1. Sao Paulo has more helicopters than any other area of the world. Everyone hates the traffic so if you have money you get a helicopter. Its also safer that way because some people get robbed sitting in traffic especially at night. Evidently a few years ago there was a family who brought their kids here to PACA via helicopter every day and landed on the soccer field. Now that's going to school high class!!
2. Things here are really expensive. They have a lot of mozzarella cheese here, but if you want another kind of cheese (at least one that I recognize) its mostly a specialty item such as parmesan, blue cheese etc. A small wedge is about $15-$16!! That's one way to get me to eat less cheese!!!
3. Along those same lines a couple weeks ago I heard some people talking about Black Friday. I asked, "Oh, they have Black Friday here too?" I thought that was just the U.S. because Thanksgiving is a U.S. holiday. They said, no not here. Brazilians fly to the U.S. to buy things and bring them back here because its cheaper to buy a plane ticket and hit up the sales than to buy things here. That also factors in that they can only bring back $500 worth of merchandise!
4. When you go to a restaurant you have to buy water. There is no free water. :) Well, the bottled water is probably a little more than 1/2 the size of a regular U.S. bottle of water and it is about $2.50 per bottle. For a girl who likes to drink I have to be careful and remember not to forget my own water bottle!
5. I'm starting to realize a little about how much of the rest of the world lives. Sunday night I went to a new church. Its in a poor neighborhood and we had to drive next to a favela (slum) on the way. This particular favela is only about 1 minute from PACA. There was one car completely burned out with a couple of the doors missing, but the frame of the car still intact. When we got to church and got out of our car we saw a blackened spot on the ground where a car had been and was burned. All that was left was a small piece of tire rubber and a screw in a piece of metal. This picture isn't the greatest, but I was trying to be sneaky about taking it (and it was night). You can still kind of see the black spot where a car was. Monday night my Bible Study leader said her fiancee's car had been stolen over the weekend. People felt sad for her, but evidently this is quite common and no one was shocked. On the way to Bible Study I saw my first protest. Evidently you can get stuck in traffic for 3-4 hours because of these protests. Thankfully it was peaceful AND on the other side of the road!!
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