering trucks that go VERY slow, causing traffic to back up for miles. (note to self, when asking God for patience, remember she has a sense of humor and will send you a reason to need it!)
Garrett has been keeping up with his schooling very well and is most especially proud of his reading skills. He has been reading the Magic Tree house series, after devouring the entire Captain Underpants series. He finished his typing just now and reported 18 words per minute. Impressive, big man!! We've picked up the Usborne Internet-linked science encyclopedia which is very well put together. For science today we reviewed momentum and inertia and then moved onto friction, drag and air resistance. The book gives websites we can go check out to play games related to the lessons of the day. This is way more fun than when Blake and I were in school.
Blake is really trying to make sure that the people who are now running the factory understand where all the spare parts are, what they are for and who is in charge of taking care of it. This is a critical part of the project. After spending $160 million dollars on a factory, it is of utmost importance to have well-educated people at the helm. Blake is working diligently to make sure that the people have everything they need. I'm so proud of him :)
In the meantime, we will just have to wait and see how long this process will take before we can cruise back home. By the way, for those of you who are wondering whether or not we are home sick the answer is yes, of course. We would LOVE to be home, enjoying warm weather, going out on the boat, speaking to everyone in English, using really thick, soft toilet paper. But the fact is, we need to control our exit. If we leave too soon, the factory won't be run as effectively as it needs to be, and then all of the time and preparation put into building it will be for nothing. We've made it 12 months. It really is only a matter of a few weeks more at this point. So we just do the best we can and enjoy the process. That's all that really matters anyway. Our family is healthy, happy and as strong as titanium.
I'll post again soon. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your comments. Tchau for now, Pam
Fall has come and gone and winter is upon us. We are now wearing long sleeves, sweaters, jeans and real shoes!! The nights get down to the low 40's and we have heaters in the bedrooms. BRRRRRR!!!!!!! Day time is usually in the hi 50's to low 70's. It rains occasionally but not usually for very long.
The sugar cane is being harvested this week. Large farm equipment collects the cane and then shoots it into massive open trailers connected to tractors. These tractors then pull the trailers over to the trucks that then transport the cane to the processing facilities. The roads are FULL of these huge, lumbering trucks that go VERY slow, causing traffic to back up for miles. (note to self, when asking God for patience, remember she has a sense of humor and will send you a reason to need it!)
Garrett has been keeping up with his schooling very well and is most especially proud of his reading skills. He has been reading the Magic Tree house series, after devouring the entire Captain Underpants series. He finished his typing just now and reported 18 words per minute. Impressive, big man!! We've picked up the Usborne Internet-linked science encyclopedia which is very well put together. For science today we reviewed momentum and inertia and then moved onto friction, drag and air resistance. The book gives websites we can go check out to play games related to the lessons of the day. This is way more fun than when Blake and I were in school.
Blake is really trying to make sure that the people who are now running the factory understand where all the spare parts are, what they are for and who is in charge of taking care of it. This is a critical part of the project. After spending $160 million dollars on a factory, it is of utmost importance to have well-educated people at the helm. Blake is working diligently to make sure that the people have everything they need. I'm so proud of him :)
In the meantime, we will just have to wait and see how long this process will take before we can cruise back home. By the way, for those of you who are wondering whether or not we are home sick the answer is yes, of course. We would LOVE to be home, enjoying warm weather, going out on the boat, speaking to everyone in English, using really thick, soft toilet paper. But the fact is, we need to control our exit. If we leave too soon, the factory won't be run as effectively as it needs to be, and then all of the time and preparation put into building it will be for nothing. We've made it 12 months. It really is only a matter of a few weeks more at this point. So we just do the best we can and enjoy the process. That's all that really matters anyway. Our family is healthy, happy and as strong as titanium.
I'll post again soon. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your comments. Tchau for now, Pam
Friday, April 10, 2009
Birthdays!!
Garrett and Blake both have their birthdays this month. Garrett turns 9 today and Blake will be 39 on Tuesday. With Easter between them, our weekend is proving to be very busy! Garrett is having a birthday party here at the house with his friends. We will be making Garrett's favorite food , fried rice, for lunch and a chocolate birthday cake for dessert.
Tomorrow for Easter, we have invited a LOT of people, most of them work for Guardian, or are on the heat-up team (these folks come in from all over the world specifically to heat-up the furnace which is a very tricky ordeal). I'm not exactly sure who all is coming, but I do know that I will be BBQ'ing for quite a while. Blake and I went to the store the other night and stocked up on meat, beer, cheese and pineapples. Most of you are probably wondering "Where is the ham?". Well, there wasn't a single ham at the store, but there was a TON of fish. Cod to be exact. Brasilians eat fish on Good Friday and then again for Easter dinner. Since my hubby doesn't like fish, we chose to go against the grain and cook picanha (yummy red meat).
The weather has cooled off since summer but, it is still usually in the hi 70's to mid 80's most days. Our BBQ should be quite a bit of fun, and I'll make a birthday cake for Blake (ssshh don't tell him) to surprise him and get everyone to sing him Happy Birthday!
Happy Easter to everyone reading this. I'll post again soon. Pam
Tomorrow for Easter, we have invited a LOT of people, most of them work for Guardian, or are on the heat-up team (these folks come in from all over the world specifically to heat-up the furnace which is a very tricky ordeal). I'm not exactly sure who all is coming, but I do know that I will be BBQ'ing for quite a while. Blake and I went to the store the other night and stocked up on meat, beer, cheese and pineapples. Most of you are probably wondering "Where is the ham?". Well, there wasn't a single ham at the store, but there was a TON of fish. Cod to be exact. Brasilians eat fish on Good Friday and then again for Easter dinner. Since my hubby doesn't like fish, we chose to go against the grain and cook picanha (yummy red meat).
The weather has cooled off since summer but, it is still usually in the hi 70's to mid 80's most days. Our BBQ should be quite a bit of fun, and I'll make a birthday cake for Blake (ssshh don't tell him) to surprise him and get everyone to sing him Happy Birthday!
Happy Easter to everyone reading this. I'll post again soon. Pam
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Diamonds
Today is the day we've been waiting for. Blake and his crew are turning on the burners in the furnace to start "heat-up". After 51 (?) weeks since ground breaking, the furnace has been started!!!!!!!!!!! The heat-up crew has been arriving for the past week and a half, and every hotel in Tatui, as well as half the hotels of Sorocaba are booked. It's been pretty intense. Blake hasn't really had a day off in a few weeks now.
Garrett and I are still home-schooling, and I have settled in with 3 english students and the Friday art class. (The cooking class has been cancelled due to her new college class schedule). I have been keeping the agenda up to date, and running a pretty tight ship. From out of the blue the other day, Garrett asked me about diamonds. "Mom, why does it take so long to make diamonds?" he asked. I replied "Diamonds are created by extreme pressure and time. Unless the rock goes through this transformation, it will remain just a lump of coal." To which he replied, "What does transformation mean?" I told him," the difference between change and transformation is the like a traffic light can change from red to green. It doesn't stay one or the other, it just changes. Transformation is a process, like cooking a turkey. You start off with this cold, slimy dead thing, and then through the transformation of cooking it, it becomes your dinner. The same thing with diamonds. Their value comes from their time dealing with the pressure that makes them what they are."
Pretty deep stuff, huh? Hope all is well with you and yours. I will post again soon. Pam
Garrett and I are still home-schooling, and I have settled in with 3 english students and the Friday art class. (The cooking class has been cancelled due to her new college class schedule). I have been keeping the agenda up to date, and running a pretty tight ship. From out of the blue the other day, Garrett asked me about diamonds. "Mom, why does it take so long to make diamonds?" he asked. I replied "Diamonds are created by extreme pressure and time. Unless the rock goes through this transformation, it will remain just a lump of coal." To which he replied, "What does transformation mean?" I told him," the difference between change and transformation is the like a traffic light can change from red to green. It doesn't stay one or the other, it just changes. Transformation is a process, like cooking a turkey. You start off with this cold, slimy dead thing, and then through the transformation of cooking it, it becomes your dinner. The same thing with diamonds. Their value comes from their time dealing with the pressure that makes them what they are."
Pretty deep stuff, huh? Hope all is well with you and yours. I will post again soon. Pam
Saturday, February 14, 2009
February
February has been busy down here. Garrett is typing up to 10 words a minute and reading very, very well. He has been craving A&W lately, especially their root beer! I was chatting with a girlfriend (a fellow ex-patriot) the other day about all of the food we love and miss back at home. Biscuits with sausage gravy, chili dogs, Oreo cookies, pre-made pie crusts, fresh milk 24/7, pastrami on rye, fresh mushrooms...... Of course we were starving by the time we were done, but it sure was fun!
Blake's project is coming along steadily. Some days are more difficult than others, but overall it is going well.
I have continued teaching English classes and may have even picked up another student! I'll know more later this month. I am also teaching a girlfriend of mine how to cook on Monday afternoons. So far we have made Shepherd's pie (browned ground beef with onions and mashed potatoes) with gravy and a side of peas and carrots, sweet and sour chicken and Brazilian white fish with cheesy cream sauce, potatoes and peppers! Her boyfriend is very happy!!!
I brought my Meijer shopping bags here to Brasil and use them all the time. The people at the grocery store first looked at me funny, but have become accustomed to them. Re-usable grocery bags are not commonly seen here, although they are available. The biggest problem is the cost of re-usable bags is really high and the plastic ones are still free. A girlfriend of mine knows the owner of our local grocery store and is going to talk with him about the mess plastic bags are making all over the world. Hopefully, we will see the price of the re-usables go way down and the plastic ones no longer be free.
Well that's about it for now. I hope this note finds everyone healthy and well. Tchau for now, Pam
Blake's project is coming along steadily. Some days are more difficult than others, but overall it is going well.
I have continued teaching English classes and may have even picked up another student! I'll know more later this month. I am also teaching a girlfriend of mine how to cook on Monday afternoons. So far we have made Shepherd's pie (browned ground beef with onions and mashed potatoes) with gravy and a side of peas and carrots, sweet and sour chicken and Brazilian white fish with cheesy cream sauce, potatoes and peppers! Her boyfriend is very happy!!!
I brought my Meijer shopping bags here to Brasil and use them all the time. The people at the grocery store first looked at me funny, but have become accustomed to them. Re-usable grocery bags are not commonly seen here, although they are available. The biggest problem is the cost of re-usable bags is really high and the plastic ones are still free. A girlfriend of mine knows the owner of our local grocery store and is going to talk with him about the mess plastic bags are making all over the world. Hopefully, we will see the price of the re-usables go way down and the plastic ones no longer be free.
Well that's about it for now. I hope this note finds everyone healthy and well. Tchau for now, Pam
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Happy New Year!!!
We are back from our Amazon adventure!!! It was very warm and humid, and rained almost every day. We stayed at the TIWA Resort just outside of Manaus. Our guide, Washington, was very helpful and showed us lots of stuff in and around the jungle. He took me (Pam) on a walk through the jungle one morning before breakfast and I was amazed at how many different plants can be used for medicinal purposes! We all went piranha fishing, but didn't catch anything. They were too fast and ate the bate off the hook before we could snag them! We took a jungle survival tour, guided by the Jaguars, a group of ex-military guys. Jeffson, our guide, even managed to start a fire using a battery, steel wool and palm tree shavings in the POURING rain! Impressive. Garrett was followed around by the two Macaws that live at the resort. You can see the male in the pictures scrolling above. That picture was taken about 3 feet outside out door after the bird had been chasing Garrett! We took a boat ride to visit a rubber plantation started by a Portuguese guy in the early 1800's. We took another boat ride to see the meeting of the waters. The Rio Negro and the Solimoe rivers meet but don't blend because they are of different temperatures, speed and chemical make up. They move next to each other for 9 km before they become the Amazon. The Amazon river is actually made up of a bunch of other rivers that come together to become the Amazon.
We spent New Years Eve on a boat outside the port of Manaus. We saw lots of other boats with tons of people partying on them. The fireworks started at midnight and lasted about 15 minutes. The Brasilian new year celebration feel just like the American 4th of July!
I kept a journal of our trip and will put together a scrapbook/report that we can keep and look back on in the years to come. Garrett will be able to keep this and show it to his kids when he grows up!
Hope everyone is happy and healthy for this new year. I'll post again soon! Thanks for keeping in touch. Tchau, Pam
We spent New Years Eve on a boat outside the port of Manaus. We saw lots of other boats with tons of people partying on them. The fireworks started at midnight and lasted about 15 minutes. The Brasilian new year celebration feel just like the American 4th of July!
I kept a journal of our trip and will put together a scrapbook/report that we can keep and look back on in the years to come. Garrett will be able to keep this and show it to his kids when he grows up!
Hope everyone is happy and healthy for this new year. I'll post again soon! Thanks for keeping in touch. Tchau, Pam
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christmas time
So for all of you out there wondering what Christmas is like in Brasil.....here it is! IT'S HOT!!!!! We have spent quite a bit of our time in the past few weeks in the pool! (Thank God we got a house with a pool!) We don't have air conditioning so taking a dip is the most efficient way to cool off. Fortunately, we have fans in the bedrooms and screens on the shutters but it is certainly summer time down here!
Brasilians usually spend Christmas on the beach so it's become pretty quite in the neighborhood just this past week. It's rare to hear Christmas music here. Even what we do hear is in Portuguese, of course! The houses have a few decorations up, but not in the quantity as you would see in the States. The stores in town have been staying open until 10or 11pm to give people plenty of time to shop. It has been very busy, with lots of cars and foot traffic in town. I went to the grocery store this morning (christmas eve) and it was a complete zoo! Brasilians are very social and enjoy chatting with their friends. The grocery store is the perfect place to run into their friends, so everywhere I turned, there were Brasilians just standing in the middle of the aisle with their carts blocking it! It was quite a pleasant experience seeing everyone happy and smiling at one another. The Christmas spirit was obvious in the smiles and jovial manner of most of the people I saw there. I even got stopped a couple of times by people I know. I eventually got out of there after more than an hour!
It has been interesting trying to get into the Christmas spirit. We spent last Saturday in the pool listening to Christmas carols on the stereo. Very, very strange........ As for putting up a tree, the price for trees down here is obscene! Instead of spending money, this year I decided to make one out of paper. I taped together 3 large pieces of paper to be about 6 feet tall. I drew a quick outline of a Christmas tree on it and Garrett and I filled it in with green tempera paint hand prints (fingers pointing down). After it dried, I taped it up onto the wall and then taped Christmas lights to it. Garrett, my girlfriend Allie and I all made a bunch of snowflakes to cover the wires of the lights. I cut a bunch of circles out of red construction paper and then got out the glitter and glue and decorated them. Garrett and I then went and picked up pine-cones from around the neighborhood and we hung these on the tree as well. I will post pictures soon so you can see it.
For Christmas Dinner we are having about 15 people over. We understand how hard it is to be out of your country, especially during the holidays, so we invited over the rest of the expatriates. Everybody is bringing something, so we should be having quite a feast. So far the menu looks like this: turkey, ham, pork loin, chipotle sauce, gravies, mashed potatos, dressing, broccoli-rice casserole, pasta, salad, BBQ cheese, garlic bread and BBQ pineapple. For dessert, homemade banana pudding, apple crisp, cookies, and Brasilian Caipira cake with white chocolate shavings over white cake, coconut and doce de leite cream filling and cherries. I also made home made eggnog this year! Nobody will be leaving hungry!!!!
We leave Monday for the Amazon!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are all so excited, it's hard to imagine we are really going! The tour includes New Years Eve on the boat to bring in the new year with champagne! We will put up lots of pictures to share with you all.
Have a wonderful, peaceful Christmas and a very prosperous New Year! I'll post again next year! Tchau, Pam
Brasilians usually spend Christmas on the beach so it's become pretty quite in the neighborhood just this past week. It's rare to hear Christmas music here. Even what we do hear is in Portuguese, of course! The houses have a few decorations up, but not in the quantity as you would see in the States. The stores in town have been staying open until 10or 11pm to give people plenty of time to shop. It has been very busy, with lots of cars and foot traffic in town. I went to the grocery store this morning (christmas eve) and it was a complete zoo! Brasilians are very social and enjoy chatting with their friends. The grocery store is the perfect place to run into their friends, so everywhere I turned, there were Brasilians just standing in the middle of the aisle with their carts blocking it! It was quite a pleasant experience seeing everyone happy and smiling at one another. The Christmas spirit was obvious in the smiles and jovial manner of most of the people I saw there. I even got stopped a couple of times by people I know. I eventually got out of there after more than an hour!
It has been interesting trying to get into the Christmas spirit. We spent last Saturday in the pool listening to Christmas carols on the stereo. Very, very strange........ As for putting up a tree, the price for trees down here is obscene! Instead of spending money, this year I decided to make one out of paper. I taped together 3 large pieces of paper to be about 6 feet tall. I drew a quick outline of a Christmas tree on it and Garrett and I filled it in with green tempera paint hand prints (fingers pointing down). After it dried, I taped it up onto the wall and then taped Christmas lights to it. Garrett, my girlfriend Allie and I all made a bunch of snowflakes to cover the wires of the lights. I cut a bunch of circles out of red construction paper and then got out the glitter and glue and decorated them. Garrett and I then went and picked up pine-cones from around the neighborhood and we hung these on the tree as well. I will post pictures soon so you can see it.
For Christmas Dinner we are having about 15 people over. We understand how hard it is to be out of your country, especially during the holidays, so we invited over the rest of the expatriates. Everybody is bringing something, so we should be having quite a feast. So far the menu looks like this: turkey, ham, pork loin, chipotle sauce, gravies, mashed potatos, dressing, broccoli-rice casserole, pasta, salad, BBQ cheese, garlic bread and BBQ pineapple. For dessert, homemade banana pudding, apple crisp, cookies, and Brasilian Caipira cake with white chocolate shavings over white cake, coconut and doce de leite cream filling and cherries. I also made home made eggnog this year! Nobody will be leaving hungry!!!!
We leave Monday for the Amazon!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are all so excited, it's hard to imagine we are really going! The tour includes New Years Eve on the boat to bring in the new year with champagne! We will put up lots of pictures to share with you all.
Have a wonderful, peaceful Christmas and a very prosperous New Year! I'll post again next year! Tchau, Pam
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