Moving to Brasil

Even 3 or 4 years ago if you told me I would be living in Brasil for 6 months, I would have thought “how?”, “not possible”. Yet today here I am, and it is really an experience for me. You see I have been here for a little over 3 weeks now, and this is the longest I have been away from Home. Where is Home you might ask, Good old West Michigan, USA. In one aspect the fact that I’m living here in Rio Grande, Rio Grande do Sul, make this my home. I mean is it really that different than when I moved out of my parents house, went to College, and got Married? The big difference is that friends and family are no longer a 40-minute car ride away, they are ALL (aside from my wife) on a completely different continent. Anyway, enough about my mixed personal thoughts of homesickness/lack there of, let’s talk about Brasil! I am living in Rio Grande do Sul, Which is Brasil’s most southern state. The fact that I arrived in May and leave in November, literally means I will have gone 18 months with out experiencing a real summer. I am sure many of you already know that when it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Despite the fact that the northern part of Brasil is in Amazonia and so close to the equator that there aren’t really seasons, the south does experience a change in weather. It is not as cold as the Midwest of the United States that I’m used to (it does not snow in case you were wondering), but what makes the cold difficult to deal with at times is the lack of indoor heating in most buildings and the poor insulation of our house. At times this makes me consider hibernation as a possibility, but then I make it out into the sun and it really isn't bad. So I'm going to stay warm; keep an eye out for some more posts. -Jake