Monkey

Today I finally captured some appropriate pictures that I feel perfectly explain why we call Jadon "Monkey".  

Jake was laughing when I took this pic. He was picturing me snapping the photo as Jadon disappears out of site down the other side. Luckily that did not happen.  We got him down as soon as I snapped this pic.

Jadon will climb anything. Dining room chairs, couch....you name it! If no one is at the computer we have to move the chair away so he does not climb up and bang on the keyboard. He tries to scale the recliner just like the couch trying to get to the set of windchimes I have hanging above it (a special gift from our Brazilian friends).  Oh...and the other morning I found him on the dining room table!

Where In The World is Matt? Brazil Edition Day 3

Hi Everyone!  Kiana here!  Matt just sent an update.  I was glad to hear from him.  He never called last night.  I waited, and waited, and waited.....I have no life!  LOL!  He explains  below that there is not internet at the hotel right now.  He was not able to send the pic he refers to yet either.  I will update the post as soon as I get it!! (post updated)

14Jul2010

There has been no internet all day today at the hotel.  The woman at the hotel desk told me that this was a city wide problem.  This is exceptionally bad, because it is my method of communication with home.  Luckily, the Cat factory still has an internet connection. 

I did get the hot water to work in the shower on Monday night.  I turned the cold knob way down and the hot all the way on and just let it run for about 15 minutes.  Now, I have hot water every time, almost instantly.  I don’t understand why, but as long as I can take a hot shower, I don’t need to. 

Last night, our Friend Anselmo and his son Gabe took us out to dinner.  He chose a restaurant by the river that serves fish.  Not just any fish.  The one we had was called “Filhote”.  This is a 60 kg (2.2 lbs per kg) fish found in the Amazon.  We had two steaks and it was more than enough for 6 of us.  It was slow cooked over hot coals and served with salad and white rice.  I attached a picture of one of the fish steaks after we had finished it.  You can see the skin and vertebrae still in place.  That is one big fish.  We also order a side dish of French fried cassava or yucca.  Cassava is a potato like vegetable that I found at Wal-Mart in Bloomington once.  We tried it raw, and it was horrible.  Fried, it is wonderful but what isn’t?  Dinner was great.

Dinner plays a major role in the Brazilian culture.  It appears that this is not something that should be rushed.  People end their day with it.  They start showing up at the restaurants at 8 or even later and sit and talk and slowly eat for two hours.  This aspect is nothing like home.  I am stuffed.

Where In The World is Matt? Brazil Edition Day 2

 Here is the latest installment of "Where In The World is Matt Nafziger?":  

 The Pool

I sent pictures of the the hotel pool and my room.  No, the walls aren't completely bare as I had indicated earlier.  You'll see that there are a couple pictures of palm trees or something on one wall, but with the floor travelling up it, I wasn't sure it was officially a wall.

Matt's Hotel Room (not very spacious)

We started the tractor build yesterday and it seemed like a slow day.  We had a quality issue with one of the parts and started off in "what can we do to fix it" mode.  We came up with a solution and had a washer machined into a spacer that should work for the first 1000 hours that the machine operates.  After that, we will have an opportunity to repair it correctly. 

The factory was clean and bright and lunch was great.  The visitors badge gets us into the cafeteria and is what lunch gets charged to.  They had a salad bar, fruit, rice, beans, grilled salmon, and a selection 

of desserts.  Everything that I tried was all very good.  The rice and beans are served with every mean here.  Usually white rice, but they had brown available at the cafeteria.

For dinner last night, we walked to the restaurant next door at 7:30 (that's when the open).  The crowd didn't really come in until about an hour later.  The food there was also great.  Chicken Parmesan, served with rice, beans, and french fries.  The portions are huge (like 3 chicken breasts apiece) and cost $109 Brazil $ for four of us.  I'll let you divide by 1.8 to convert to US $ and then divide by 4 to get the individual price.  We each had a beer also.  Oh, and in the process of asking if we could get 4 individual checks, they brought out an after dinner coffee for each of us.  Our Portuguese could use some work.

Oh, and how could I forget the accident that we saw while eating dinner.  A garbage truck sides swiped a small Chevy and kept going up the street collecting trash.  It left quite a mark.

Where in the World is Matt? Brazil Edition-Day 1

Matt flew to Brazil for work on Saturday night.  He arrived there around between 9 and 10 their time on Sunday.  Here is his email about his first day.

Hotel Beira Rio, Piracicaba

We landed in Brazil and were picked up by two drivers as planned.  Four of us and all of our bags wouldn't have fit in one vehicle.  It was a 2 hour drive into Piracicaba.  Most of the vehicles are smaller cars, with the biggest being a Ford Fusion.  The taxi that we were in was a Citroen.  There were motorcycles, lots of motorcycles zipping by us, weaving through traffic, splitting lanes between cars.  All going as fast as they could.  The cars seemed to abide by the 120 km/h (75 mi/h) speed limit but the motocycles seemed to just run wide open. 

The hotel looks nice, but it really isn't much to write home about.  I will anyway.  The pool is outside and looks to be just big enough to cool off in.  More of just a landing for the water slide.  No one is using it beause it is winter.  The lows are in the 50's and the highs are around 80.  Not bad at all for winter!  The room is about 13' x 13' including the bathroom.  It is completley white, with bare walls, and a light beige curtain.  The sheets are white.  The floor is wood (laminate) and continues half way up one wall to act as a headboard.  The shower has a frosted window in it that never really closes well.  It pivots open (no screens anywhere) with a chain to keep it from going to far.  I can hear traffic through it all the time because there is no seal at all.  Glad I am on the fourth floor.

Speaking of the shower, I have not figured this thing out.  There are two faucets up high labeled hot and cold and one down where you would expect it.  When I failed to get hot water from the one down below, I adjusted the cold knob above down to off.  Still only cool to warm water at best.  After my cold shower, I noticed that turning off the cold in the shower had turned off the sink completley.  Something is amiss with the pluming, I suspect.  

We had a pastry of some sort and a yogurt on the plane for breakfast yesterday at around 8 am.  We thought we would meet around 3 for a late lunch after unpacking and taking a short nap.  Turns out that the hotel resturant (a steakhouse) doesn't open until 7 pm.  We saw nothing whithin walking distance so we sat and watched the world cup game at the outside hotel bar.  Finally at 6:45, the restaurant manager let us in to the salad bar.  The food was great and this morning, I am still stuffed.  A brazillian steakhouse cooks different cuts of beef and chicken on big skewers and bring it out and cut it off as you want it.  You get a red and green coaster-like peice of cardboard that tells them whether you want more meat or not, depending on how you have it flipped.  At the point that we were all stuffed and had had plenty, the hotel manager came out and said, "too early" and flipped all of our peices back to green.  It was great food, but a dangerous way of eating.  All those small peices of meat add up.  In the end, it was only about $35 each.  I hope I don't have to eat like that everday! 

Now, off to the factory to start building the first tractor.

Matt