Campeche, the beach

Okay, day three. Sun is shining, Mauri has a morning shift, I'm not tired, I'm on vacation, no more working in Supermarket, no crazy sales, no additional sales, no working at all so IT'S BEACH TIME!

It takes about 5 to 10 minutes of walking to our beach. Depends if you are in a hurry and if it's 15 or 45 degrees.

I wasn't really expecting anything special, just so that my big dreams wouldn't crush. I have seen beaches of Croatia and those are not easy to beat.

Okay, few pictures.

Look at that sand!

Look at that view!

Look at those mountains!

I live here!

I live here! This is my neighborhood and I can walk here when ever I want! We also found a shortcut from our place to here so it takes only 5 minutes to see the beach! There is a surfing school on a beach and waves are pretty high here on this wintertime so you can actually see a lot of surfers! (At this time it was winter ((August)) and it was like 25c)

But I mean I LIVE HERE! I don't care I don't speak the language, food is expensive and I don't know how to use a gas oven because THIS is my backyard! It was so worth of waiting the 6 months in Finland and feel the broken heart and crying for far love because all this was so worth it. Mauri is also kinda nice but this beach is so beautiful!

Our beach!

It's not a tourist season yet and the beach is kinda empty. In summer there's gonna be umbrellas, tourists, beach chairs and beach vendors making the are more lively. I CAN'T WAIT! I'm super exited that summer is gonna be soon and I'm gonna see how this part of the city is gonna be on it's best glory! I want to drink mojitos on a beach and eat hot dogs. Buy jewels from hippies and listen to reggae. Look people who know how to Samba and think why Brazilian ladies wear flosses as bikinis. I want to be curious and stare how thick women carry themselves in thongs and their husbands are proudly squeezing their butts! No fat shaming, no stupid-ugly-fat days and guitar is playing!

After this happy moment I realized that my whole face is completely red and burned. I mean whole face, not just little bit from here and there but my whole face was evenly red. Like someone would have painted it. Winter sun is not for me, I'm too white. My shoulders were also burned. My shirt you see on picture didn't help much. Now I'm smarter and bought sunscreen of 50 with aloevera.

Next day my face hurt and scalp was peeling. hahah. I haven't burned myself after this day so lesson learned.

"You can always get the curtains up somehow"

Second day started with Mauri going to work around 7 am and I stayed here to get to know this ..dream apartment.

I didn't feel so horrified anymore, I got used to the smell, it wasn't so cold inside and I got warm water from shower!

Okay. Isn't it kinda obvious that when you move to a rental apartment there is supposed to be fridge, stove and other kitchen cabinets. Like basic furniture. Right? (At least in Finland)

We had: A fridge, (which Mauri carried few weeks before from the balcony to inside) sink and under that a sink cabinet, ugly as fuck kitchen table and chairs (these are the owners of this apartment) equally horrible couch, closet for clothes and bed. Ew. And ofc toilet things.
Yeah no oven. Its not part of the basics. OVEN IS NOT PART OF THE BASICS. No worries I knew that already but what... We cooked first two weeks with a microwave. Yeah you can cook with a microwave, did you know that? Our microwave sounds like it's in terrible need of euthanasia though.. I'm serious it's explosion hazard.

All this I would accept but a curtain rod. We didn't even have a curtain rod.

The balcony of our place is kinda like walk-through-balcony. So other people who live in this building also walk through it and our front door is the "balcony" door and the door is a size of our kitchen. So the size of our front wall. Filled with windows.
But still. No place to keep the curtains.

On a previous day we went to a hardware store to buy a drill, the bit for the drill and curtain rods. I told the dude who was selling those to us that "Now, sell us everything we need to get curtains on the wall". Sim sim.

At home I was super exited and said "Hubby, now let's start drilling!" I drilled a hole, put the curtain rod there and added a screw but HOW ARE YOU GONNA DRILL THE SCREW TO THE WALL WHEN THE DUDE ONLY SOLD US THE BIT AND NOT THE PART WE NEED TO SCREW THE SCREW. No screwdriver no nothing. See you don't remember all the things you need when you start your new life. Even the hardware store dude didn't realize that we have to attach the screw to the wall somehow.. ..sell me everything we need.. yeah right.

It's cool, now after living few months here we have curtains on the wall.

There is few other interesting things I realized from this apartment.

Here we already got some shelves to keep our food somewhere!

The sink cabin of ours is a fiasko.
Doors wont click, the closets don't fit. Who ever installed this thing there, didn't really care to measure much. "yeah, this is good I'm just gonna put this here, oopsie it's crooked well whatever because Brazil baby." Same thing with the sink. The hole of the sink in little bit higher that the bottom of the sink, so you have to push the water inside the hole, to empty the sink completely. Well.. No problem. It's cool.

Other thing I noticed is that shower only gives you freezing water or hot as hell water. Nothing in between. Well there I go and get my skin burned red and try to get used to the temperature. At least we have other than cold water.

It's okay, it's okay small details and it's all gonna be good.

My mother told me to

"You should start writing a blog, at least I would read it" -Mom

Okay so I have been writing this blog a month now in finnish and I thought that I give it a try in english too. Mainly because blogspot shows me what countries have been visiting my blog and people from States and all over the Europe have seen my finnish blog but the language is well.. finnish. So I'm just gonna give this a go.

All these texts here are just direct translations from my original blog: brazilandiia.blogspot.com.br

I've been living in Brazil 2 months now, so these english texts are not gonna be dated correctly. But all the texts are in the order of how I've been experiencing days here.

This is a tryout and lets see how it goes!

Okay, let's try this. At least I don't have to open up my mind on facebook anymore and this gives me other things to do than acting all wifey while Mauri is working.

We are gonna start from the day one and the first impressions and feelings about this country and place.

This place where we live with Mauricio is called Campeche, this is a beachy area, I insisted that if we are gonna live in Brazil, we are gonna live by the beach. This is still a rental apartment which you can tell, but Im gonna get back to that later..

Okay. Florianopolis, Campeche. I didn't know anything about this place before I got here. Mauri just told me that this is the place where brazilian people come to have their vacation and that this is amazingly gorgeously beautiful place and that "You are gonna love it!"

I prepared myself mentally as good as it is possible to be prepared when you move to a weird country. I knew that nothing is like in Finland and Finland is a luxury country and life is easy over there to compare to Brazil. I knew all this but Oh my Lord how this hit me hard. There is WTF moments everyday and all the time.

I flew here through Frankfurt and Sao Paolo. It took about 24 hours to get here.

It's okay, I like travelling and I'm used to wait arriving planes and delayed planes and I think this was actually a first time when nothing weird or special happened during the trip. Except on Frankfurt-Sao Paolo flight there was this kid who screamed 10 hours in a road, also the time when people tried to get some sleep, because it was a night flight. Hahhaha. At the time it wasn't funny.

Frankfurt airport is crazily big! Super cool to go from terminal to another with a train!

In Frankfurt I was again a threat as always...And 10 solid minutes I was lifting up my shirt and stretching my pants and making some exercise movements just to make sure I wasn't carrying anything illegal with me. At least this time there was no drug dogs sniffing me around.

In Sao Paolo at the gate where I was waiting my plane, I got to know to this boy from Florianopolis. He was coming back home from his to Europe. So he was kinda from wealthy family.

Brazilian people don't travel outside of their country unless they have money. Well maybe in other South American countries, but not in Europe.

Anyway we were talking a while with the dude about our trips and travels and we compared our countries to each others and I made him laugh by telling him how cold Finnish girl had to learn how to hug and kiss people whenever meeting.

Also I recommended few places to go in Europe and just chatted about general things of travelling. 

At one point I realized that the gate has changed and I had to leave and hunt down the right gate. Announcements are just in Portuguese so.. But I didn't miss my plane!

Florianopolis has its own airport, many asked if I need to take a boat to my home island but no I don't :D

Mauri was there at the airport waiting for me and we cried a little while we met after 6 months. We took a cab and my first impression from the island is the same as I have from all the warm countries. Similar ground and plants like in Greece or Spain. But when the plane landed to the airport the view was AMAZING! Mountains were framing beaches and the whole island looked like this secret place you find accidentally and you notice that WOW this is a paradise, you know?

Our home is close to the airport. 20 minutes by cab. Which is amazing, I was so tired and 3 hours or something by bus would have been ridiculously horrible.

And then: Home

Okay First I was pretty shocked that oh hell no this is the place Im gonna be living? Help me.. It was cold and even colder inside, because floors are tile and walls are stone, it was echoing inside, no curtains, rugs, NOTHING and the place smelled weird. I almost started crying, but now I blame the tiredness of the trip and I was pretty emotional because of the 6 months waiting.

Right away I told Mauricio that we are gonna go buy some cleaning products and clean this place from floor to the roof. And we have to buy a curtain holder. And sheets for the bed. And this is what we did. And I felt little bit better.

Mauri must be very happy when wifeys first words are "Eww it smells in here!" :D

But the next day was already much better!