First Impressions

view of the city

Oi gente
I've had quite a few requests for a blog, so here it is.
Although I would have loved to live and teach in Rio (I love that city), it is just too damn expensive... So now I am in a small city in the state of Minas Gerais (north of Rio de Janeiro). The population is around 85,000 people. It is urban enough and there are two universities here, but according to wikipedia the city is essentially agricultural. "The main crops are fruits, vegetables, and especially coffee. With an area planted with 66 million trees in more than 320 square kilometres, coffee growing provides about 8 thousand direct jobs and 35 thousand indirect".
So like any small, agricultural town you don't get too many foreigners here. I am one of the only  Americans here (maybe the only). This has its advantages and disadvantages (more about this later).
Advantage: I quickly got a job teaching English at a language school here despite the fact that I have no teaching experience and basically can't speak Portuguese.

By the way, my Portuguese sucks. Before coming here I really thought I had a better grasp of it than I do.... My first couple days here everything sounded like gibberish and I could barely remember how to form a sentence besides "my name is" and all that other introductory stuff. A little more than two weeks later I can understand a lot, maybe not 100% but most. The speaking..... hasn't improved quite as quickly. I kind of feel like a mute, I listen and nod and maybe say "sim" or "nao".... but Jolie has reassured me that it is possible for me to speak Portuguese, as she had a similar experience during her first 3 weeks in Nicaragua. So we'll see I guess.

the steep climb to my house

For now I'll just give you some pictures:

My street

Minha Casa

my little kitchen