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Here are 1996 photos of Carla, Josh, and Zeke! If you have a fast link, you can click on the image to go to our larger photo album page.

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Carla, Josh and Zeke arrived in the US in May of 1996 from Brazil. Their trip included about 5 weeks in residence at Lar Rogate in Curitiba. Curitiba is a beautiful city in southern Brazil. While we were at Lar Rogate, we rented a car for a week and drove over to the South Atlantic Ocean and Caioba Beach. We also saw the Vila Velho rock formations, and the Punta Gorda sinkholes. Carla and I even took the overnight bus to see Iguacu Falls.

In Brazil, you need to cohabit with the child for 30 days if the child is over the age of two. Lar Rogate is a great place to do this. They have an outdoor swimming pool, a soccer field, and a few sheep! The supermarket is about 5 blocks downhill. The ice cream stand is 1 block away, and the Video Laser rental place has plenty of tapes in English just 2 blocks away.

Lar Rogate is also on the bus line that can take you downtown. Downtown, we loved the Passeo Publico park, where you can rent a paddle boat, or just sip drinks overlooking the pond. I was fascinated by the crowds of men hovering over domino games in the park! We also hired a taxi one day to take us to the zoo south of town. The zoo is really fantastic.

Our family was built with the help of Limiar USA, a child advocacy group who runs an orphanage in Sao Paulo and works with orphanages in 6 other Brazilian states. They have an excellent site, and for more information on adopting from Brazil, please visit them.

All of the following links have been verified & refreshed as of April 1998. In the future, I hope to complete:

• Photos of great side trips to Caioba Beach, Iguacu Falls, Vila Velho & the Jesuit Trail
• Photos of the beautiful downtown parks in Curitiba
• Visit our store of Brasilian books and music.
• We learned Portuguese for our trip using the 15 cassette edition of the Pimsleur tapes. If you are going to be adopting an older child, I definitely recommend learning enough of their language to carry on a conversation. I started using a cheap $10 set of tapes from the local bookstore, but quickly switched over to this professional set of tapes. They are expensive ($300+), but you can really reach what is called Foreign Service Level 1 in about 45 days with these tapes. To try the concept with out plunking down $300, buy the 4-cassette Pimsleur sample set from Amazon.com for about $20. This will not give you enough Portuguese to get by, but at least you can see if you like the method.
• I love this history of the Portuguese language, because they explain that the word "bobo" was absorbed into the language when Portugal was under the control of Spain from 1580 to 1640. At Lar Rogate, Josh became very angry with me, and called me a "bobo". Of course, this was not on the Pimsleur tapes, so I had to enlist Carla's help for a translation. It means "fool", and the word has become our favorite term of endearment!
• Carla's favorite band in Brasil was the Mamonas Assassinas. These links have been flaky as of late: Mamonas Assassinas. Carla convinced me to buy this cassette in Brazil. She taught me how to sing the hit song, "Pelados em Santos". Thinking back, we would sing it everywhere, in restaurants, walking along the street, whatever. Boy was I embarrassed when I returned home to a Portuguese slang dictionary and got a gist of what I was singing! Anyhow, here is a site with the lyrics to Pelados em Santos, and they have provided links for many terms that show up in the song (like the Reebok page when they sing Reebok.) It is in Portuguese, but I liked it none-the-less. Lino guarantees me that the kids have no clue what they are singing. The Mamonas CD is now out of print. Here are some other Brasilian artists that kids AND parents will like:
• The best place to find a great selection of Brasilan artists is at CD-NOW. You order over the Internet and the CD's show up a few days later. CD-NOW's discounted prices and fantastic customer service make shopping a pleasure. The following links will take you to the appropriate page at CD-NOW. If you have some favorite Brasilian music that is not listed here, let me know via the guestbook and I will add the links here.
• Carla likes some really beautiful music by a female vocalist named Daniela Mercury. I have her Musica da Rua (street music) CD and it is great. Starting April 28th, you can buy her new release, Swing da Cor on sale from CD-Now.
• My new favorite CD is called Red Hot & Rio. This CD is an AIDS benefit CD. It has a variety of artists, including a great duet of David Byrne and Marisa Monte singing Waters of March. If you buy only one CD to get a flavor of Brazilian Bossa Nova Music, this should be the one! By the way, Bossa Nova means "new beat".
• My next purchase will be the companion CD to the above. It is called Nova Bossa - Red Hot Verve. Same concept as above, a compilation of various artists.
• Carla's Brasilian friend Tara really likes music by Xuxa (pronounced Shoe-Shah). CD-Now sells at least one Xuxa CD.
• Another female singer with a great voice is Marisa Monte. CD Now sells her 1997 release, Great Noise.
• CD-Now also sells a nice compilation of various Brasilian popular artists called Musica Populera Brasileiro. To find other Brasilian artists, click on the "Sony Discos" link from the Daniela Mercury album page.
• To add any combination of the above items to your CD-NOW shopping cart in one easy link, use our CD-NOW link page.
• Click here to see the recipe for Lar Rogate's famous Black Beans & Rice.
• Carla's favorite soccer club is the Flamengo club. For some reason, we have much better luck with the main home page, but there is also an English version of the Flamengo pages.
• I recommend a book called Little Brazil, An Ethnography of Brazilian Immigrants in New York City by Maxine L. Margolis. It is published by Princeton Paperbacks (ISBN 0-691-00056-5). It is an interesting look at the journey of many Brasilian immigrants. In association with Amazon.Com, you can order this book now.
• Maxine L. Margolis wrote a new book called An Invisible Minority: Brazilians in New York City, available from Amazon.com for $17.00.
• Carla arrived in the US at the age of 12. She had very little school in Brasil. Now that she can speak English, she is working on learning to read. I went to all the local book stores looking for beginning reader books that would appeal to older kids. All the national chains said that no such books exist. Wrong! We have since found several companies that sell resources for us. The Listening Library Catalog (1-800-243-4504) sells audio books for teens. They also sell some books where the audio tape reads up to an exciting point and then ends, leaving the student to finish the story. Next, High Noon Books offers what are called "high interest, low level" reading books. You can get first grade-level books that will appeal to teens in their catalog. They are a division of Academic Therapy Publications 1-800-422-7249.
• When you adopt an older child, be prepared for a challenge with the public schools. They can resist testing for an IEP, when they do agree to test, they can forget to tell you about your federal right to have kids tested in their native language, and after they do the testing, can stick your kid in a program that is not at all appropriate. We finally chose to have Carla attend a private school in Kentucky. There, she has four periods a day of one-on-one instruction - two in reading, two in math. When you get frustrated with the challenges, remember that there are other options.

Tips for parents who will be staying at Lar Rogate:

• Pastor Horst and his wife Anna are wonderful people. They are nurses and can be a great asset. Trust them!
• When your child gets sick, the pharmacies do not require a prescription to get medicine!
• If you have older kids who are fascinated by the planes flying overhead, take the bus down towards downtown. Watch for the sign (or ask someone). If you get off the bus correctly, it is a two block walk to the Bacacheri Airport, home to a few puddle jumpers that fly to Sao Paulo. It is fun to spend some time there watching the airplanes.
• The tiny store near the bus stop has great ice cream for about 80 cents a scoop. They also sell candy, smokes, soda, and a few grocery staples. For most grocery items, though, plan on walking 5 blocks down hill to the supermarket.
• At the tiny store, say hello to the girls behind the counter for us. We were on a streak, teaching them a word of English each day.
• Lino has a membership at the Video Laser store. Your best bet there is to pay about $11 for a book of 10 video coupons (Video Check-ees). You can then rent 5 videos and keep them for 5 days for the low price of 5 video coupons. They have kids videos in Portuguese, and also English movies with Portuguese subtitles for the adults. The VCR at Lar Rogate is NTSC compatible, so you can bring down a few Disney tapes for the kids if you wish. Also, downtown you can buy Disney tapes in Portuguese. One word of advice to you budding Portuguese speakers: Don't get confused about what day quinta-feira is. If your have five tapes due on Thursday, and you convince yourself that they are due on Friday, it will cost you the other five video cheques in overdue fines.
• VISA is the most accepted credit card, but if you go to the beaches in Parana for a few days, that entire area only accepts American Express! There are two banks in Caioba that sport the VISA logo. One will refuse you a cash advance, but the other one (hidden on another street) will come through.
• Downtown is wonderful. Spend an afternoon at the Passeo Publico Park. Older kids can rent a paddle boat. They have monkeys, birds, popcorn vendors, and men playing heated games of dominoes.
• Just when you are convinced that you will never find anything you need, visit the Shopping Mueller downtown. Go to Dollar Dreams or Lojos Americanos. There, you will find Johnson's Baby Shampoo and other things to remind you of home.
• Oh, and I have a favor to ask: on the way down to the supermarket, there is a quaint little barbershop on the left. I didn't get a picture of this place, but my barber would like one. If you could shoot a photo or two and get me the negative, I would greatly appreciate it.
• The food at Lar Rogate is great, but one night go out for dinner at Gran Chaco. The Brazilian "churascarias" offer a wonderful array of tasty spiced meat.
• If you have other questions, we would be happy to talk with you. Ask Nancy Cameron at Limiar how to contact us.

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Last updated August 26, 1998