Everybody....PUSH!

Oh man did I make an incredible cultural discovery today! I went out for lunch with one of the missionary families from the church and after we finished they wanted to take me back to their apartment to pick a few things up before heading back for evening service. On the ground floor of their apartment complex there is a parking garage for tenants. A buzzer was used to open the gated door and we drove in to look for a place to park since there are no reserved spots. The garage was much smaller than I expected and after I took a closer look at the layout, I noticed there were quite a few spots that were completely blocked by another spot right in front of it. In other words, if you parked your car in the back spot against the wall, and someone else came and parked in the front spot, you were totally stuck.

My first reaction was, surely they rent those spots out to the same tenant that has two cars so there would never be a situation in which one car would be blocked from getting out by a car that belonged to someone else.
Wrong!
The understood rule is, if you park in one of the spots blocking another car (which we did) you must leave your car in neutral (regardless of whether it is an automatic or manual) and make sure you do not put the parking brake on. You have to do all of this because if the owner of the blocked car comes down and wants to leave before you do, he has to push your car out of his way!
Now stop and think about all of this for just a moment. What if the parking garage is not level? What if cars periodically slide around? What if when you return to get your car but you cant find it because gravity or another motorist has moved it? The possibilities are many and funny.
So remember, when you return to your car in Brazil and you see a few lads pushing a car around, lend a hand because they just want to leave too!

A Field Day For Science

No matter what you have going on your schedule, you will definitely want to make time to attend my funeral. I am not exactly sure how it will go, but my hope is that spliced in with the stories about my life and the nice comments, someone will find time to tell the audience what science discovered during the autopsy. The reason you are going to want to hear that report is because there is a good chance the man delivering the speech is going to be baffled that I made it as long as I did. And lets be honest, everyone likes to watch the public speaker squirm every now and again.
I suspect that one highlight of the autopsy will be the amount of Guarana Soda that they found. Guarana is a popular soda in Brazil that is sometimes tough to find in the United States. It is for this reason that I decided to move to Brazil and start this blog in honor of the great soda.
Many of you are asking, What does it taste like, and How can I get some for myself? The answers to those two inquiries are: come visit Brazil, and words can not even describe the taste, disrespectively.
So stay tuned to the blog where I will tell you all about my experiences in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil complete with pictures and the relaying of funny stuff that happens to me. If nothing funny happens, I will just pick something normal and puff it up real good.
Until next time, bite, claw, scratch, and gnaw....do whatever you have to do, to get your hands on some Guarana.