Stories Inspired by Life in Rural Brazil
It’s World Cup time! Ever tuned into a professional soccer game? Has it ever struck you how dramatic the injuries are? And despite that how astonishingly quick the recovery times are? Some of the players seem to be weebles–knock them down and they wobble about and pop right back up! And there is no player …
Brazilians are savage AF (no, not that kind of savage)Read More
I’ve joined a writing class. In Portuguese. Yeah, it’s going as you’d expect: it’s a lesson in humility. Take action or stop complaining The thing is, you can complain about something or you can go learn to do better. I’m good enough at Portuguese these days that I know I have my failings and where …
How to stumble your way through the humble and humiliatingRead More
There are two bars of fuel in my tank. That’s approximately 10 liters and when that’s gone there might be no more. Our town is running dry. We were lucky enough that the propane tank on our stove ran out on Friday. Inconvenient, it meant that we had a take-out lunch rather than a home-cooked …
Last week Facebook gave me a flashback to an old memory. Just after we came to the farm six years ago, I achieved a feat of true endurance and moved 33 wheelbarrows of dirt in one day–wildly surpassing the work of the men. This memory happened in the same week that there was lots of …
What wheelbarrows and the Boston Marathon have in commonRead More
Yesterday I had a life lesson served up to me by a little tree frog. We’ve all been in his shoes…He was just minding his business, having a day, and he decided to sit down on a bench to rest. And then it started to rain. And then someone went and pulled the bench out from …
Ever have one of those days where it feels like you just can’t do anything right? That you have to scrap everything and just start from zero again? Yeah. Me too. Today was one of those days. I pulled my car to the curb and sighed one of those sighs that wheeze out of your …
It’s International Women’s Day! Hooray! We don’t celebrate it much in the United States but every Latin-American country I’ve visited takes it really seriously. Good for them! So here I am in a school presentation about how marvelous women are, and I can’t help but think to myself: Why, but WHY, is the airtime today, of …
Happy International Women’s Day! So why is a male politician talking?Read More
The dogs were barking up a racket last night. It was clear that there was something in the yard–they don’t bark like that when discussing territorial politics with the neighbor dogs–so we went out on the veranda with flashlights to investigate. We were so glad that we did! We had a late night visitor, and …
Oh, these Brazilians do love their English. They’ll put it on anything. Sometimes they like to mix and match. They often have no idea what they’re actually saying. So I had a good chuckle when my very god-fearing in-laws checked in on Facebook at the “Top Less” Restaurant for lunch in São Paolo. oh. MY. It’s funny …
