Banespa Building

On Friday, January 21, we decided to visit the old headquaters of the National Bank of Brazil shown here.  The public is allowed to go to the top of this building. There is an observation deck just below the round tower. One must take two elevators,  a narrow stair case and a circular metal stair case to get to observation deck. Once there however, the 360 degree view is spectacular.  

Just begore entering the building we ran into this demonstration. It was peaceful and orderly. We were told that they were bank employees but we were unable to find out why they were demonstrating.  Some had on animal costumes and music was blaring so loudly that we could not hear what the speaker was saying.We took a lot of pictures and this one above is typical. 

Notice the helipad on the bulding in the foreground. São Paulo is said to have the largest fleet of private helicopters in the world.  If the number of helipads you see on buildings is any indication, I believe that is a true statement.

As you can see a storm is coming in and if it starts to rain they make every leave the tower.  There were frequent lightning strikes and we felt that was not a bad rule to have.

The rain is almost upon at this point ane thguide are indicating it is time to go inside.

One more picture and we'll come inside to start the long descent to the ground.

By the time we get back to the street level, the cloud burst is almost over. We begin the several block walk back to the bus stop.

Instead of getting on a bus or taking the subway, this day we decided to get better acquainted with our own neighborhood of Casa Verde.  So all of these shots were taken within easy walking distance of the MTC here in São Paulo.  Normal garbage pick up usually takes place between mid-night and 6:00 A.M.  People place the waste materials in plastic sacks and put the sacks in these metal baskets which are emptied during the night.  No bulky garbage cans to haul back and forth and the sanitations trucks come by multiple times during the week.

This photo has nothing to do with our walk around the neighborhood. It was taken on New Year's Eve.  Normally pictures are not allowed in the cafeteria, but an exception was made on this ocassion.  We were sitting with the mission president and his wife and had dozens of missionareis wanting to take our picture.  Jerry thought it would be fun to take this shot of them shooting us, so she barrowed a camera and this is the result.A street corner on a little hill with a veiw of the city looking to the northeast.  At this point we are about six or seven blocks away from the MTC. 

Many people in this area don't have anyplace to park their vehicles except on the street.  This family had space for several cars behind this gate. Ours is an older lower-middle class neighborhood. During our walk I stopped to talk with an 83 year old man who has lived in the same house since his marriage, well over 50 years ago.  He wasn't sure how long he had been married. He answered my question about how he was doing by saying that he could still walk;  and as long as he do that he said he was doing just fine.

This man was pulling bricks and mortar up to the third floor of the new building.  Some one behind the plywood fence was mixing the mortar and supplying the bricks.  So far as we could tell, there were only two people working on it as we watched for a few minutes.

Neighbors are out on the corners chatting with each other while the young boys are out flying there kites. This is the the first day without rain for about a week.  You can tell the there have been a lot of kite accidents by noting all of the remnants of kites tangled up in the electrical wires above the streets in both the photo above and the one below. 

This tree is typical of those found in many of the older parks in the city.  This is the arae where we live and work.  The longer we are here the more we are grateful to be here in this wonderful country.  We have been very blessed during the almost three years of our missions.

This is a partial view of the MASP or the São Paulo Museum of Art. It is a huge building suspended in the air by two concrete beams which are supported by four concrete pillars, two of which are partly visable on the left (in red).  We were very impressed with the display of art inside the museum.  We were not allowed to take pictures of the artwork inside,  but on display were paintings by Gauguin, Monet, El Greco, Picasso, Van Gogh. Toulouse-Lautrec,Van Dyck and many other famous artist. This shot was taken from across the street (Avenida Paulista).  In back of me is the  Trianon Park, a lush green area in the middle of the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere.

This shot of the Brother and Sister Dille was taken only a few yard from the first photo.  The palm trees are wrapped in Chistmas lights and were being undecorated by city park employees. We wondered how they were going to remove the lights that were forty feet up the side of the trees. And there were hundreds of tree decorated like this one.

This is a shot of a bench inside the museum but not in the area where the paintings were displayed.

The paths within the park were all paved with broken stones about the size of golf balls.

Even though the strees surrounding this park are crowded, there were relatively few people within the park. Dogs are allowed in the park but must be on a leash.

Although we had heard from some that this park is not always safe , we saw a lots of armed police and felt comfortable as we strolled through the beautiful scenery.

There were two or three well used playgrounds within the park. We commented that this may be the only nearby place where families that lived in the city can bring their children to play.

Now we are back in the MTC. I wanted to show this picture because it is a scene that we see several times everyday.  It is a view from the third floor  (the floor on which we live) looking north.  The tiny spire to the left of the beige building is the new Casa Verde Chapel. This is the building for which the MTC missionaries provided the music at the open house in August of last year.