Finally!

Good news!  Today we finally left Brasilia with the shipment!  It's pick-up time went from Monday morning, to Monday 4:11pm, to Tuesday 8:00am, to Tuesday 11:30am, to Tuesday 1:30pm, to Tuesday 6:30pm, to Tuesday 10:30pm, to Wednesday 9:00am.  We left town by ten this morning.  Not bad.  It's pick-up location went from "maybe Terminal 2"/"I think, Gol airlines", to Gol cargo, to Avianca cargo, to being shipped to our hotel (it never showed up so...), and finally back to Avianca cargo.  When Jonathan went in to get it, after shuffling around for awhile they informed him it was indeed onsite, but somehow it had been changed to one of the employee's names rather than Jonathan's.  The missing employee was called in to sign for it, and we were good as gold!  Needless to say, I think I'm done with Brasilia.  It's an okay place, but...I'm just done with it.

Tuesday morning as we waited around for news on the shipment, we spent our extra time visiting the zoo.  

 As we parked we were greeted by these funky looking birds roaming free.

This doesn't do their height justice; they were taller than waist high!

 These dudes were my favorite, but it's not a great pic, sorry!

The giant anteaters!  

As we stood there, one stuck out his tongue!

So gross.  An impressive kind of gross.  Google it.

 Leopards.

 The lion gave a roar for us.

It sounded more like a complaint.  Not very majestic, to say the least.

 Tiger.

And elephant.

So...I know the pictures aren't that exciting.  I mean, anyone can go to a zoo just about anywhere and get even better snapshots of the typical animals.  But in my general defense regarding picture taking this trip, honestly, there hasn't been much worth taking pictures of.  And I also forgot the camera in California, so these are iPhone pictures.  

As for Brazil, it's looking like we'll cut out the second half of our trip because waiting on the shipment wasted so much time!  This means we might have to come back as part of our planned trip to Argentina in a week.  Yikes!  I'm already gearing up mentally for another trip into this frustrating country.  

We learned something when we were engaged that has really stuck with us.  "Expectations lead to contempt."  I think that's been the chief problem with adapting well to Brazilian culture.  When you're constantly fed an expectation--"The shipment will be here tomorrow at 8:00."--when it doesn't come through (which is apparently often here) it's not easy to be flexible and adjust without a lot of negativity.  We have a lot of learning to do.  Maybe that's why we're coming back.  God's not done teaching us this valuable life skill: letting go of expectations.