Sam's Club Date Night

Last night Corey and I went on a most exciting date! Get this - we went to a bulk warehouse! Yes, we went shopping at Sam's Club! I found out there was a Sam's Club here our first week, and it's just as close to our house as the Dom Pedro Mall! WOW! We could probably not just survive our time here but really feel like it's almost normal life! But... alas ~ we do not have a membership. Memberships are only like $20 bucks, but we can't get one cause we don't have one of the necessary and all important CPF numbers for ourselves. CPF - Cadastro de Pessoas Fisicas, or in English, the "Registry of Individuals". That link explains a bit of what the CPF is - they ask for it at Walmart, we just say "no" and they let us buy stuff anyway, but I think it's kinda like a Social Security card mixed with a Preferred shopper card from grocery stores, but it's like the one card number for all grocery stores, and "anywhere-else-that-sells-anything-or-involves-money" stores. Well, not restaurants I guess. But boo on you to these big governments. So too bad for us, no CPF. But wait, our friend Andre and his wife have memberships at Sam's. Andre said I could go with his wife sometime, but then instead this past week, he just gave Corey his card. Would it work? Can Corey pass off as Mr. Silva? Will they ask? If we get in the door, will we be able to make a purchase at the check out? These kind of antics wouldn't fly at the Costco in Sandy. But here in Brazil? Maybe, just maybe... so we went together at the beginning of our date and tried our luck.

It was an exciting and unknown adventure in this new territory. The first thing I noticed and liked was that there wasn't any monitoring of the parking lot - you didn't need to pay for parking like you do at Dom Pedro and there's no gate, you just drive in... and park! Just like in the US! I was excited. The store wasn't busy. We weren't sure if it was open or not as we approached the glass doors, but then they opened for us. Ok, so, we walked with some guilt toward the lady at the front door sitting at the desk. Corey was ready to lay it all out~ "Look, we're not members, but we want to buy stuff here! Can we use my friends card?!?" Instead he just said "Do you need to see our card?" (like how you have to flash your card at Costco) and she said "No, you can go in..." Well ok, great! First obstacle completed without any problem! We're in! We didn't get a cart though, who knew if we'd be able to buy anything. As for the general feeling of the store - could we look around and pretend we were back shopping in Utah? Hmm, no, not quite the same feel. It felt like the Price Club we went to in San Jose, Costa Rica, before we flew to Chile. It still felt nice though. So nice to see such big boxes and quantities of things for sale. So we walked around taking it all in, seeing what kind of stuff they have for sale in a Brazilian wholesale club. Wine from Chile! Always nice to see that flag, good times, good times.

Check this out ~ you can buy 'happiness" here at Sam's Club!

They sell happiness by the box, it's true. I think we should get one. Well, I might not be able too, and if I can't buy happiness, well that would just make me very sad. I better not try. I'll have to wait and buy that next time if we make it out. Are there other forms of happiness in a box here? Yes there is - COLD CEREAL!

We thought cereal would be a great thing to try to purchase in our little Sam's Club experiment. They had a bigger variety than Walmart. I told Corey that the Walmart at Dom Pedro, and this is totally true - they give more shelf space to mayonnaise than they do to cold cereal. Definitely not the US. We live by our cold cereal breakfasts there, don't we? In our stores we have a small spot for Mayo, but goodness, not floor to ceiling shelves of mayo brand after mayo brand. And don't even let cereal know about the perks that cooking oil gets ~ oil has a whole isle. All the brands of cold cereal together can't compete with all that oil. But the cereal had about as much space as they give to Nescau (Brazil's version is Nesquick, apparently a daily necessity) or Nutella (that one really is a necessity). But the cold cereal, no joke, there are just a few tiny boxes and one normal sized box of our Nesfit. There are no things of bagged Malt-o-Meal cereal. But here at Sam's, wow, they had the tiny boxes, but they had a few big boxes too and a few bulk boxes! The double ones, just like back in the US. Wow, the kids are gonna love this. If we make it out alive...

So, we had our arms full of cereal boxes, and one think of mango juice, and head toward the check out. We play the dumb Americans roll and don't try to talk to much, we just handed them our friends' card and waited. They didn't look at the picture ID, yes! ...we might make it out! They start scanning our boxes of cereal... is it going to work? Ok, total is $70 reais... (I usually divide by 3 to get an estimate of what is equals in US dollars...) Corey gives them his American Express... and... small glitch - no credit, only debit... okay, here's the debit card... and... doh, it didn't take. I was thinking that if Corey hadn't used his debit card here yet, he might have the same issue I did the first time I tried to purchase with debit at Atacadao~ it was rejected, and then when I got home I had an email from the bank asking if an attempted purchase in Brazil was me. I clicked "yes" and haven't had trouble after that. They tried again, it didn't take, and that was our only debit card... I didn't bring my wallet. Doh. They call for the manager... Oh no, we got so close. Have we failed? The manager lady took the debit card, tried it, and I'm not sure if she did anything differently than what had been done before, but that time it way accepted! Yay! And they let us take the cart they put our cereal in. We made it! We left with our victory food, down the slanted escalator and down the cart ramp to the parking lot underneath the store - just like when I'd go shopping at the Walmart Hiper Lider in Vitacura, Chile.

And here's another great thing - Sam's is serious about their shopping cause they have places not only to put a child (Walmart doesn't have that, which is why I don't like taking Natalie, no place to put her) but their carts also had the rack on the bottom. I never knew I loved those bottom racks so much, but they don't have those on the Walmart carts at the Dom Pedro mall. So, wow, it felt like shopping back in the US on several fronts, such a breath of fresh air!

Then after our Sam's cereal shopping spree, we drove to Barao Geraldo, which is the little Campinas suburb that is close to where we lived last time we were here in 2007. We drove by a store called Pao Acucar, which was where I had my first greenie shopping experience last time, where I was in a little bit of culture shock and numb about "this is my new life?" during the first days of our experience here last time. Our trip here in 2007 was my first international experience. It was hard. We're old pros now. It's kinda fun having these little vaguely familiar memories.

It's strange to know that that was 8 years ago, and life has been going on here that whole time. It feels more recent, in a "like a dream" kind of way. We stopped at a restaurant called Barao Grill.

Good food, we were glad that the waiter didn't hover like last week, but this time he was a little too lax. Corey needed another juice and he never came, oh the trials. And we had to send the meat back to get more cooked, it was super red. Still red after they cooked it more.

Corey was looking forward to cooking it a little more for his lunch the next day, but we must not have communicated that we wanted to take it, cause they didn't give it to us in a doggie bag, and when Corey asked, he said "no". So some of that cow's life was wasted, sorry, we don't mean to be wasteful.

And the most important thing about eating out - make sure you get water "Sin gas" or "Sem Gas" here in Brazil. Carbonated water? NOT a good thing.

On the drive home, we were totally laughing at how terrible the GPS lady's Portuguese is. It's pretty bad, she just butchers the whole slew of words, just throwing out sounds in a big "whatever" attempt, she doesn't even try.

And the kids cheered when they saw what we brought home for our Date night gift.

Cold cereal! A big 1.5 kilogram box, wow! Then the normal 750 gram sized, and that little box was at Sam's, 300 grams. Itty bitty box. That's okay, we'll take it.

They were amazed and love us even more than they did before. We all love date nights. And I'm excited to try to go to Sam's Club again next week, I hope it will be another successful experience!