Teresa

I can't tell you how grateful I am for Teresa. So far her help as been one of the highlights of living in Brazil for me. On Monday's she cleans the whole house. Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love to have a clean house. Right now I only have enough energy for essential things, and cleaning this house would be too much. Cleaning in Brazil seems very labor intensive to me because of how fast mold can grow in the bathrooms and scrubbing the hard wood floors and patio to get the black dust off is a big chore. There is no way at this point in my pregnancy I could be doing this myself, so I am so grateful for her. Then on Wednesday she comes and goes to the market for me and makes food in the morning. When she leaves the refrigerator is stocked full of good healthy Brazilian food and fruits and vegetables. This week she made chicken, beef, meat balls, a tuna casserole, vegetables, rice, cut up mango, watermelon, pineapple and washed the grapes. I know you wish you were coming to my house for dinner this week! It's so helpful because by 6pm at night I am so tired and making dinner hard when Eric doesn't come home to eat with us, and Gretta and Eliza want toast every night. So she is really feeding me and the babies and making sure Eric has some good food when he gets home too. 

Usually she spends the rest of the day cleaning a little bit, but Wednesday I asked her if she could help me find white shorts for Eliza's end of the school year recital. School sent home an email at the beginning of the week that for her performance she needs to wear a white shirt, white shorts and white shoes. At home that wouldn't be to difficult, but here I have no idea where to buy kids cloths except the mall which is super expensive and I didn't know if I could find all white shorts. When Eric asked her this morning she said she knew the perfect place and that they would cost about R$6. What!!! That cheap. I offered to drive her because it was 90 degs and super humid and the bus doesn't have air conditioning. I am not sure that was a great idea or not. It took us 1 1/2 hours to get there and the place is no more than 5K away!!! Buses have a dedicated bus lane, so it would have been faster on the bus, but I just couldn't do that to her. It only took us 10 minutes to get home!! 

Once we got to the place it reminded me of a garment shopping district in Hong Kong. There were tons of clothing store in a row and all over the place. Sometime when it's not so hot and we have more time I would love to go back and go shopping. I actually didn't get out of the car. I waited for her because I couldn't really find a good parking spot. Parking is the hardest part of driving here for me. 

She bought Eliza a pair of shorts for R$4.50 and a shirt for R$9. Then she bought the girls some underwear.  Remember she told me the first day she worked at our house that she knew of a cheap place to get very comfortable underwear. The underwear was R$1.40 a pair. 

I am so grateful for Teresa and her daughter Alana. Next week when the girls are off of school she is going to start coming Thursday and Friday afternoons to help watch the girls. She is such a blessing to me.