newbie

Hello Mrs. McGrath (I presume),


On behalf of the entire Expat-blog Team, welcome on board. I hope your experience on the blog will be both enjoyable and informative.

As a new mom, I know you're going to find it difficult to make time for doing things for yourself. That said, I'm sure you're starting to find out that without a good command of the Portuguese language you're going to continue to have serious problems in your day-to-day living in this country. English is not widely spoken, not even in the corporate world here. Take some Portuguese classes and improve your language skills, it will be the single most important thing you can do to improve your situation and expand your social circle. Otherwise you're going to be isolated within the expat community even in São Paulo you're going to have problems meeting other expat moms.

Once you've got a good grasp of Portuguese you'll find it much easier to meet Brazilian moms. You need only take your baby to spend a few hours a day in one of the many local parks. You'll meet lots of other moms there. It's not hard to make friends in São Paulo, quite to the contrary. You just need to put yourself out a bit. I know because I lived in São Paulo for many years and have hundreds of Brazilian friends there because I learned to speak the language.

Your real problem is not that you can't make friends, it's that you're really limiting your own options as to the KIND of friends you want to make. Look at it this way... If a Brazilian mom went to Ireland and couldn't speak English, didn't make the effort to learn, how many Irish friends would she make? If she only wanted to meet other Portuguese speaking expats in Ireland, how many of them would she encounter? Answers: NONE and VERY FEW.

It's that way in any Non-English speaking country too. Until you speak the local language you're going to continue having problems.

Cheers,
William James Woodward, Expat-blog Experts Team

you're right I'm going to look into classes today maybe someone could recomemd a good school\teacher.

thanks for the advice William.

Will send you a private message with a recommendation for classes in your residence

hi,

I'm very new to Sao Paulo, 2 weeks only.
I also have a baby, 8 months old.
And I'm looking for other mom and baby for meeting up.
I'm Indonesian and my husband is German. I'm totally new to the city.
Would be great if we can try to meet up over coffee or something.
For me, it can get quite lonely on the day time, when my husband is at work.
So, would love to hear your experience.
And do let me know if you would like to meet up

Cheers!

Hi! that would be lovely where are you living, my husband works in Alphaville outside Sao Paulo and its hard to get around without him.

We are currently in a temporary place in Pinheiros, not far from subway station Faria Lima.

Where do you live? Do you live in Alphaville?

Hey no we live in Cambuci Pinheros is a nice area though..i would love to live in a house instead of an apartment but they are just so expensive and security is better in apartments.My husband commutes to Alphaville everyday and it sucks he leaves at 6am and is lucky to be home by 8pm hardly get to see each other at all during the week Sao Paulo is great and all but i think for families its better to move somewhere close to work as the traffic is too stressful and especially if your new here its important to spend as much time as you can together..are you planning on buying or renting