Beyond the Temple

This was a slow week. I came down with the flu. Fortunately wasn't Dengue Fever, which has been going around. Even with that we were able to begin learning to use WebEx for training, send off emails to new technology specialists, get off 2 blogs, find a new life history of Lois Judd, and download an app for the iPad that syncs with Legacy. Actually, I only missed Friday at the office. Diane went to the store by herself to pick up a few items (good for her!).

Syncing Legacy to the iPad

Brazilians have colorful ways to name things. What we call peanut brittle they call pé de moleca (foot of a tomboy). 

Have a foot for a snack

By Saturday afternoon I was tired of laying around the apartment and decided I needed to get some fresh air (in São Paulo?), besides I felt a little better. As we look out our bedroom window we can see the temple. Beyond the temple we see some green spaces, houses on the hill, and colorful apartment buildings. We decided to explore. 

View of the temple and beyond

As we walked along the main street we saw an old truck loaded with empty wooden crates.

Is she getting run over by a truckload of crates?

 The sidewalks change shape as trees grow.

Is this the straight and narrow path?

 We found the Parque Luis Carlos Prestes which made a delightful trek through nature.

Are these African elephant ears or Indian elephant ears?

 The hills have some nice houses right across the street from the park.

A quiet place to live, even if a bit shady

 I just wanted a gentle walk, not major exercise.

The Energizer Bunny in Brazil?

 Most of the space in front of houses is used for parking cars behind a fence-style gate. There are some front lawns, however.

What kind of lawnmower do I buy for this?

 The actual park was fenced in and guarded, but did not show as green space on the map. The part shown in green was not fenced, run down, and had signs of homeless residents.

Who wouldn't want to live here?

 Actually we heard about favela life from Paulo. He said there are families who will squat on open land in a wooden shack. When asked to move they reply they have no place to live until the government builds them a house. When they get into a house they sell it for the money and find another place to squat. We don't know how prevalent this is. We did see a lot of green space surrounded by walls with no apparent opening. A road went through one of the areas we could see from our window, but we couldn't get into it. We did get a view of our apartment complex, however.

Our apartments from the park road, the shorter white ones on the left.

There are some apartment buildings with red-tiled roofs we can see from our window. We found them on the other side of the sealed-off green space. They are called the Garden Village.

Garden Village

 On the way back we found this pink motel. According to the sign rooms rent for R$40 for 3 hours. It must be for truck drivers who need a quick nap before going on.

Something is suspicious here

 We got back and Diane wanted to get a picture in our courtyard of the tree that had very fragrant blossoms.

Oops, where are the blossoms?

We learned a few things from church today. First, Brazilians must be healthy eaters - the children were eating fruit in sacrament meeting rather than Cheerios. Second, that may not always be true - the lady next to us was eating cookies and didn't even have children to feed. Third, it is possible to follow the example of the Savior. Sacrament meeting was about the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood. As I listened to the president of the Deacon's Quorum speak to a large audience of many experience adults I could picture the Savior teaching in the temple at the age of twelve.