At the constant badgering of my mom, I have decided to put in another entry for those few who actually were reading this on a regular basis - this may only be for the benefit of my mother.

The first month here (hardly can believe one has passed, no?) has been great! The cats are settled in very nicely, right down to catching cockroaches at the back door at night and carrying them around like little wriggling prizes. They make fun toys, and I know not what becomes of them after they leave my sight - I never find the bodies...

After the scary incident of loosing Ona, who we later found hiding under the refridgerator, and a brief bout with some American Round worms that we found puked up on the kitchen floor one morning (who knew with that many trips to the vet that one of these girls would still manage to bring a foreign parasite into Brasil) they became quite taken with this new home that contains stairs. Lela likes when we throw her strings down from the upstairs, so she can bring them back up to us. Ona seems to like the fact that her "trout meow" echos so clearly if she does it in the hallway outside the bedroom at 3 AM. I think the whole condominium complex can hear her. They spend most days sleeping in the back bedroom where there is more sun, on an old smelly mattress left there by Meuamor's old roomate. He says they even have "chero do gato Brasileiro"- they smell like Brasilian cats now. I think however, that they smell sort of musty, and quite a bit like the mattress which smells distinctly like Taco Bell and makes me want to puke.

A few weeks ago now, I broke something on the car when I had my first driving lesson on a stick shift in 8 years. Speed bumps are not my friend. The car made a bad noise for a few weeks, but stopped sometime this week, for an unknown reason. I wrote to my friend Kevyn of this, accusing him of being crazy for some unrelated reasons, when he pointed out that I must be crazy to try to learn to - to quote his brilliant wit here - "learn to drive a stick in Portuguese in the fucked up traffic of Salvador - kind of like trying to learn to ski in Hell." As funny as this sounds, it is rather true. Someday I will find the link to a lovely animation about Italy that was compared to Salvador by some native Bahians - purely coincidental yet uncannily similar... And none of it has to do with the holes in the road that could easily kill your suspetion, a few tires, and lets not even talk about the ones that could swallow your car (one of these appeared not 1/10 of a mile from where I stayed last year the day before I left).

Last week was a nice long weekend, but I was unfortunatly sick with some kind of "flu da cidade" or dengue, we are not sure which. I was sick, writhing in pain in bed with a fever of 39.4 for the entire vacation, which sucked for me, and probably even worse for Meuamor, since he had to take care of me and deal with my constant whining, dengoza, and thoughts of suicide to get away from the pain of whatever I had. He also was sick with it for 1 whole day. We spent all of Valentine's Day sleeping. What a great married couple we are.

So now I just have to finish all my school work, right? I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can...