Picnic in the bus

We were going to have a picnic in one of the most beautiful places in Sao Paulo, Ibiapuera Park. 

We planed that I would meet Mike at his school around 3pm and go from there to our romantic picnic. 

Both of us were feeling like getting way from the craziness of this city. Great idea and perfect plan. 

While waiting for him at his school I looked outside and it was pouring rain. I told myself, "I hope Mike got my message and did not go outside to look for me." After a long time trying to find each other, our phones weren't working very well, I finally found Mike at the library writing me a email to let me know that he was giving up the search. It was sad because I saw that he was soaking wet. It was funny looking though because his hair is longer right now than it's ever been. He looked like a sad wet baby chicken. Ha. He went to check our meeting place in the park. The picture is of mike sitting on a step in the bus eating an apple. We decided to have our picnic on the bus. Not as fun, but definitely a more memorable day. 

Since I haven't written for a while, I will give you an update on some of the things we have done over the past month. We had a holiday last weekend for the official Brazilian Saint, Nossa Senhora Aparecida. We went to Belo Horizonte to visit my family and friends. One of the places we visited was Congonhas, a historic city in Brazil. There is a very famous Catholic church there that was built in the late 1700's. Mike said that part of the city felt just like Europe. It gives me the desire to visit Europe because I really like old cities like that. There are dozens of statues around the church. Twelve are of old testament prophets and then there are many wood statues in structures leading  up to the church that show the last few days of Christ's life. The amazing thing about them is that they were carved in the early 1800's by a man called "the little cripple." The artist had leprosy and would carve by having his hammer and chisel strapped to his hands which at that point had no fingers. He couldn't stand either and would climb the ladders on his knees in order to do his carvings. Here is a Wikipedia link if you want to see better pics of the art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleijadinho. It's very inspiring to see. Even my 14 year old nephew Igor was very impressed and that is not the type of activity he normally likes. 

Cool Baroque Era church in Congonhas

Nivea playing in her first box fort. Told you it was awesome babe.

Going #2 on the subway. That's normal here.

 Igor and Me

Rain made the water all muddy. We still had fun in pool in the same park.