Isnt life just funny like that...

So we have been waiting and waiting for months and months for our visa's to go through. Finally everything is approved, the millions of forms are finished, the hefty payments are complete and all we need are the plane tickets and one minor detail, my passport. When I was packing to leave home and head to Denver I had a lot of things that overstuffed my suitcase taking me out of carryon size. So I packed a box of clothes to mail to myself in Chicago and at the last minute I clearly remember throwing in a bag I just didn't feel I had room for. Well in that bag was my passport. My mom mailed the box as I suggested, "you dont need to rush it mom, its just clothes so keep it cheap." Yes well that means no tracking number and a lot of time. Its been a week and no box ...no passport. I can't fill out my forms and submit them to the consulate until I have my passport. So Alex's company in Brazil is ready to buy our tickets, the consulate has our visas and every day I pace for the mail truck. I can't believe after all these months its come down to a box, floating out there in postal odyssey. Hopefully we will be on a plane early next week so we can finally begin our overdue Brazilian life. I just hope whenever I finally get that box that my passport is in deed in that bag because if it isn't well that will be another story that I hope I dont have to tell.

How Fake Money Saved Brazil

I had no idea????!!!!


Copied from NPR Planet Money
by CHANA JOFFE-WALT

This is a story about how an economist and his buddies tricked the people of Brazil into saving the country from rampant inflation. They had a crazy, unlikely plan, and it worked.

Twenty years ago, Brazil's inflation rate hit 80 percent per month. At that rate,  if eggs cost $1 one day, they'll cost $2 a month later. If it keeps up for a year, they'll cost $1,000.

In practice, this meant stores had to change their prices every day. The guy in the grocery store would walk the aisles putting new price stickers on the food. Shoppers would run ahead of him, so they could buy their food at the previous day’s price.

The problem went back to the 1950s, when the government printed money to build a new capital in Brasilia.  By the 1980s, the inflation pattern was in place.

It went something like this:

1. New President comes in with a new plan.
2. President freezes prices and/or bank accounts.
3. President fails.
4. President gets voted out or impeached.
5. Repeat.

The plans succeeded at only one thing: Convincing every Brazilian the government was helpless to control inflation.

There was one more option that no one knew about.  It was dreamed up by four guys at the Catholic University in Rio. The only reason they enter the picture now  —  or ever — is because in 1992,  there happened to be a new finance minister who knew nothing about economics.  So the minister called Edmar Bacha, the economist who is the hero of our story.

"He said, 'Well, I've just been named the finance minister. You know I don’t know economics, so please come to meet me in Brasilia tomorrow,' " Bacha recalls. "I was terrified."

Bacha had been waiting for decades for this call.

He and three friends had been studying Brazilian inflation since they were graduate students — four guys at the campus bar complaining to each other about how no one else knew how to fix this.  And now they were being told "Fine, do it your way."

Bacha was invited to meet the president.

"I asked for an autograph for my kids," Bacha says. So the president wrote Bacha's kids a note that said, "Please tell your father to work fast for the benefit of the country."

The four friends set about explaining their idea.  You have to slow down the creation of money, they explained. But, just as important, you have to stabilize people's faith in money itself.  People have to be tricked into thinking money will hold its value.

The four economists wanted to create a new currency that was stable, dependable and trustworthy.  The only catch: This currency would not be real.  No coins, no bills.  It was fake.

"We called it a Unit of Real Value — URV," Bacha says. "It was virtual; it didn't exist in fact."

People would still have and use the existing currency, the cruzeiro.  But everything would be listed in URVs, the fake currency.   Their wages would be listed in URVs.  Taxes were in URVs.  All prices were listed in URVs.  And URVs were kept stable — what changed was how many cruzeiros each URV was worth.

Say, for example, that milk costs 1 URV. On a given day, 1 URV might be worth 10 cruzeiros. A month later, milk would still cost 1 URV. But that 1 URV might be worth 20 cruzeiros.

The idea was that people would start thinking in URVs — and stop expecting prices to always go up.

"We didn't understand what it was," says Maria Leopoldina Bierrenbach, a housewife from Sao Paulo. "I used to say it was a fantasy, because it was not real."

Still, people used URVs. And after a few months, they began to see that prices in URVs were stable. Once that happened, Bacha and his buddies could declare that the virtual currency would become the country’s actual currency. It would be called the real.

"Everyone is going to receive from now on their wages, and pay for all the prices, in the new currency, which is the real," Bacha says. "That is the trick."

The day they launched the real, Bacha says, a journalist friend asked him, "Professor, do you swear that inflation will end tomorrow?"

"Yes, I swear." Bacha said.

And, basically, inflation did end, and the country's economy turned around. In the years that followed, Brazil became a major exporter, and 20 million people rose out of poverty.

"We were in awe," Bierrenbach says. "Everybody was very happy."

For more: Listen to the Planet Money podcast, "How Four Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil."

Correction:  An earlier version of this story misspelled cruzeiro in two instances.  Thanks to the commenter who pointed out the error.

reflections on growing up

I think everyone has those moments. You are in the midst of doing something and it hits you. Your back hurts more while doing something you've always done painlessly. You run into someone you knew years ago. You hear a song or smell a fragrance that takes you back in time. You think, wow was that really ten years ago? I feel so old!

My room at my parents house was frozen in high school. Memorabilia from field trips, ticket stubs from concerts, pictures from dances and dried flowers from old boyfriends were scattered around my very blue and very dated room. There was comfort in knowing nothing tangible there ever changed while I was busy... changing. My mom recalled the year I decided blue was my favorite color. I loved the smurfs, owned a blue winter jacket, wanted blue curtains and walls while wearing blue socks and shoes. It was the mid nineties and I was declaring proudly my newly establishing preferences for dress and decor. I am lucky that my room got to stay mine. It wasn't converted to a study or a sowing room, it just collected dust on those defining elements of school days.

I came home last week with the furniture I had bought years ago when I moved out to Denver as there was just no space for it in Brazil. To make room, we sold my first bedroom set given to me by my grandmother when I was about 8. I think my mom shed a few quiet tears. Then I went about redecorating and painting over the memories. Goodbye Blue. I spent three days priming and painting one 'bright white' and three 'gravity gray' walls. Down went the giant poster of a Cala lilly, the 9th grade twin day pictures, the beads from sorority events and the collection of shot glasses I once thought showing off would be so cool. I was in love with stars and galaxies so my dad pasted a glow in the dark system all over the ceiling above my bed which took forever to peel off. I went through the love notes of middle school, a complex world where my friends and I wrote pages and pages to each other during class about all the boys we 'loved'. The 'Best Friends Forever' necklaces I seemed to have shared with different friends each month and the math papers filled with dream house floorplan drawings instead of formulas. The biggest room was always noted strictly for my dogs. Over the past week I relived a decade. The items were aged yet the conversations in the letters and the people behind the pictures felt so fresh. Where did all the time go? And what do you save? Will I really sit down with my own children and show them the 200 pictures I took on a field trip to the Arlington Cemetery when I was 12?

My new room was to be grown up, organized with visually diminished amounts of stuff. But here I am having gone through containers and drawers feeling like I recyled enough to start my own center and I am still swimming in pictures and journals. I didn't realize I've been documenting every feeling and every place I've been since I was 5. Somehow before I leave in the next few days I have to finish deciphering treasures from trash.

So my grown up moment was fragrant, rich with the smell of high school football games and the music of band class even new paint can't disguise. I guess the takeaway for me is that somewhere in the significant era of a color I made some fantastic friends, traveled many places, slept beneath stars, graduated a few times and found my real best friend forever. Its amazing what a little paint can do. Goodbye Blue.

Goodnight West Loop

Move part one has arrived. Tomorrow the overseas moving company that will ship our little life to Sao Paulo is packing everything up and moving it to Alex's mothers garage. Luckily we are moving in with her for the next... what we hope is a month as we wait on the work visa. Our stuff will wait too and once we finally hop on a plane to move, visas in hand, we must find an apartment and then give the ok for them to go back to the garage and pack all our stuff up into a crate that will then ever so slowly, sail down to find us.  So today we organized what we will actually take, assuming our place will be small. It was emotional to take down pictures and disassemble our chicago life. We ordered pizza from our favorite place, cracked open the balcony door for a great fall breeze and watched NFL all day. That was not my choice, but I've never see a happier man than one that got to watch 4 back to back games so how could I interrupt that? The thrill of the day however came when we managed to fill 14 bags worth of goodwill material! I drove over there THREE TIMES! Each more delightful than the last. Clothes, duplicate pans, books, vases, old random glasses, college koozies, spices, dishes and only one wedding gift (shhhh). Originally we wanted to have a garage sale to make a little cash but I am so glad we canned that idea and just gave it away. I was picturing the people that always sit around the table at our local goodwill and read (yes I seem to walking by often), enjoying my dusty Pillars of the Earth. I used to love showcasing every book I've ever read but both of us have our masters and unlike college you actually want to keep all your books (for obvious reasons but mainly because you finally understand the dollar signs representing each...I know I should have realized this in undergrad but I didn't sorry). 

This slow transition south is proving to be quite rewarding.  I doubt our new brazilian friends will spend much time browsing our bookshelves anyways; theres more important things to do like drink caipirinha's and eat hundreds of Pao de queijo (incredible cheese rolls). I know I'll miss football and homemade pizza company pizza among other things, but Ill be damned if we haven't picked another good place for football and cheesy bread!

Its the last night here at home, the chapter comes to a close. The empty walls are lonely, there are only a few lights left on in the buildings around, the annoying yapper dog is still yapping and my old belongings are awaiting new homes down on Washington street.  Goodnight West Loop, goodnight Larry the security guard who loves nights when we have leftovers, goodnight Jo at the cleaners and all the doggies at the new park, for you will always have a special place in my memory, homes always do. 

There is comfort in ritual

I feel like I'm standing on a ledge. Behind me is my day to day life, full of familiarity and comfort. Ahead is a blank canvas of unknown. It can take form in opportunity or despair. Its my choice. But its like walking in the fog. I don't know what I want to do with my life and everything up to this point seemed so clear. Most people I've spoken with recently in the midst of discussing leaving, have professed jealously in my new abilities. I can sleep in, I can watch Oprah, I can have time for the things we never seem to have time for. And yes, that will be fun for a few weeks. But there is something to be said for consistency (and a paycheck). For most our jobs are what we use to arrange the rest of our lives around. We schedule time with loved ones, vacations and weekend respite around what is always most steady. As we build our careers we wed, breed, build, upgrade, shop and errand. With this job, my first job, I have built a sturdy base. It takes the form of junior, associate, senior and principle. Each is attached to earning power and people power. Is that my path?! In no way do I want to discredit that direction because it is very respectable. I am just trying to figure out if that is where I want to go. So I connect this post to a picture I took in Cuba. Oh how I crave to go back to Cuba. With all its messy government and dilapidated buildings the colors and people of Cuba just need some polish (well that is of course a metaphor for everything, they need better structure, income, freedom...food...they need a lot of things). But it is and they are... beautiful even in their current state.

So today I say goodbye to the comfort zone, the consistent next step in the stairway that equals 40+ hours of my week, 200 some of my month and what feels like a hell of a lot of my year. Years behind and ahead. But a shout out to the things I will oh so miss.


-The wonderful secretary that greets me every morning and calls me on her operator line to tell me when there are cookies and candy in the conference room..its really the little things that make a day good to great
-My friends in the Water and Transportation Dept that also keep an eye on the candy levels knowing i usually show up when they are plentiful or when something major in hollywood occurs and there is need for discussion
-My space with my pictures and my plant that is taking over my desk
-Trips to the kitchen that usually incorporate a lot more than more water or lunch
-The old man on my bus route that holds books an inch from his face and today he was reading, "Dont Sweat the Small Stuff." how appropriate
-The work, be it thrilling or tedious... the work has always been an adventure and has really helped me to realize options for the next step
-The view over the lake that on summer days looks like Mexico and in the dead of winter... well looks dead
-The fact that the lights go out after 6pm and the heater gets set to 60 on the weekends during winter. They sadly assume the whole building works 8-5 m-f
-And most of all the people...my coworkers. Mentors and friends, to which I listen and take note. The wonderful people that turn bad days into smiles and keep everything else in check. People derail the lemmings, stop the madness or add to the madness... make the world more interesting. They are the polish and the comfort.

Thank you

find what you love and get paid to do it

Thanks to an old friend from Denver and MasterCard I finally understand the thrill of doing what you love as work. Labor Day for me wasn't a relaxing one, but it surely was fun. A group of MasterCard holders from Mexico City and neighboring townships won a "Priceless" weekend in Chicago.  My friend works on the MasterCard account and needed a photographer. At first, I recommended several professionals, but in the end I nervously decided I could give it a try. We ate at classic Chicago establishments like the original Morton's, and toured the architecture of downtown and Hyde Park and Sunday we had batting practice with the cubs. If meeting incredibly sweet people and capturing their joy is a job requirement, sign me up for life! Here's a little taste of the weekend.

Those were just a few of the 814 pictures they went home with. 

Thank you for the opportunity James. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day Weekend!

bring your own....stove?

Before Alex came back, he spent the day looking at potential apartments. In the areas we would 'like' to live in Sao Paulo, rent prices are on par with those in Manhattan. 'Like' translating to safe and near the highway as less time driving means more time living....literally (driving can be quite dangerous).

Our stylish little loft in the West Loop runs around 800 sq ft and is quite full. Looks like we are about to downsize. Most of my friends that have gotten married recently have purchased homes and wonderful new things to fill them with. In accordance with our 'road less traveled' plan, I've just learned we will be minimizing. However, fortunately we still get to purchase a few little things for our new home as well.

Like.... a stove, a refrigerator and a microwave. Yep, in all the places he saw, you bring your own. Goodbye marble counters, stainless steel double fridges, a washer and dryer and built-in microwaves. I've been so spoiled! We've had cabinets in the bathroom (in the apartments he saw its just a standing sink and shower), a bedroom that fits a queen bed AND a dresser (yep those bedrooms barely fit a bed) and...heres the kicker....CLOSETS! Yep, in a few of the places he saw no closets. Im on the lookout for a larger stove so it can double as my shoe storage!

The positive highlights? A fantastic pool and community area. Because most spaces in the buildings he looked at were smaller, people mingle and eat together. There were large kitchens by the pool area with tables for large gatherings and wonderful amenities. Much like cluster housing designs, learning to share communal space breeds socially supportive and environmentally responsible living. Don't worry, if you come visit us we will have a wonderful blow up mattress for you. You might be sleeping in the kitchen/dining room/fridge/oven/closet but we will make it work =)

As a fellow expat blogger wrote, "we have re-learned the joys of personal relationships as life enhancers." As we prepare to unstuff ourselves we also look forward to kicking off our first year of marriage in tight quarters and meeting lots of wonderful people. You cant argue with that trade off!