Saturday night Teresa and Alana came over to watch the girls so Eric and I could go to the movies. I was super excited to see "Catching Fire". The funny thing is that some how between looking up the movie theater on line and me putting the address in wrong in the GPS we ended up at the wrong mall, or we think that's the problem because the show times were different than we thought and they didn't have an Imax. Oh well it worked out it was just that we thought we were going to see the 8:30 show and it ended up being at 9:30 and then didn't really start until 9:50, so it ended up being a late night!
Eric had actually tried to buy the tickets online to the movies because you pick your seat out when you buy tickets, but you had to have an RG which is the equivalent of a social security card and a credit card that matched to buy the tickets online. After being here 2 months we are still working on getting our RG and also a local bank account. You won't think it would take this long!!!We have to have both before we can leave the country or it will cause problems with paying taxes here and our visa. Hopefully we will have both by the end of the year!
I guess it's a good thing we didn't buy the tickets online because it might have made it even more complicated.
The mall is called Iguatemi
It's in the Jardiens which is a super nice part of Sao Paulo.
This mall is on what I would say is comparable to Michigan Ave in Chicago and is very upscale. It has a lot of high end brands including a Tiffany's. The mall was decorated for Christmas and we even saw where the kids can visit Papai Noel. Maybe when the girls are out of school we can come back and look around.
The movie was great. The price of the movie was about the same as at home and so was the popcorn. Now I am on the hunt to find Frozen in English. Most adult movies from the US are in English with Portuguese subtitles, but most kids movies are translated. It makes sense because kids can't read subtitles, but it's going to make it a little tricky to take the girls to the movies here.
I would say most of the Brazilians who were at the movie with us spoke English since it was at such an expensive mall and it wasn't super cheap. Once the movie was over we had a little problem getting out of the mall. To pay for parking you had to use a credit card and the reader didn't like Eric's US Credit Card. All the cards here in Brazil have chips in them and they put the card in the reader. Luckily there were two girls paying for parking at the same time and one of them agreed to pay for our parking using her card and Eric gave her cash. For a second I was afraid we were going to be stuck at the mall for a long time!
The next day at the girls ballet performance we meet on of Eliza's friend, Sophia who also goes to school with her, Dad and he told us he worked for Master Card. Eric asked him about the chips. He said they offer extra security but they have had a hard time getting the banks in the US to do the same because in Brazil the credit card readers are owned by the card companies and then leased to the shops, but in the US shop owners actually own the readers so they don't want to have to buy all new machines. Interesting. All I know is that they look at my debt card funny every time I buy something, but luckily so far it has always worked.
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