Of Roofs and Such…

After moving from southern Brazil to the North, my family was blessed to be able to live in a house belonging to an American lady while constructing our home.  While the two bedrooms were enclosed, and even had air conditioning, the rest of the house was not. 

Instead, the roof was made of rafters covered with red tiles. Each tile was arched with a raised area on the end to fit it onto the wood laid across the rafters.  Tiles were laid with the curve facing up and then tiles were laid in between those facing down. 

Made of red clay, the tiles were attractive to look at and held up to the weather well. 

There was one very big problem with them though.  When the tile met the wall of the house there was a gap left.  A gap of about two to four inches square. Or in other words, just about the proper size for a tarantula, or snake, or mouse, or other small creepy crawly you don’t want in your house. 

One creature that made its home in and out of the roof of the house was a gecko.  The gecko to show his appreciation left us a “gift” every morning in the hallway.  Sometimes, there was more than one so you didn’t walk around the house barefoot, and you cleaned up the floor first thing after leaving the safety of the bedrooms.

Of course, the safety of the bedrooms was dubious since upon arriving after a days’ long trip from the south, we were shown around the house.

In the master bedroom bathroom sink was a several inches long pior-de-cobra.  In English, that means worse-than-a-snake.  In other words, the bites of these not-so-little centipedes were worse that the bite of a snake.  Considering Brazil boasts quite a number of nasty, deadly snakes this was a bit alarming.

We were grateful for the use of the house and the refuge found in the almost enclosed bedrooms.  But we had very definite ideas about making our own house rodent, arachnid and reptile free.

Or so we hoped.

Of paint…

Some people can paint.  Some cannot.

I grew up painting.  Walls, that is.  Although I enjoy picture painting, I am by no means the next Renoir. However,  when it comes to slapping paint on walls, I manage pretty well.

One of the first things we did in Brazil was help to construct a church.  The church we were attending had been renting a building, but had recently purchased some land and began building the church.  They were in the process of prepping the tiles for the roof when we arrived. 

Cement block walls rose to meet metal rafters and the tiles were about 4x6 feet and were made of cement as well.  The tiles were wavy with about five or six waves per sheet. 

My family and I were asked to help paint and showed up at the church ready to work. 

Now, one very important aspect of painting is the paint.  Good paint in the can means good paint on the walls, and bad paint in the can—I’m sure you’ve guessed—means bad paint on the walls.

One of the men from the church had prepped the paint.  Not being of a painting mind, he assumed the following. 

1.      If adding a little water to thin the paint was good…

2.      Adding a lot of water was better…

3.      Adding even more water would stretch the paint even further.

4.      One could paint the entire ceiling with a gallon of paint.

My family and I regarded the resultant paint with dismay.  The consistency of skim milk, there was no way on earth it was going to cover the tiles.  Or stay on the rollers long enough to get to the tiles, since it ran from the rollers like water through a colander. 

We grabbed rollers with the longest nap possible and dunked it into the paint before slopping it onto the tile using the nap to push it around and create some kind of coverage. 

The results were splotchy to say the least.  We did use up all the watery paint on several coats of paint none of which did much to cover. 

In the end, the church bought a few more buckets of paint and my dad rushed to assure the man from the church that he would thin it as much as needed.

Perhaps a lesson to be learned is, like that man from the church, we think that the Gospel could be improved with maybe a few other things added to it.  And if a few things added are good, maybe a few other things to make it more appealing to a sinner would be better. 

But the only thing that can truly and abidingly cover the multitude of our sins is the pure and unaltered Gospel.  Jesus’ blood and atonement is enough.  Don’t thin down the Gospel with anything else.

And to avoid frustration, don’t thin your paint with too much water. 

Of Travel…

I flew back from Wales last week.  The trip included an hour to the airport.  A seven or eight hour flight to Newark and then around a two hour flight home, followed by an hour long drive.

Some might consider that a long trip, but after living in Brazil, any trip that last less than a day is a short trip.

When we first moved to Brazil, we lived about an hour from the airport.  After the move to Northern Brazil we lived seven or eight hours from the airport. 

A typical trip home to the west coast included the following.

1.       Drive to the airport.  This may sound easy, but with the conditions of the roads, this could last up to eight hours, and incalculable stress.  At one time, the state of Para decided to redo their roads and began by scraping off the asphalt and smoothing the dirt roads.  This was a vast improvement over the pot-holed asphalt roads.  We had particular places where the bathrooms were more or less clean and we could eat lunch.  Usually a small fried pastry called a pastel.

2.       Once we got to Belem, where the airport was located, we found a place to stay the night.  At first it was hotels, but eventually, we ended up staying at a guest house at a Christian camp. 

3.       After a very early morning we flew SOUTH to Sao Paulo.  Yes, we were actually only a few hours flight from Miami, but our flights always went through Sao Paulo. 

4.       After a five or six hour flight we had an entire day to kill until the flight to Chicago left at ten at night.  Since we usually had a lot of luggage, airport strolls weren’t really an option.

5.       The flight to Chicago was around ten hours long.  If we were fortunate there might be a movie worth watching, or better yet some empty seats where we could lay down and try to sleep.

6.       Landing in Chicago we switched over to speaking English and waited for our afternoon flight to Oregon. 

7.       The five or six hour flight to Oregon seemed interminable.  Partially because we had already read the airline magazine cover to cover on the previous flights.

We arrived in Oregon jet-lagged and exhausted after about three days of traveling.

And that is why, for me, any trip that lasts less than a day seems like a walk in the park.

Of Coffee…

Brazil is the leading producer of coffee in the world, accounting for about a third of all coffee produced.  It might be expected that Brazil is a country of excellent coffee.

It isn’t.

Mainly, because, although it does grow wonderful tasting coffee, it then exports all of those wonderful beans to be enjoyed by other countries.

The inferior coffee left behind was sometimes stretched with ground up, burnt peanut shells. 

Brazil had two main types of coffee that were popular. 

One of the most popular coffee drinks served in Brazil is Café com Leite, which as the name suggests is coffee with milk.  This was my mother’s favorite.

The second, cafézinho, was a very small cup of coffee, about the size of a shot of alcohol.  This was actually a good thing since cafézinho is very potent.  Made of very strong coffee, with a lot of sugar added, the resulting concoction more closely resembles syrup than liquid. 

What’s odder is that cafézinho is often given out for free at gas stations.  Along with coolers of water complete with a communal drinking cup.

In spite of the fact that my mother hates sugar in her coffee, she did occasionally enjoy a cafézinho.  My dad is also partial to strong coffee.  This created a bit of fun when we came home on furlough.

My wonderful grandmother and her husband always welcomed us into their home on our furloughs.  Now, my grandma’s idea of coffee was a pale amber color and seemed to have only a passing acquaintance with coffee grounds.  My parents were less than fond of the mild brew.

Their solution was to get up and make the coffee.  Unfortunately, my Grandma was used to her watery brew and eyed my parents black concoction with distaste.  After a few mornings, she gently told them that she was okay making the coffee. 

In the end, they each made a pot of coffee suited to their tastes and gave our family a fun story to tell.

But no matter how strong you like your coffee, chances are it may have been grown in Brazil.

 

 

Of Idioms…

Since I am in Wales visiting my sister (she married an Englishman), I have been thinking a lot about idioms.  Those phrases that people use that make perfect sense to people with whom they share a nationality, but which cause a lot of head scratching for those who don’t.

For instance, in England, they use the phrase “lost the plot” to say someone is out of their mind.

In Brazil, the idioms have the added ‘confusion benefit’ of being in a different language.  Americans would refer to clunker cars as lemons, whereas in Brazil, the word for a car that’s a lemon is a pineapple.   I’m not sure why people associate poorly running vehicles with yellow fruit, but apparently we do.

In America, it rains cats and dogs, but in Brazil (were idioms based in reality) you would be more likely to be clunked on the head with a knife and fork than a cat or dog.

And then there are the phrases that when translated into English make no sense whatsoever.  In a bakery we were often helped with the phrase, “Pois não” which literally means, “Because No.”  Although, it might sound rude, it was an expression used to offer help.

"Sei la" literally means, "I know there."  It's used to mean, "I don't know."  So, apparently, if you know there, you don't know here.

"Legal” has the same meaning in Portuguese that it does in English, but it can also mean that something is “cool”.  This is helpful to know so someone’s not offended when they’re told that their new car is lawful, when what they were hoping to hear is that their new car is the best thing on four wheels.  

The truth is that once you get past the confusion of a new idiom, they’re fun to add to your vocabulary. 

At the very least, you can enjoy the look of bafflement on someone’s face when they have no idea what you’re saying.

Do you have a favorite idiom?

Of Whipping Cream…

Before moving to Brazil, I was a child of Cool Whip.  For me, the topping you put onto pies, cakes, and sundaes came from the freezer and had to be thawed.

In Brazil, we couldn’t find Cool Whip. 

We were left with two options. 

The first was a box of powder that after being added to liquid and beaten made something that resembled whipped cream but by no means tasted like whipped cream.

Our second option was real whipped cream.

In Brazil, a lot of dairy comes from either boxes or cans and is shelf stable.  We bought our first box of whipped cream and carefully put it into the fridge since warm whipping cream won’t whip.

After pulling it from the freezer we got out our transformer (Brasil is 220 and all appliances we’d brought from the States including our Kitchen Aid were 110).

We hooked up the mixer in the living room to the nearest transformer and crowded around to watch our whipping cream turn into luscious whipped cream.

Excitement grew as the cream thickened more and more.

Excitement faded as the cream began to clump together and we realized we had created butter.  Butter is all very good but not quite as exciting as whipped cream.

We did eventually learn to whip cream properly.  We abandoned all the boxes of chemicalized powder in favor of real, genuine whipped cream.

And became whipped cream snobs.

After our return to the States, with Cool Whip in abundance, I find I no longer enjoy the taste or the thought of the chemicalized fluff.

So, although I find whipping cream in a carton in the refrigerator section of the supermarket, rather than in a can on the shelf, I find myself committed to the pursuit of real whipped cream.

In honor of whipped cream, I’ll share a favorite recipe from Brasil.  I have Americanized it so there is no need to pursue the more exotic ingredients.  If you wish to make that version, look up Mousse de Maracuja on a search engine.

One can of sweetened condensed milk.

Enough juice to fill the can and perhaps a little extra if you like things tarter.  You can use pure passion fruit juice, which is the proper way to make it.  I was unable to find it in any local supermarkets so I used lemon juice instead.  It is important not to use any juice that is sweet or the result will be too sweet.

A small carton of whipping cream.

Combine the condensed milk and juice.  Whip the whipped cream being careful not to turn it into butter.  Fold in the juice/milk mixture.  Refrigerate until chilled.  

Enjoy!

 

Of Christmas Trees…

I was born in Oregon, where pine trees grow on trees.  Oh wait, that doesn’t quite work.  Well, anyway, pine trees are common there.

It made me quite spoiled. At Christmas, we went to a u-pick tree farm and were instantly surrounded by gorgeous trees and the unforgettable smell of pine hanging crisply in the air.

In Brazil, pine trees were almost as rare as white Christmases.

Eventually, I decided that we needed a tree of some kind.  Using a piece of Styrofoam I managed to cut a semblance of a pine tree that would slide into another half creating a lopsided white Christmas tree that didn’t fulfill our Oregonian expectations of what a Christmas tree should either look—or smell—like.

The next year I decided to try to create the same effect out of plywood.  I was making plans when my parents came home from the store with a fake pine tree causing a great deal of excitement.

It is, after all, hard to hang ornaments on a Styrofoam tree.

We took it out of the box and stacked the pipes before laying out the branches and sorting them according to size.  We put the metal ends of the branches into the holes on the green pipes and stood back to admire our work.

After years of not really having a tree at all there was something thrilling about seeing something that resembled a real tree.  It might lack the smell and be merely a collection of pipes, wire, and whatever it is they use to make the phony needles, but we were happy.

Thinking about real versus phony trees got me thinking about real versus phony Christmases.  In Brazil, Christmas didn’t feel real at first because we had none of the trappings with which we associated the holiday.  But the truth is that a real Christmas isn’t about fireplaces, snow, sleighs, or even real pine trees. 

It’s about celebrating our Lord’s birth.  He is the real Christmas.  The greatest gift.

I wish you a very blessed and merry Christmas, celebrating the real reason for the season.

Even if your tree is a lopsided one made of Styrofoam.

What is the weirdest Christmas you ever spent?

Did you find it made you more grateful for the true meaning of Christmas?