I was told several things about Brasilia that I didn't find to be accurate once I got here. The first was that everything is 3x the cost here compared to the U.S. This is not true. There are things that cost 3x as much as in the U.S., but it is far from everything.
We went shoe shopping for our kids' athletic activities last weekend. Athletic shoes cost exactly the same here as they do in the U.S. if you go to the right store. I had been warned that shoes would cost more, but having bought shoes for growing boys a lot in the past year, I knew what current prices were.
Food might cost 3x as much as in the U.S. if you are accustomed to buying prepared foods. Breakfast cereal is terribly expensive. Ice cream is really that expensive. Oats are nearly impossible to find, and when you do find them, they are expensive. Peanut butter is crazy expensive - around $10/lb (one small jar). However, some of these items can be purchased at the commissary, if you are with the embassy. Peanut butter is still more expensive there than back home, but I can handle $3.74/lb, as the cost is seriously offset by produce prices. I was also warned about olive oil, but haven't noticed the price or quality issues I had heard described.
If you normally shop around the outside edges of the supermarket (produce, dairy, deli, meat), you will find that most foods you buy are at or below the prices you will find in D.C., with the exception of milk. Milk is more expensive, but not as bad as I was thinking it might be. I was also told that it was hard to find, but it is everywhere. Maybe it is harder to find in Asa Sul or Asa Norte, but in Lago Sul, I have seen it at every grocery store. It is in 1 liter bottles or bags. The bags are cheaper, and for those of you in the upper midwest, they resemble the bagged milk at Kwik Trip, but are half the size. One bag of milk will cost somewhere between $.75 and $2 USD. Different stores seem to have widely varying prices, and there are frequent sales at some stores. The bottled milk tends to be about $.50 USD higher than bagged. It is certainly more convenient, but the quantity we go through has made me a fan of the bags. Chicken and beef are the meats of choice here for our family. We tried sausage once and didn't like it, but maybe we need to experiment with more varieties before we make a decision on it. Beef is pretty cheap here. Ground beef is about the same price as back home, but steaks are a fantastic price here, and the cuts are high quality. Chicken is about the same price as back home, but not as well-cut. We can even get rotisserie chickens from a nearby grocery store, and they cost about what they did back home...maybe a little more than Costco, but about the same as a regular grocery store.
The difficulty buying oats surprised me, but I had to laugh when I finally found the flour after searching the grain aisle for 10 minutes. They put it in 1 Kilo bags. That's about 8 cups of flour per bag. I'm used to dealing with 25 lb. bags of flour at a time, so I bought about 10 to satisfy my cookie-making sons. As for the price, I think it was a little higher than back home, but don't quote me on that one. I was in a hurry and didn't calculate it out fully. That's one thing about this new lifestyle...we get a COLA adjustment, and it means that I don't have to be as careful with our grocery budget. It is there to make up for the areas where things cost more.
The other items in Brasilia that are seriously expensive are housewares. Some things line up with prices back home, but then other things don't. For example, pillows. I figured we would buy pillows here, as we threw ours out in MN and used the ones that came with our furnished apartment in VA. We have pillows in our welcome kit, but ought to buy our own. Pillows that look like cheap Target pillows back home cost about $15 or $20 USD. I'm thinking I'll see whether I can order vacuum-sealed pillows on Amazon so they don't constitute a bulk shipment.
I'm not sure why so many people told us that prices were so high here. One guess is they haven't lived in the U.S. for a while. Milk used to be $1/gallon in the States not that long ago. Now, it is $2.50-$3.50 per gallon, depending on the state. I can also remember when I could get cereal for $1/box without going coupon-crazy. Nowadays it isn't uncommon for it to be upwards of $4/box. But I can see where if someone lived outside of the U.S. for the past decade, they might not have a good basis for comparison. Food prices really inflated after corn started being used for Ethanol production.
I am really glad we have the commissary, though! There are certain items you just can't get here. Salsa, certain chips, cake mixes, syrup, peanut butter, jam...I love the commissary. In fact, I think I will go there now.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Catching Up: POV, HHE, UAB and Luggage
My last two posts were separated by a large gap, during which life was really busy with getting ready for our move. Since one of my purposes of this blog is to help new FSOs with exactly those things that went on during those last months in D.C., I had better do a little catching up.
The Test:
First, I should mention that my husband passed his Portuguese exam with flying colors. He got the examiner he was afraid to get (he had her as a substitute in class and she was rude, mean and scary), and someone who didn't even speak Portuguese was the assistant examiner (I think there is a term for that person, but I can't recall it at the moment). DH says that this most likely resulted in the lowering of his score by a half point on the speaking portion. At one point, he gave him something extremely convoluted to translate to the examiner (translation isn't even supposed to be part of the test), and since the examiner herself didn't exactly know English enough to be able to make the leap between both languages and understand what the other guy had him translate, she thought DH made a big mistake, which he knows he didn't. Ugh. But he did get the highest score of anyone in his section - tied with one of his classmates, who got a half point higher on speaking than reading, the opposite of his.
One thing to understand about language learning at the FSI is that each department is a little different. Some departments try hard to work spouses into the full classes, and other departments try really hard not to. Some have extremely high failure rates, despite being fairly easy languages, and other departments have higher pass rates. Occasionally, a department gets so puffed up with how hard a language they are that other departments start failing more people just to show that they are a tough language, too. This is what we get when we have foreign nationals in charge of teaching languages. On the positive side, native speakers are better teachers of their languages because they understand their own languages better than non-native speakers. It is also easier to pick up a native accent when you learn from a native, and the opportunity to learn about the culture and nuances of the language is invaluable. On the negative side, natives have pride issues; it is to be expected. I am sure if this sort of institution exists in other countries where Americans are teaching alongside other foreign nationals, they suffer from the same malady.
The Move:
I don't know how well everything went yet, as we have only been in Brazil for a month and don't have our stuff yet, but this is what we know...
I scheduled the POV shipment well in advance, and completed all of the required paperwork, both for the transportation coordinator and for post. I got a little nervous when, the day before it was scheduled to be picked up, the transportation company didn't call to confirm. I shot an email over to our transportation coordinator, and he confirmed it for us. (I have to say that the transportation guys are awesome. They answer questions quickly and get stuff done in a hurry.)
Since we have a large family, we have a large van. When I say large, I mean 12-passenger E-350. The State Department will pay for normal-sized vehicles to be shipped (up to 800 Cubic Feet), but ours was 833 cubic feet, so we had to pay for the overage, which amounted to around $900. We considered selling it and buying something once we got here, but after looking at the prices in the newsletters from post, we decided that we would have to spend three to five times what we would get for our van in D.C. on a vehicle in Brasilia, so we shipped it. We hear it is likely to take between 3-5 months to get here. Yes, even after paying for rental cars and the like, we will do better just shipping it. Our post is unusual in how long things are transported to post, by the way. Most places don't have such long wait times.
I also scheduled the pack-out of our HHE and UAB well in advance. I missed the part where the Transition Center moving guide suggested scheduling the pack-out 2 weeks in advance, in case issues arose, and scheduled it for the Thursday before the move. We had to be out of our apartment on Monday by noon, and we were to leave for post on Wednesday. On Wednesday, we got a call confirming our pack-out for between 2-5pm on Thursday. On Thursday, DH had the day off to help sort HHE and UAB and help with the move. The movers called at 4pm and said they were running late. At 7:00pm I started getting nervous and started calling and emailing all of our contacts. No response. At 7:30pm the movers arrived, to my relief and annoyance. Only two men showed up to start. They didn't have all of the right boxes, but started on the UAB, with a box that I learned after the second team of two arrived was smaller than they ought to be using, which probably decreased the amount we could have packed into UAB. They weighed UAB as they went...I never heard what the HHE weighed in the end, although they promised to email me the next day and let me know. Hopefully we won't be surprised in the end. By the end of the night, there were six or eight movers. I was so tired I don't remember exactly.
Since I heard on the boards that UAB and HHE typically arrive within a week or two of each other in Brasilia (again, not typical of other posts across the globe), we had them pile clothing and other items that didn't need wrapping and really filled space in the UAB to maximize our weight allowance. All weights include packaging materials. UAB's weight also includes crates, so packing them full of items that filled the boxes made sense to me. That way, there would be fewer boxes, packed more densely. They typically add 10 pounds to each box to account for crating. HHE weights don't include any crates, so putting items that needed wrapping or were awkwarly-shaped automatically qualified for HHE, since we aren't working with shipments that will arrive months apart. Of course, as soon as the second team of workers arrived, they just started putting whatever they wanted into the UAB and my instructions went unheeded for the last couple of boxes. Hopefully that didn't mess up my carefully-devised plan.
The movers were at our apartment until after 12:30am. When the movers hadn't yet arrived at 7pm, I had gone online to figure out what to do, and one thing I read was that we could turn away movers after 5:30pm. While I could have refused them, I didn't feel I really had that option. The movers already had jobs scheduled for the next day, and I seriously doubted that they would come back first thing in the morning. Since we had to be out by Monday, we let them in and let them stay, while our children fell asleep on couches. It was not ideal, but I did not feel we had a choice. Next time, we will schedule our pack-out for two weeks ahead of our move.
Traveling:
Brasilia may have some long waits for UAB and HHE, but one advantage to all of Brazil is the two bag/70 lbs. per bag allowance on planes. All State Department moves get two bags, but they are normally just 50 lbs. each. What this means is that each of our family members could have two checked suitcases (totaling 140 lbs), one carry-on suitcase, and one backpack. Have I mentioned we have a family of 8? Yeah, we could have had 32 pieces of luggage. We had 31, due to a miscalculation on my part. See, before you leave D.C., you can ask to see your HHE at the warehouse in Haggerstown. You can even pull a few boxes. There was this one box that said "suitcase" on the inventory list, and I knew we didn't have our large red suitcase with us, so I figured that was what was in that box.When I got home with that box that said "suitcase" on it, I found it was my scrapbooking tote. This was not useful, and got packed back into HHE from the apartment. I subsequently forgot to purchase one last suitcase. Thus, 31 instead of 32.
One good reason not to have too many packers pack your house is so that you can try to do a little bit of inventory on your own as they work. Supposedly, we can tell moving companies that we want fewer packers. As I have figured out that you never really get a choice in any of this, I think that next time, I will label all items (or at least groups of items) and ask the movers to use my labels as their inventory descriptions.
Anyway, I forgot to buy another suitcase, so we ended up with 31 instead of 32. Also...make sure you check over all of the suitcases and instruments/instrument cases when you are still in your destination airport. We discovered after we got home that our son's French Horn case was cracked open and the horn has a weld that is broken. This is a super-cheap horn, luckily, but we don't know whether this happened on the plane or in the parking lot when DH tipped over an entire cart full of luggage. If we knew it happened on the plane, we could have filed a claim, but we were tired and were not as observant as we should have been.
DH just told me that our UAB is being cleared through diplomatic customs right now, and that he was told that it typically takes 3 days, but not to hold my breath. It has only been a month since we arrived, and I was told to expect about two months, but we have recently heard of some coming through in six weeks, so it could be sometime soon. POV and HHE are on the ship, expected to hit the port close to September. Customs normally delays things for quite a while after that, so I won't hold my breath on those, either. However, things are sounding better than I had been told to expect.
Speaking of that, my next post will be on the difference between what I had been told to expect and how I perceive things to actually be.
The Test:
First, I should mention that my husband passed his Portuguese exam with flying colors. He got the examiner he was afraid to get (he had her as a substitute in class and she was rude, mean and scary), and someone who didn't even speak Portuguese was the assistant examiner (I think there is a term for that person, but I can't recall it at the moment). DH says that this most likely resulted in the lowering of his score by a half point on the speaking portion. At one point, he gave him something extremely convoluted to translate to the examiner (translation isn't even supposed to be part of the test), and since the examiner herself didn't exactly know English enough to be able to make the leap between both languages and understand what the other guy had him translate, she thought DH made a big mistake, which he knows he didn't. Ugh. But he did get the highest score of anyone in his section - tied with one of his classmates, who got a half point higher on speaking than reading, the opposite of his.
One thing to understand about language learning at the FSI is that each department is a little different. Some departments try hard to work spouses into the full classes, and other departments try really hard not to. Some have extremely high failure rates, despite being fairly easy languages, and other departments have higher pass rates. Occasionally, a department gets so puffed up with how hard a language they are that other departments start failing more people just to show that they are a tough language, too. This is what we get when we have foreign nationals in charge of teaching languages. On the positive side, native speakers are better teachers of their languages because they understand their own languages better than non-native speakers. It is also easier to pick up a native accent when you learn from a native, and the opportunity to learn about the culture and nuances of the language is invaluable. On the negative side, natives have pride issues; it is to be expected. I am sure if this sort of institution exists in other countries where Americans are teaching alongside other foreign nationals, they suffer from the same malady.
The Move:
I don't know how well everything went yet, as we have only been in Brazil for a month and don't have our stuff yet, but this is what we know...
I scheduled the POV shipment well in advance, and completed all of the required paperwork, both for the transportation coordinator and for post. I got a little nervous when, the day before it was scheduled to be picked up, the transportation company didn't call to confirm. I shot an email over to our transportation coordinator, and he confirmed it for us. (I have to say that the transportation guys are awesome. They answer questions quickly and get stuff done in a hurry.)
Since we have a large family, we have a large van. When I say large, I mean 12-passenger E-350. The State Department will pay for normal-sized vehicles to be shipped (up to 800 Cubic Feet), but ours was 833 cubic feet, so we had to pay for the overage, which amounted to around $900. We considered selling it and buying something once we got here, but after looking at the prices in the newsletters from post, we decided that we would have to spend three to five times what we would get for our van in D.C. on a vehicle in Brasilia, so we shipped it. We hear it is likely to take between 3-5 months to get here. Yes, even after paying for rental cars and the like, we will do better just shipping it. Our post is unusual in how long things are transported to post, by the way. Most places don't have such long wait times.
I also scheduled the pack-out of our HHE and UAB well in advance. I missed the part where the Transition Center moving guide suggested scheduling the pack-out 2 weeks in advance, in case issues arose, and scheduled it for the Thursday before the move. We had to be out of our apartment on Monday by noon, and we were to leave for post on Wednesday. On Wednesday, we got a call confirming our pack-out for between 2-5pm on Thursday. On Thursday, DH had the day off to help sort HHE and UAB and help with the move. The movers called at 4pm and said they were running late. At 7:00pm I started getting nervous and started calling and emailing all of our contacts. No response. At 7:30pm the movers arrived, to my relief and annoyance. Only two men showed up to start. They didn't have all of the right boxes, but started on the UAB, with a box that I learned after the second team of two arrived was smaller than they ought to be using, which probably decreased the amount we could have packed into UAB. They weighed UAB as they went...I never heard what the HHE weighed in the end, although they promised to email me the next day and let me know. Hopefully we won't be surprised in the end. By the end of the night, there were six or eight movers. I was so tired I don't remember exactly.
Since I heard on the boards that UAB and HHE typically arrive within a week or two of each other in Brasilia (again, not typical of other posts across the globe), we had them pile clothing and other items that didn't need wrapping and really filled space in the UAB to maximize our weight allowance. All weights include packaging materials. UAB's weight also includes crates, so packing them full of items that filled the boxes made sense to me. That way, there would be fewer boxes, packed more densely. They typically add 10 pounds to each box to account for crating. HHE weights don't include any crates, so putting items that needed wrapping or were awkwarly-shaped automatically qualified for HHE, since we aren't working with shipments that will arrive months apart. Of course, as soon as the second team of workers arrived, they just started putting whatever they wanted into the UAB and my instructions went unheeded for the last couple of boxes. Hopefully that didn't mess up my carefully-devised plan.
The movers were at our apartment until after 12:30am. When the movers hadn't yet arrived at 7pm, I had gone online to figure out what to do, and one thing I read was that we could turn away movers after 5:30pm. While I could have refused them, I didn't feel I really had that option. The movers already had jobs scheduled for the next day, and I seriously doubted that they would come back first thing in the morning. Since we had to be out by Monday, we let them in and let them stay, while our children fell asleep on couches. It was not ideal, but I did not feel we had a choice. Next time, we will schedule our pack-out for two weeks ahead of our move.
Traveling:
Brasilia may have some long waits for UAB and HHE, but one advantage to all of Brazil is the two bag/70 lbs. per bag allowance on planes. All State Department moves get two bags, but they are normally just 50 lbs. each. What this means is that each of our family members could have two checked suitcases (totaling 140 lbs), one carry-on suitcase, and one backpack. Have I mentioned we have a family of 8? Yeah, we could have had 32 pieces of luggage. We had 31, due to a miscalculation on my part. See, before you leave D.C., you can ask to see your HHE at the warehouse in Haggerstown. You can even pull a few boxes. There was this one box that said "suitcase" on the inventory list, and I knew we didn't have our large red suitcase with us, so I figured that was what was in that box.When I got home with that box that said "suitcase" on it, I found it was my scrapbooking tote. This was not useful, and got packed back into HHE from the apartment. I subsequently forgot to purchase one last suitcase. Thus, 31 instead of 32.
One good reason not to have too many packers pack your house is so that you can try to do a little bit of inventory on your own as they work. Supposedly, we can tell moving companies that we want fewer packers. As I have figured out that you never really get a choice in any of this, I think that next time, I will label all items (or at least groups of items) and ask the movers to use my labels as their inventory descriptions.
Anyway, I forgot to buy another suitcase, so we ended up with 31 instead of 32. Also...make sure you check over all of the suitcases and instruments/instrument cases when you are still in your destination airport. We discovered after we got home that our son's French Horn case was cracked open and the horn has a weld that is broken. This is a super-cheap horn, luckily, but we don't know whether this happened on the plane or in the parking lot when DH tipped over an entire cart full of luggage. If we knew it happened on the plane, we could have filed a claim, but we were tired and were not as observant as we should have been.
DH just told me that our UAB is being cleared through diplomatic customs right now, and that he was told that it typically takes 3 days, but not to hold my breath. It has only been a month since we arrived, and I was told to expect about two months, but we have recently heard of some coming through in six weeks, so it could be sometime soon. POV and HHE are on the ship, expected to hit the port close to September. Customs normally delays things for quite a while after that, so I won't hold my breath on those, either. However, things are sounding better than I had been told to expect.
Speaking of that, my next post will be on the difference between what I had been told to expect and how I perceive things to actually be.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
A Minha Vida no Brasil
 |
| Swimming in the Backyard |
I love Brasilia! I don't know where to begin, so I will just make a list of the things I love, followed by the things that are a little weird or I don't love so much.
Love:
The weather! It is winter here, and winter is almost perfect. It is between 73 and 80 during the days. There is rarely rain; it rained twice, briefly, a week or so ago when it got a little cooler than normal. The is such low humidity here that the rain dried up in no time flat.
Don't Love:
Dryness. It is around 10-15% humidity here during the winter. I was warned, and I brought a humidifier for my bedroom, which was great until I was woken up by a "drip, drip, drip" one morning this week. The float had malfunctioned, and the entire contents of the holding tank were spilling onto my dresser and floor. No damage, luckily, but I am afraid to use it again, and by the time I get another one, winter will almost be over and I can expect rain for an hour each day to keep the air moist.
Love:
Our house! This house is amazing. It has four large bedrooms, and each has plentiful closet space and its own bathroom. Three of the bathrooms have showers and jacuzzi tubs. They are all on the upper level. The master also has a sunroom, complete with hammock hooks. I haven't bought a hammock yet, but it is in my poans. I need to work on that, because there are also hammock hooks in the sunroom off the loft, in the front yard on the porch and in the back yard on the porch and by the churrasqueira. If we tried to fill all the hammock hooks, we could probably have a hammock for each family member.
Anyway, the upper level houses our bedrooms, a sunroom, and a loft area, which is our family room. The main level has our living room, dining room, den, kitchen, T.V. room, weird room that looks like it may have once housed a hot tub (in the middle there is a hole where you can sit down in a square - I need some throw pillows to put in there for the kids), and finally, the servant's quarters, complete with laundry room, pantry, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a "drive room." The drive room is a room right off the driveway where we can put shelving and keep car-related stuff, as there is no garage. There is also a small basement storage room, which is kind of musty-smelling, but clean. I may put potatoes in there during the summer to keep them fresh longer.
In the back yard, there is a churrasqueira, which I mentioned previously. That is a brick barbecue. It has a counter and lots of cupboards next to it. Behind it are a sauna and bathroom with shower. The pool is right across from it. The pool is very nice, and has a nice fence around it to keep little kids out. My kids can all unlock the gate, but understand the rules and don't go in without me watching. There is also an outdoor shower, for those who would rather shower outside in cold water instead of walking five feet to the bathroom behind the churrasqueira where there is hot water. They have only swum twice, as it is a little on the cool side yet (overnight temps get into the 50s at times).
Behind the pool is a beautiful garden, complete with fruit trees, flowers, a fire pit, and raised pathways, which I imagine will be nice when the rainy season hits. Two duplex doghouses and a storage room (for garden tools, lawn mower, etc.) are just off the garden. One of the doghouses will be put to use in a few weeks when the kids dog-sit for someone at the embassy. There is even a doggie shower and basin on the side of the shed.
Behind the garden is a soccer field. It isn't quite regulation size, but is about the size of a basketball court or maybe a little bigger.
All of this comes fenced in with a tall, decorative-spiked fence, enclosing the whole property. The back of the house also has an additional set of floor-to-ceiling gates along the back porch of the house. Nobody is cracking into this place.
Don't love:
The security system. I have set it off a few times and had embassy security come by to check on us. Oops! But I am getting the hang of it. The driveway gate is also a problem. It came off its track and isn't functioning right now, but when it works and when I remember to close it so I don't get a visit from the security detail who drives by regularly, it is fine. But, the top rail is probably the exact height of our van, which means we may have to park on the street when it gets here. No big deal, as it is an old van, but we will have to make sure not to leave anything in it that someone would want to steal, like cell phone chargers and the GPS. It is just a minor annoyance, not a major sacrifice.
Love:
The embassy. The family is welcome to utilize the facilities any time, and the kids can even get dropped off here instead of at home after school. There is a cyber cafe for lounging around. There are exercise rooms, a swimming pool, a brand new playground, tennis courts, soccer fields, a sand volleyball pit, medical unit, cafeteria, commissary, and there are language classes, which I am starting today.
Don't Love:
The continual transportation anxiety. Our van will not be here for 2-4 months, so until then, we have limited options. The kids and DH have busses to take them to school and work that are provided by the embassy. But grocery shopping and getting to church are up to us. We depended on our sponsors the first week. They have been truely amazing! Last week, we rented a car. We totally ignored all of my ingrained rules for seat belts and double-buckled and went without the booster seats when we drove to the school for admissions testing and to church for meetings. We thought we would be without a car for a while, but my husband's boss went on vacation today and gave him her car for the duration of her trip, so I have a way to grocery shop and get to the school if I end up with a sick kid. After that, we will probably rent a motor pool minivan, which is available on the weekends, to do our shopping, and I will just have to use taxis if I need to go anywhere else.
I really do love it here. I am sure I could go on about church here and school, but I think that will have to wait for another day, as I need to go deal with returning the rental car (harder than it sounds). I will also quickly mention that DH got to spend his birthday in the Amazon. He had a really nice trip.
Tchau!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)