Antipodes

We just lived in Virginia for 8 months, and I spent most of my first three decades of life living in the USA. But now that I'm here in Brazil, I can't help comparing it to our experience in China. I guess they both fit into the "foreign country" category in my brain, so it works.
First of all, there are some similarities.
I think.
There must be, right?
Never mind. Brazil is nothing like China. They're practically as far away from each other as you can get. (I just looked it up: the antipode of Brasilia is just off the coast of the Philippines; the antipode of Shenyang is off the coast of Argentina. But I know if I was the one digging the hole, I'd probably wind up digging from Shenyang to Brasilia and calling it close enough.)

1. The first thing is that Brasilia is CLEAN! Now, I'm not talking about garbage on the street or anything. But the air here is crystal clear! It smells good. When it rains I'm pretty sure it's mostly water, not mostly grayish acid rain.There are trees and plants growing everywhere-- and the trees have been here for decades, not days. I swear, in Shenyang, every row of trees still had sticks propping it up from when they planted it the year before. Now, if they could only leave them planted for a few years. The potential is there.
2. For Shenyang, most of my wardrobe preparation consisted of buying sweaters, stroller blankets, and warm baby things. This time, I spent most of my time finding my sweaters new homes, making sure I had a maternity swimming suit, and trying to buy shorts and t-shirts in October in the US. Not as easy as it sounds.
   Ironically, our apartment, both here and in Shenyang, is shaped like a freight train. There are giant sun-facing windows in both, making them into little solar ovens. I never did wear all those sweaters I bought for Shenyang, but here in Brasilia, I can just open the windows. Or if there's no breeze, I can just turn on the AC. I tried both in Shenyang, but there's something about the frigid winter air that will really do a number on your AC unit. They frown on using it in the winter. Our neighbors had ice chunks come out of theirs.
3. Pastries. Chinese people like really bland cookies and cakes. They're mildly sweet and quite spongy (the cakes, not the people). We did find some sesame-seed waffle cone cookies at a little neighborhood bakery that we really liked, but there wasn't much to get excited about. I've found a little bakery here in Brasilia, though, Torteria di Lorenza (okay, so it's Italian... but it's in Brasilia, so it counts) that is FANTASTIC. Everything we've tried has been rich, delectable, chocolatey blessedness. Kevin got me this plate for Valentine's Day: 
   Those mice are chocolate-covered cake, and instead of tasting like a Hostess snack, the chocolate is good, and the cake is fairly dense with cloves or something to spice it up.
   Sometimes I think my Portuguese is good enough to communicate with people here. When I ordered the mice, I asked carefully for the "ratinhos." Ha-teen-yos. She was super confused for a while as I pointed but didn't resort to charades. "Oh, ratinhos!" That's what I said! but apparently it goes, "Ha-cheen-yoos." I will figure this out someday.
   They also had a fabulously rich chocolate milkshake and Kevin got a huge cake-version of a Ferrero Rocher. The bakery is about a 10-minute walk from our apartment, which is both awesome and frightening at the same time.
4. The traffic. Before we arrived, and now that we're here, we hear a lot of Americans warning about the crazy traffic. I was honestly more scared driving in Miami than here. Brasilia's traffic is fascinating. In the city's master plan, they decided that instead of having a bunch of T-intersections and 4-way junctions, they'd just have a conglomeration of on-ramps, off-ramps, roundabouts, and U-turns. It works, and it works well. It's just VERY different-- from anything I've ever seen before. There are stop-signs, which are optional. I've gotten used to just ignoring them completely-- which should terrify everyone when I plan a return trip to the USA. Mwoo ha ha ha! But seriously, the signs are usually places where we'd usually put a Yield sign, and so that's how they work. It's not that crazy, really. 
5. People here smile at my kids and tell me (presumably) how cute they are. People in China would smile at my kids and tell me (definitely) how cute they are. There were just more of them (Chinese people, not kids).
   I guess that's the same, after all.