Bemvindo a nossa casa!

(Let me preface this long post by saying that this painful story has a happy ending. If you wish to skip all the drama, jump down to the bottom to see the final result)

Welcome to our house! Yes, that means we actually have a house. Just as we were starting to wonder what we'd gotten ourselves into and how quickly we could buy a plane ticket to Canada to finish out the sabbatical, a stroke of great fortune.

To back up a moment, we had no pre-arranged living situation when we left the U.S. Our plan was, more or less, to 'wing it'. I had contacted a Brazilian living in Campinas, Simone, who specializes in helping foreigners relocate and settle in. She quickly became our closest friend as we spent several long days with her viewing possibilities, mostly to find that they were not in fact possibilities. In Brazil, it is very unusual to rent for less than thirty months AND it is even more unusual to rent a place furnished. And in Brazil, an unfurnished apartment does not even come with a stove or refrigerator. Yet here we were looking for five months, completely furnished, in a safe neighborhood and oh - maybe a pool and a few fruit trees in the backyard for the kids. Simone had the patience of an angel and the perseverance of a New Yorker but the best we could do was a tiny, overpriced executive flat in a high-rise (with shared pool) in a busy downtown neighborhood. It was teeny tiny and the rent was about $3,500 - but it was in the center of the city (and therefore didn't require a car to get everywhere - except for the kids school and Anthony's work) and oh - did I mention it had a pool?

So, we applied. But in Brazil, it seems, nothing is ever that easy. And just because you have money to pay the rent doesn't mean you can rent it. The agency sent us a contract that was 34 page long - no joke. As we desperately tried to translate it (thank you Google!), we stopped over at the University's international relations office and - strangely enough (because we had asked them several times in the past via email) they knew of a condo available in the very neighborhood where the university and our hotel are located. In Barao Geraldo - the neighborhood we were already starting to think of as home.

We saw it and loved it, but we were feeling frustrated and deeply suspicious at this point. We didn't want to get our hopes up and we definitely didn't want to lose the apartment contract that was still in play. But Denilson realty, who handled the condo contract, immediately put us at ease. The father/son team greeted us warmly, soothing the adults with coffee and the kids with candy. The pair looked as if they were always enjoying a great joke between them, and their answer to all our questions was 'no problem'. No, we didn't need a guarantor; no, we didn't need to prepay many months of rent; no, we wouldn't have to re-paint the whole house after only four months of living. And the contract was only three pages long! What a difference. The next day, the owner drove up from Sao Paulo - a lovely older woman...kind and gracious...loves Americans (and especially Italian-Americans), loves Hollywood, loves English...happy to have us as tenants. We drank cafezinhos, we signed the contract, we got the keys. (Ok, so it wasn't that easy of course. The contract had to be notarized at the public cartorio, with three official signed and sealed copies, prior to which Anthony's signature first had to be registered at the cartorio. All in all, two trips to the cartorio and about three hours time spent - not too bad)

This all happened on Friday and we spent the weekend moving in, buying a few necessities (a ~$700 shopping spree at the Brazilian Walmart) and getting comfortable. We absolutely love it. It's small by our standards but it feels like a palace. We have a little backyard for fresh air and hanging the laundry, three bedrooms to spread out in and great showers. It is a gated community with a doorman at the entrance - the kids can literally run throughout the neighborhood on their own. And it's full of other children, plus there's a communal playground and, best of all, a really nice pool and churrascaria (bbq) area. The location couldn't be better - Barao Geraldo is it's own little neighborhood with stores and markets in walking distance - yet easy on and off the highway to get to downtown Campinas and the kid's school. And Anthony can walk to the university.

So, a very stressful process but our determination paid off and we wound up getting really lucky. Now, if we could just get the Internet and phone set up....