Our household goods and our minivan finally arrived in Brasilia this week. It's only been three months since we've had access to these possessions as they spent a month sitting on a dock, another month sailing the ocean, and another month sitting in the customs house in Rio de Janeiro. Based on our conversations with other embassy families, three to four months seems to be about average for Brazil, and quite a bit longer than many other posts. We are still waiting on another smaller shipment of household goods we pulled out of storage.
The movers were very efficient and were able to get everything off the truck, unwrapped, and place in the right general location. This was a great opportunity to learn the names of the rooms, or "salas", of the house in Portuguese. The movers could have also unpacked for us, but we weren't quite sure where to put everything, so we just had them assemble a bed, the sofa, and a couple of shelve units. Besides, we wanted to create a big box fort out of the boxes.
Our van took another couple weeks to get the diplomatic plates issued. It was so nice to have a car again, especially in this "designed to get around by car" town. In Brazil, cars that belong to diplomats get a special blue diplomatic plate. It is a stark contrast to the regular white plates on all the other cars. In order to get plated, I had to take the van to DETRAN, the BMV in Brazil, and have the inspector confirm all the serial numbers for the chassis and engine. We arrived late to our appointment, so we waited about an hour while the inspector finished up a Canadian diplomats car. While waiting, Abby found a cat to befriend.
I also got a number of questions about our van, a Honda Odyssey, and a couple of offers to buy the van if we decide to sell when we leave. Odyssey's are larger than most of the family cars here and are quite rare since they're not built and sold in Brazil. I know of only three other Odysseys in Brasilia, all but one owned by diplomat families.
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