It becomes a ritual, whether you live in the United States or are just visiting. You gather the various boxes from Amazon, ordered by a variety of people, and pull out your list of requests. Because if you're flying from anywhere in the United States to Brazil to see friends or family, you will inevitably have a list of requests. For my husband and I, it's usually Centrum for my mother-in-law, contact solution for my sister-in-law, and a scattering of other items. My sister-in-law always asks for mouthwash, but we never bring it and take chocolate instead as a consolation prize. And then there are Amazon packages and a flurry of last-minute requests from extended family that my husband negotiates.

Image: Dave Nartin

As of September, Brazilians have spent $18.9 billion abroad this year. In 2012, Brazilians spent over $9 billion in the United States alone. That's because a combination of taxes and other elements of the "Brazil cost," like infrastructure problems, continue to make many consumer goods in Brazil more expensive than in some other countries. Plus, some believe that foreign goods are still of higher quality than Brazilian goods, a perception that is sometimes justified, depending on the product. And even though e-commerce is expanding in Brazil, particularly in niche areas like baby products and athletic shoes, Brazilians who can afford to often opt to buy these products abroad.

Despite Brazil's heralded growth and an economy that's one of the largest in the world, many Brazilians try to take as much back with them as they can whenever they travel abroad. Brazil used to have a much more closed economy, when it was actually difficult to purchase things like computers in country. But even now, high prices continue to drive a portion of Brazilian consumers to take their big shopping sprees abroad. When Sony announced last month that the Playstation 4 would cost R$4,000 in Brazil, around 4.5 times the price in the United States, some calculated that it would be cheaper to fly to the U.S. to buy it. And with big-ticket electronic items, that is sometimes the case.

Through an informal survey I did on the blog and social media, here are a selection of things from A to Z that Brazilians have bought while in the United States, or have asked others to purchase and bring back for them. (Not all requests were granted.) What I hoped to capture is that we're not just talking about electronics like iPads and cameras; it's everything you could imagine.