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!