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We live in Brazil.  In Brazil I have not yet found chili powder, or jalapenos, or tortilla chips...or celery - sometimes it's the small things you miss.  In Brazil I can't go into a store and ask them where I could find celery if there is any celery to be found in the city we live in because I can barely say good morning and count to twenty.  But in Brazil I discovered the pressure cooker for the first time.  Oh how I love to cook beans in thirty minutes without even trying.  And I figure that language-wise  my sign language and body language skills are really shooting through the roof.

In Brazil I drive a stick shift.  I haven't driven a stick shift since I was in my early twenties.  It's not that one has to drive a stick shift in Brazil, but I am.  In the part of the city where I live there are frequent entrances and exits on the road that require shifting with decision and confidence.  I find myself jolting my kids and I around like we're in an overloaded washing machine.  But the beautiful thing about all these exits and entrances is that when one takes a wrong turn (which I like to do regularly), it's usually just a half-mile or so before there is an opportunity to turn around and get yourself on the right track.

In Brazil we have a house with maids quarters and a room for the gardener.  They are lonely rooms, empty of everything but maybe the vacuum cleaner and discarded boxes.  We have so many rooms that even with the eight of us, two or three of the rooms will only be occupied when Gracie comes in with a paper, or a book, or a toy that she wants to hide in one of the unused desk drawers.  But in Brazil we have a swimming pool - a swimming pool!  Brazil might find that it needs to go to no greater effort to justify itself beyond us having a swimming pool.

Also in Brazil I've got these six noisy kids and a very tall husband.  Two of the kids bump around Brazil and look at cashiers in confusion with me, play on the playground with me, and read Star Wars and Superhero books with me.  The other four pour into the kitchen in the morning to eat oatmeal or pancakes, or, on lucky days, cereal, with me.  Then they hop in a school bus that actually is the same type of Sprinter Van that is parked in front of our own house and they don't come back until almost dinner time.  When they get off the bus I hear whether or not their day was good, if they had someone to sit next to at lunch, if recess went okay.  And then I listen to them playing in our big house together, sometimes fighting, sometimes giggling loudly, sometimes reading a book in the hammock, sometimes jumping off of furniture.

And the tall guy comes in and out looking handsome and trying hard at everything he does and he tells me I'm doing okay and that I'm going to learn Portugese and that the kids are okay and that Brazil is pretty good too.  And I get the idea that this could be home.