Beth’s parents arrived on January the 9th and stayed for nine days. They came all the way here from Brasilia by car which is over 2000km! It went really well and they really loved it here! we were a bit nervous before hand because we thought they wouldn’t like our basic facilities and having to wash in the river, but they were really happy with everything 🙂 they brought a huge load of vegetables and fruit trees for us to plant, we have chillis, lemons, pineapples, bananas, mangos, papayas and more! many of them may not be able to handle the climate down here, but we’ve tried planting them at the border of the forest and the garden where there’s no frost but hopefully enough sun.
We all went to Canela a few times to go overboard on cakes and coffee! in Portuguese they say “pé na jaca” which translates literally as putting your foot in the durian and it means to go overboard and have too much of a good thing 🙂 We also had many good meals at home including an indoor vegetarian “Churrasco” on our wood stove which is the cultural style of Brazilian barbecue cooking.
It was really nice having them here, and I think it was really good for them to see first hand what it’s like here and how we live. The pictures really don’t tell the whole story and they were a bit worried about us and thinking it wasn’t good for our health and well being. But now they see that this is an extremely healthy and fulfilling way of living and completely understand why we’re doing it 🙂