SÃO PAULO - 455 YEARS OLD

The big city of São Paulo, our home, just celebrated another birthday. It was settled on January 25, 1554, by jesuit missionaries as a location to convert indians. Now it is where we reach out in a metropolis with around 8,000 square km (abt. 3,000 sq. miles) and over 21,000,000 people (that's over 7,000 persons in 1 square mile.)

The new bridge had hanging lights on it for Christmas.


São Paulo has the Ipiranga Museum which was once the home for the Portuguese emperor, Dom Pedro. It was near this land that the freedom cry was shout for Brazilian independence on September 7, 1822 (to actually save the royal family from Napoleon's influence over Portugal.)

The concrete jungle does have lots of beauty and park areas.


SAMPA - a city that never sleeps.


China town. Lots of cultures have settled into São Paulo, where they tend to congregate in different sections of town. But there is a big mix. The largest population of Japanese outside of Japan live here. There are more Italians in São Paulo than in Rome. No wonder we love massa and pizza so much.

A small fraction of the people that buy and sell in a downtown street. If the street is like this, imagine inside the store! Raquel loves to buy things down here because prices are so much better. 25 de Março is where lots of stores buy their goods to resell.

Public bus is a common method of transportation. I happen to use it often because we only have one car. This is all for another blog entry though.

The metro system carries over 3 million persons a day around the city.

In the center of the city is one of the largest cathedrals, Catedral da Sé. Usually you can find tons of homeless here, flea market sales, evangelists with megaphones, as well as tourists.