Christmas Catch Up

Well almost half a year has gone by since out last post. We knew we would be great bloggers when we started this but didn't think we would be this great! Due to the incredible length of time that has passed since out last post, let's use this as a bit of a Bentleys' Christmas Newsletter.



We have just begun our 5 week holiday, the weather is in the high 20's- low 30's and we are starting to spend a lot more time at the pool. We decided not to travel back to Canada this Christmas, instead we are staying down here in and around Sao Paulo, where we will celebrate Christmas and Zoe's 2nd birthday with friends. Then, on New Years Eve the big excitement begins when we fly down to Buenos Aires, spend 3 days there and then hop on a big cruise ship and head south down the coast of Argentina, out to the Falkland Islands and up the Chilean Coast to Santiago, where we will fly back to Sao Paulo in time to begin work again on Jan 21st. We are very much looking forward to this "sampler platter" tour of the bottom half of South America. Our good friends here- Jim & Andie, their kids Jaimo & Alexia, age 9&11, who Gavin and Zoe adore along with both sets of their Grandparents from Canada are joining us on this trip. We will take lots of pictures and actually try really hard to make a blog post some time soon after we get back to share our adventures with you all.










It has been a busy spring down here. Kim and Dan have enjoyed work but have had very full days. Kim is in her 4th year of teaching 4th grade and has really found her groove with this age group. Dan is continuing to teach IB math. As well as teaching the High Level course, he also is teaching the second half of the Standard Level course. Though the math isn't to the same level, he really notices that is can be much more work relating concepts to learners that don't really like math that much. It is all good though, class sizes are small and the students are great. In September, Dan traveled to Recife (Northeast Brasil) with a group of students on a week without walls. It was great to see very different part of Brasil than the southern region of Sao Paulo - two different worlds. In October, he traveled to a conference in Santiago, Chile. He had a great time catching up with friends Lissa and Ian (friends from the DR) they are now teaching in Santiago. What a great city Santiago is! The snow capped Andes Mountains framing the city, mountain bike/ running trails galore, vineyards just outside the city it was a nice change from the grind of SP.




















Gavin is doing well at school. He is a 4 year old in a class of 3-5 years olds. I think he is much more confident not being the youngest any more. He has brought home many " art" projects. Most are small scraps of paper pasted to larger scraps of paper, but most have a story to them. It is a nice schedule, his little bus picks him up just before we leave shortly before 8am and then bring him home again at noon. Zoe spends the mornings with our nanny, Roquelina, playing with her little friends in the indoor and out door playgrounds in our complex. She is excited for Gavin to get home each day as he is her hero, despite the fact she steals his toys from him.

After a lunch and a quick nap, on Tues. & Thurs they have swimming

lesson in our indoor pool. They are both doing great and are swimming with confidence. Zoe perhaps has a little too much confidence, the girl has no fear- she freaks everyone out as she throws herself head first into the deep end.

Both of them have a good little scene here at the moment as they have lots of friends and there is so much for them to do in our complex. They are flip back and forth between Portuguese (friends and our nanny) and English (with us), though look at us strange if we try to speak to them in Portuguese ( " whatever mom and dad....give it up, your accent is terrible and those verb tenses are all wrong"-that's what they're thinking). Gavin was a little disappointed with the Santa in the mall the other day as he spoke to him in Portuguese, all our Christmas DVDs (and we have a lot) are in English. So it was a little fishy that this mall Santa didn't speak the language of the North Pole.

Zoe will turn 2 in less than a week. She is very active, and very cute. Ok, I know, what parent doesn't say this about their kids, but look at the pics of her, she's adorable!
She will start in the Montessori school within our school next August. She is very social, and likes to make friends so we are confident that she will enjoy school. She is a passionate dancer. Whenever she hears music her shoulders just start moving and then she jumps to the floor and throws down some funky moves. Check out this video if you want a good laugh......



For three weeks in Nov. we were happy to host Grandma Joyce, Dan's mom and her husband, Granddad John. G and Z loved playing with them. From fort building with chairs, blanks and pillows in our living room to hide and seek and chase games on the play ground. Gavin, Zoe, Joyce and John enjoyed their bonding time together. Joyce and John were very adventurous and handled a trip to Rio de Janeiro for three days on their own while we were at work and school. On a long weekend we all boarded a plane a flew into the interior to the three way boarder of Brasil, Argentina and Paraguay where one of the most astonishing natural wonders is, Iguaza Falls. The are bigger than both Niagara and Victoria

Falls. What an amazing place!
We enjoyed great view from the Brasilian side one day and went to the Argentine side the next day but got a little rained out.































We were sad to see Joyce and John fly back to Canada and will miss them as well as the rest of our family and friends up there this Christmas.

November each year is the time that international educators start to get itchy feet. This is the time of year that schools from around the world start to post their up coming vacancies for the next school year. We are in our 4th year here now and this is the longest we have lived anywhere since we were both in University. It was very tempting to move on and begin a new adventure in a different corner of the world. We had a little sniff around at some early postings but the time came for us to confirm or reject another year here and we decided that everything is working really well right now, G & Z have a great life and despite Sao Paulo not being on our list of favourite cities, we really enjoy our jobs and the people down here. We signed to continue our stay here until June of 2011. We are pretty confident at that point we will head out on a new adventure, most likely further east (yea, that narrows things down a whole lot doesn't it).

Well if you have got this far...we will send you one of the Christmas cookies that Kim is currently working so hard on, in the mail. It will be a very different Christmas for us Bentleys down here this year. Not just because the weather is 34 C and we are sitting around in our swim suits, but because we won't be sharing it with a lot of you. Our thoughts are with you all especially at this time of year. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays!

Summa Time in Canada

Hello Everyone!

Sorry that it's been such a long time since we've updated our blog. It is the middle of August now and we've been back in Brazil for two weeks and we've had students at school for one of those weeks!
We enjoyed a wonderful seven and a half weeks back in Canada this summer. We spent most of our time at the cottage but were able to visit each grand parent and aunt and uncle, too. To be honest, Dan and I were nervous about this summer with Zoe so close to the water. I expected that she would want to throw herself off of the dock and into the rocky water. Thankfully she was much better than we expected and neither her nor Gavin fell into the water or were injured this summer. Phew!
Gavin got a shiny, red bike at the start of the summer from Grandpa and Nana Mary which he practiced on quite a bit and is now regularly riding in Brazil. Zoe loved "mowing" the road with her toy lawn mower. The driveway was the play area of choice at the cottage this summer. Gavin and Zoe also went to two zoos this summer. This was their first time at the zoo and they thoroughly enjoyed both visits.
Family and friends was the focus of our summer and we had a wonderful visit. It's sad to think that we won't be going to Canada for Christmas this year but we're also looking forward to our cruise around the bottom of South America. The weather here in Brazil is pretty nice. Actually today it's about 24 degrees Celcius and sunny. Hopefully the "winter" will continue like this and not get too rainy and cold. We'll keep our fingers crossed. I'll now paste in some pictures above. Enjoy!

Dance Party

Fall is upon us here in Brazil. The hot humid weather has come to an end and the nice pleasant 20 C days and 15 C nights are here. Gavin and Zoe are busy little guys. Some exciting news for them is that the apartment complex that we live in just renovated the three playgrounds they have. They replaced some 20+ year-old equipment with newer, cooler, to code (less likely to break your arm on) apparatuses. Much time is spent swinging, climbing and sliding. Zoe, despite her 16 months, will try anything Gavin does. It is a little scary at times.

Gavin finished his first half marathon a few weeks ago. He pulled his dad along in his jogging stroller to a time of 1:30. Kids exercising with their parents isn't a popular thing in Sao Paulo, as young kids would be at home with the nannies while mom or dad is out running or at the gym. Therefore, Gavin and I were quite the novelty in the Sao Paulo half marathon. Kim also trained hard for and ran the race with a few of her friends and did really well.

The other night we decided to get one of our many Bentley-Before-Dinner-Dance-Parties on film. As you can see in G and Z have been working hard on their moves. Gavin has his dad's uncanny sense of rhythm, musical interpretation and Zoe is starting to work the hips.





The kids in the above picture are most of the teacher's kids who live at the Portal (the apartment complex where we live). These are some of Gavin and Zoe's closest buddies.
Gavin and I did a Canada presentation for his class. April has been international month throughout the school. We read and sang Raffi, ate strawberry shortcake (red and white) and showed his class pictures of Canada in the summer and winter.
The lovely lady in the blue dress is our nanny, Roquelina. At the end of March we attended her daughter's wedding (the one getting married is not in this picture). It was a beautiful wedding and it was great to meet all of Roquelina's family.

Summer in Sao Paulo

Happy Summertime from Sao Paulo!

It's been nice and hot here the last 5 weeks. Makes for some sweaty days at work but as soon as we get home we head to the pool. We've been spending most of our weekends at the "Clube". This is the central area of our complex where there are 4 pools, saunas, game rooms, pool and ping-pong tables, work out rooms and and an indoor and an outdoor restaurant. We pass the time swimming and running around with other kids but always stop to eat chicken nuggets, popsicles and drink Caipirinias and beer towers (This is a wonderful addition to our restaurant's menu, you can see it on the table below. It is a 3 liter cylindar that sits on the middle of the table on a lazy-susan and you just spin the spout around infront of you and top up your glass, it even has a cooling tube running down the center of the cylindar.). Gavin and Zoe have been practicing their swimming. Gavin started swimming lessons on Tues. and Thurs. two weeks ago and so far, so good. He seems to enjoy them and we're hoping that by northern hemisphere summer he'll be swimming on his own. Below are some pics from a typical weekend.

Here is Zoe doing what she does best these days, aimlessly running around. She is a very busy (almost) 15 month old. She is into everything and does not want to be left behind the bigger kids. If they can climb on or jump off something, so can she. She is so cute, and her first word was "NO" but a close second was, "daddy" (sorry Kim). She is also saying "mama" and "Agua" as well. Gavin and her continue to be good friends although Gavin does get frustrated with her as no matter how many toys there are scatter around the house to play with, she wants whatever it is Gavin is currently playing with.


Here is Gavin with several of his friends munching on some pizza at one of his friend's birthday parties.A few weeks ago we had our week-long Carnival break from work. For three of the days we headed off to Itatiaia National Park on the boarder of Rio State and Sao Paulo State, about 4 hours out of the city. We travelled there with our friends Matt, Karen and 3 month old Eli. We stayed in these nice little cabins and did a little exploring and jungle hikes. A few of the trails were a little over grown so Gavin, on foot and Zoe and Eli in packs got their first experince with bush wacking. One of our adventures ended at a small water fall, but is was a little to cold to swim.

Flying through the jumgle!


Dan and Kim are doing well. Both busy at work though things are calming down for Dan as he has finished grading his major assignments and they have been sent off to IB headquarters to make sure he is accuate in his grading. Kim, Dan and Gavin are training for a Half-Marathon at the beginning of April. Kim is doing great and just did a 20km training run on Sat. at Uni. of SP campus. Since Dan is a headcase and has issues with his trasition to becoming a recreational runner, he can't run in 10 k's or 1/2 marathons and be satisfied running times much slower than he used to run so he has to set other goals. Therefore, in April he wants to run his fastest half-marathon ever, while pushing Gavin in his jogging stroller. Gavin is pretty excited about it and has been really good about spending 1.5 hours in the stroller on training runs, maybe it is the chocolate treats he keeps getting feed every 15 minutes or so that keep him and his spiderman action figure in such good humour throughout.

Well, that's all from us for now. We have three long weekends in April so we expect it will fly by, and before we know it we'll be boarding a plane to the cottage! Let us know how you are!

Love, Dan, Kim, Gavin and Zoe

Bentley's Christmas in Canada

On Dec 18th Zoe, Gavin, Kim and Dan boarded a plane in sunny and hot Sao Paulo, Brazil on route to Toronto, Canada where they were greeted by one of several winter storms that they would endure over the next month.We certainly got a dose of Canadian Winter! So much more bearable when you know that within weeks you will be back in 30 C and summer time. We got to do some tobogganing and Dan and Kim even got away on a 3 days snowboarding mini holiday while Grandma and Grand-dad hung out with Gavin and Zoe.
We spent the week leading up to Christmas and Christmas Day at Keely and Marvin's house with Dan's family. Gavin was very excited about Christmas this year and seemed to know what was going on.

Gavin and Zoe get yet more Christmas gifts at Grandma Betts' house on their second Christmas morning.















Grandpa and Zoe enjoying time together.
















We were also lucky to be able to celebrate several birthdays while up in the winter wonderland.

First (pun intended) Zoe turned ONE. Soon to be Aunt Val made Zoe an awesome Monkey cake which her and even more so her older brother Gavin loved tearing into.

Next Dan had his 35th birthday, it was his first birthday in Canada for at least 10 years.
And Gavin and Zoe's Great-Grandma Dot had a big party for her 85th birthday the day before we headed back to Brasil. It was awesome to get to celebrate it with her and all her family.