I have been under the weather lately, a stress induced ‘flu I suspect as we close out our second month stationary waiting for good things to be completed -soon!- to GANNET2. Thanks to anonymous who pointed out my shortcomings on this page and alerted me to get myself together now I am feeling better. Even Rusty has transformed from caring nursemaid lying at my side on the bed to impatient walker demanding his time outdoors. I get the feeling he too is getting bored in our stationary home, but I could be fooling myself.
Travel fine tunes your appreciation for things you did not necessarily enjoy at home.
It may be obvious to anyone who has visited South America, but it’s worth repeating that there is a middle class here, and at a time when class distinctions at home are being laid bare by failing social systems I find it odd how our US retirement puts us squarely in the upper middle class here. We live in a gated community and we shop at Sam’s Club and Carrefour and the local equivalent to Whole Foods a fruit market called Oba Hortifruti. Below, an ice cream stand offering to mix in liquor. That will keep the little dears quiet I suppose. 
The Boulevard Mall puts us in Miami two decades ago when shopping and mall walking were supposed to act as entertainment and social hubs.
There are delivery services in all Latin America for online shopping Mercado Libre and Alibaba are the ones I’ve seen. We’ve used Mercado Libre to get a few things delivered and it with like Amazon. The difference is you need a social security number in addition to a delivery address so what we do is have friendly campground owner order the item so we can pay them back but retail therapy remains an important feature of life across the South America we’ve seen. 
You won’t see these places on Instagram simply because they are familiar to the folks at home so if you are trying to talk up your vacation with pictures of exotica your travels look like this:
But we aren’t on vacation so we vary our shopping, sometimes as tourist posing as cultural anthropologists and sometimes as middle class homeowners (on wheels) seeking a break from the road. 
We recently got our dengue shots at the mall and we passed by the food court which gave us an idea for a rainy day lunch. Why not? And while I’m at it let me show you how it is in a middle class Brazilian mall. 
You read about shootings between police and drug dealers in the sleazy areas of cities and Brazil’s metropolises have a poor reputation for theft but Brasilia is a city apart and doesn’t make for lurid news headlines. A truck crashing on a freeway none Federal District was big news in this sleepy political burg.
We haven’t been to a movie at the mall in decades I think but we had the possibility here had we wanted to sit through some Portuguese. 
And if you want to catch a movie without your kid there’s a child care facility in the mall.
It’s called the forest and if you drop your kid off for two hours you can get 30% off your movie theater ticket. Sounds like a deal to me.
Or you can just wander around for some child- free window shopping. 
And hunt down lunch.
We checked out the food court too, Montana the beef place reminding us that Hollywood’s cowboy myths are worldwide.
They also have a version of the usual Brazilian buffet:
“Serve yourself once with no weighing” for $6:50. As tempting as that might sound we went with Japanese for a change. 
Even the mall can be a cultural experience. Been there and done that. We got the good news the solar panels have arrived so the final piece of the puzzle for GANNET2’s rebuild is in place. We have high hopes next week we may be busy repacking our home on wheels. We can only hope. 
