We arrived!

Finally we are here in Sao Paulo! Months we have waited for this moment. A waiting which can be characterized by hope, extension, hope, extension, hope……But now this is over, or maybe this is just the beginning of what we can expect here. We will see.

After almost a month of saying goodbye to everyone, we arrived here on the 6^th of August. A warm welcome was waiting for us: Mr. Marques (our faithful taxi driver who had picked us up the last time and other times when Ronald was on business trips) and a very nice temperature of 29 degrees. How awful to know that this is just wintertime….

Ronald and I are spending our first week close to the Philips office, which is in a suburb outside Sao Paulo. We have a nice hotel with swimming pool and a fitness centre. I was already looking forward spending my time at this swimming pool in the next couple of days, reading some books, tanning…. Well, this plan was a bit disturbed. Since yesterday there are grey clouds moving by and a bit of rain is falling(still 21 degrees though). With this weather this place is a bit boring and reading books, using the internet and doing some Portuguese exercises is satisfying for some time, but not for days. So we needed some action! Today I decided to visit some hotels in which it is possible to stay after this week. They are located more in the centre of Sao Paulo. Philips offered us this option so that we can find a nice and lovely place for the next two months. An offer I accepted with pleasure!

Another thing Ronald and I would like to give notice of is the way how Brazilians do sports. IT IS VERY FUNNY! They all dress up with their most fancy sport outfits and then…… there is almost no activity or progress. They are as slow as slugs. If they run or bike, it’s all the same. No progress. It is so funny, haha. We have put a picture of the running cycle just in front of our hotel which is a small 1 km run. They are walking on it over and over again. Running on the streets is a bit uncommon here.

Well tonight we are going to have dinner with Anniek, a Dutch girl and a colleague of Ronald, here in Alphaville. Hopefully we can move to the city centre this weekend. The weather forecast is at least very good (28 degrees). Still a topic a Dutchie is fond of talking :) Speak to you soon!

Some first pictures below

An impression of Alphaville suburb

Philips Head Office

How Brazilians do sports: slowly

Skyline Sao Paulo