After the Passover Seder, we went to sleep. The next morning we flew to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. Our layovers were in Santa Cruz and Sao Paulo. There, Asher and I ate lunch with Troy. I have a funny story for you! The menu was in Portuguese (Brazilians speak Portuguese), but Asher said it was in Spanish but that he couldn’t read it. Mistake number one. The waitress overheard us and brought English menus. Asher didn’t hear her, opened the new menu, looked through it, and freaked out; “it’s still in Spanish!” Oh, I love this kid… After lunch, which was surprisingly good, I got dark chocolate ice cream. It is the best ice cream I have ever had. It was creamy and rich and DELICIOUS. We landed in Brasilia. You probably assumed that Rio was the capital of Brazil, so why is Brasilia so unheard of? I don’t know, but it is wonderful. Aba and Troy were in paradise, as most of the buildings are mid-century modern. In fact, furniture line called Brasilia Lane was designed based off of the city, and we own a few of the pieces. We got to the hotel and relaxed. The next day was Easter. We spent it at the mall buying new clothes! Also, as it was Easter, I should mention that Asher is the Easter Bunny. Shhh, don’t tell. He’ll deny it, but it’s true! In the afternoon, it poured rain. This was very unusual because it is normally very dry there in April. In the morning, we went on a tour with our guide, Juan. He was very very very fun! All day, he would randomly burst into song (for example, Singin’ in the Rain from Singin’ in the Rain when it started raining) and was very informative about the city architecture, and history of Brasilia, even though he is originally from Uruguay. Our first stop was the JK Memorial. JK was Juscelino Kubitschek, a president of Brazil. He created the city of Brasilia and made it the country’s capital.
However, the memorial was closed and we moved on. Next, we went to the General Headquarters of the Army, where they also have a cultural museum. We did not go into the buildings, only admired the architecture, but we did stand under a big echo-y arch. Aba ‘persuaded’ me to sing a little (after a lot of prompting). I did a bit of Ave Maria and Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game”. At one point, I forgot the lyrics to Ave Maria and Juan started singing it to jog my memory! He was really supportive and I’m very glad he was our guide.
Fatima Chapel was our next stop. This nun’s-hat-shaped building was built in haste for the architect’s daughter’s wedding, the first celebration held there, but was still elegant and beautiful. We wandered around the residential neighborhoods in the area and noticed how alike the architecture and setup were to Israel, but, then again, Israel was on our minds a lot.
We took a stroll through a park, then drove to the Dom Bosco Sanctuary. This is a large church that is mostly filled in with beautiful stained glass in different colors of blue. This actually ended up being one of my favorite buildings in Brasilia because of the glass.
The following church was the Metropolitan Cathedral. We only got to see the outside because, like the JK Memorial, it was closed. However, even that was great. The outside is hard to describe and I don’t want to label it in your mind as anything, so you’ll have to be content with pictures.
Itamaraty Palace was next on our list. Juan has even dined there as a guest! We visited the National Congress and toured the building, but the Square of Three Powers and the Alvorada Palace were only seen from the outside.
They were nice, too, though, and we even drove over the JK Bridge and saw some tiny burrowing owls!
I really enjoyed our time with Juan, so if you ever go to Brasilia and need a guide, find him on TripAdvisor or his website at http://guiajuanluishermida.com.br/. The next day I woke up three hours early and did homework and other chores (opera, etc). Asher woke up at 9 AM and we ate breakfast. Asher packed his bag and we put them into Juan’s car. He drove us to the cathedral again in order to show us the interior, which we had missed the day previous. It was wonderful. Almost as cool as the stained-glass church, this building also had stained glass but was in a dome crown shape. The walls are curved, so a whisper spoken on one side of the large room can be easily heard on the other side. In the nearby baptism room, there was a rounded cement ceiling that gave off a nice echo.
Next, we went to the Military Culture Museum again. I had practiced Ave Maria the night before and in the morning, but after the first stanza, I couldn’t remember the melody. It was embarrassing, but I had to stop. Next, we went to the JK Memorial again, also previously closed. There, we learned about his history and accomplishments as well as the story of his rise to power. A few interesting objects were the number of sashes and pins presented to him by other countries and another gift from The Queen: An original second edition set of illustrated Shakespeare novels. She was very generous with Brazil! This is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
After lunch, Juan drove us to the airport. I gave him a bracelet I had woven with the colors of the Brazilian flag and we went inside.
Our flight to Lisbon was nine hours long and very uncomfortable. I read, but if I wanted to watch (bad, blurry) movies I couldn’t have because you had to pay for movies. The seats were uncomfortable and much too tall, and if you dropped something it would be impossible to bend down and pick it up. Our eight-hour layover was in Lisbon, but because of our earlier delay (a “safety concern”), we only had 6.5. We left the airport via the subway and ate lunch, strolled, and bought new bathing suits! Our flight to Israel was five hours long and when we disembarked we had to find our family through a crowd of rejoicing united Eritreas. Then, we saw the family. Our uncle Moti, cousin Emri, Tuko (their dog), uncle Oved, cousin Noa, cousin Meital, and cousin Matan picked us up and took as to Savta’s apartment. She was so excited to see us! Our aunt Ronit was also waiting there for us! We ate dinner and later in the evening my cousin Arieli came! We had tons of fun and went to sleep. I’m so happy to be here! 22-4-22
Ella