This was a week of good-byes as both Sarah and Jimmy headed back to the US after being in Brazil for months.

Sarah was the first to leave, on Thursday, so she really needed to make some final purchases of gifts for folks back home. She, and I, had both liked the artwork we had seen at the weekly “Brique da Redenção” or brick market, if you navigate to Expositores, then to Artesanto, and finally to Box 117 you will see Daniel at his exhibit. The past Sunday we had made plans to go, before the mall, and the all day rain more than dampened them as the market was completely shut. Thankfully, we had stopped and talked to the artist on a previous visit and Sarah had his card with his blog, email, and phone. Since his English is quite good she was able to call him and arrange to come to his workshop to make her purchases and asked me if I wanted to go along. I figured why not, as the weather may not cooperate on other weekends as well so I should go when I had the chance.

Thankfully on of the guys from the office here, Rodrigo, offered to give us a ride there. If he hadn’t we probably never would have made it since the directions given by Google Maps weren’t exactly right, and even with the right directions we wound up almost getting lost. Eventually we found his place, on a fairly residential street with a school nearby, his workshop is in the garage which is under the house and is somewhat hidden by the painted gate that greets all of his visitors.

I had hoped to get one of what he called “bikeosauroses” when we saw him at the market, listed as sauros on his blog. As often is the case with artwork, he didn’t have them any more. He said he might be able to make another but is was becoming hard to figure out how to describe the one I had liked the most as we didn’t have the blog in front of us. Instead, I looked around at what he had and wound up with a borborleta (butterfly) that can be hung on the wall of illuminated by attaching to a lamp and a couple of his signature piece, the gecko.

I also was very interested in a fairly large sphere (caotictopus on his blog), as my place in Chicago is in need of some larger and more dimensional artwork. He was kind of surprised that I would want it given that it was a bit heavy and he knew that I had to fly it home with me, and I assured him that I didn’t think it would be an issue. As I hadn’t expected to spend that much money, I didn’t have enough cash with me to purchase all of the items, and I asked him to add a holder for a candle inside the sphere similar to what he had in a companion piece that I was not buying. So we arranged for Rodrigo and I to come back on Friday to pick of the final piece and we did just that. I also needed help getting everything to my apartment that evening, especially since I forgot to take the other pieces home each of the past two days.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful.

I had planned on attending a coding dojo Wednesday evening in the office, but since it was open to non-ThoughtWorkers eight folks who signed up didn’t speak any English, so Greg and I had to take a pass. It wasn’t the worst turn of events as that was Sarah’s last night so a number of folks were going out to Z Café in Padre Chagas for dinner and drinks and we were able to join them.

Friday there was a separate outing for Jimmy’s last night that I didn’t go to as it looked to be more at a bar than a restaurant and I really am just not that into the bar scene anymore. Instead I grabbed dinner with Fernando from the office at Press Café, where I had eaten before so knew that they had a good menu and that I could get a decent glass of wine.

There was one good thing with Jimmy leaving, well for me at least. He had purchased a real coffee pot when he got here and offered it to me, even though he knew I had my little individual metal French Press, since there was no need to take it back to the US. I of course accepted  my inheritance as I was getting a bit tired of having grounds swimming in every cup of coffee I made since the grind here is a bit too fine to work correctly in a French Press.

Even though I had already been chewing on my ground infused coffee, I nearly immediately made a pot and I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t indulged in one.

The rest of the weekend was a bit lonely as I had to get used to not having as many folks around to do things with, but it gave me the time to catch up on my blog (as you may have noticed by the number of times I have posted in the past week) and on some other of those tasks that one just keeps putting off when there are better things to do, and of course they are the kind of tasks that pretty much anything is better than doing.

Tchau,

Wendy

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