Wednesday- Market Day

Today Kendall and I took Eli, Evan, Naomi and Joshua to the market. Once we got past our discomfort at being the foreigners, it was lots of fun. We may have overdone it with the big bag of fruit we bought, but how can you resist real fruit that hasn’t been shipped green thousands of miles?

For lunch we stopped at a little stand selling “pastel.”  These were deep-fried pastries full of one of a huge variety fillings. 

It took us forever to figure out what was what.  Naomi helped translate, but even so, I was surprised how lost I was with the language.  Our Spanish helps us a lot because Portugese is related to Spanish.  So I can read something or listen in on a conversation and get an idea of what is going on.  However, I’m finding that conversing is something altogether different.  But a smile goes a long way. J  Finally, we figured out which pasteles we were ordering and enjoyed sitting in the crowd eating.  In fact, the crowd seemed rather focused on us by the time our orders were in.  (Eli, especially, tried to become invisible, but it didn’t work.)  People were very friendly and seemed to enjoy the novelty the foreigners offered.  The women making the pasteles must have really liked us (or the diversion we offered), because when we went to pay, they told us we get one free pastel.

Speaking of the novelty of foreigners, 4 children so close in age seemed to also offer a bit of novelty.  People really like kids.  Delton told us ahead of time that Brazil is very mother-friendly.  So my big belly along with a small crowd of children didn’t help us blend in.  Several vendors seemed to enjoy seeing so many children appearing to belong to one family.  One had a conversation about it with me.   (I think).  I tried to explain to him that only 2 were mine.  Another one started counting as we filed past him.  When he got to Kendall at the end of the line, he laughed and shook Kendall’s hand, congratulating him.  We waited in the shade of another vendor’s fruit stand while Kendall went to buy a watermelon.  He had fun figuring out which children were Brazilian and traded a quick language lesson with us, teaching us to say “strawberry” in Portugese and learning the word in English.

Here Kendall and I enjoy coconut water back at Delton and Fernie's, a treat we often enjoyed straight from the tree while living out in the country in Costa Rica.