I spent my Sunday for Ju. Early in the morning we got a call from our friend Isis who also has a two year old boy with whom Ju has already spent some time playing. She invited us over to hang out and then have lunch. Ju had a great time running all over, jumping on beds with Vito, and was in such a state when it was time to go home that we ended up staying all day and going to a theater done by local street kids (says the paintings on the wall outside) late in the afternoon - Ju's first real theater experience. The subject of the play was fear and the story was pretty interesting and rather psychological as far as I could follow it. Vito cried and had to be taken out, mostly due to tiredness (neither he nor Ju slept at all since they got up at about 6 AM), but Ju enjoyed it and wasn't frightened at all by the lights and sounds and costumes. I have only gotten Ju into bed now - I'm surprised he made it this long!

Ju is eating canned sardines and pumpkin and rice for dinner. Mmmmmm, healthy.


Ew, and he just called me in there to show me a maleka he picked out of his nose! Are all boys this gross? Makes you wonder how they grow up and marry....

Story for today -

Last year, in about... I dunno, maybe March, our sick sick printer that used to jam 4 or 5 times a day (probably more, since surely I cannot be the only person who was unjamming it), suddenly was so broken that no one could fix it and disappeared. They told us in April we would get a new one, when there was money, then it was in May, then they told us a new one would be bought before the next school year, as there was not more money in the budget. At the beginning of this year, we heard that rather than buy a new printer for the 40+ teachers in the Elementary, a new one would only be bought for the administration office, and we got our old broken one back in the middle of August. It would print one document and quit, then it disappeared again for a week, then it was back. As of today it's still not spitting anything out, yet it remains there like a plastic tormentor every time I go to the bathroom or to check my mailbox.

I think I only managed to print 3 or 4 things on it so far this year, since it seems to receive a print command and then say it was printing, yet nothing would ever come out. Every time I need to print something, first I open the print jobs folder and see how many are in the line. More often than not, there are print jobs in que from at least 24 hours before, if not days. I finally quit relying on printing anything and tried to find time to either run over and ask the principal to print for me on his private printer, or go down to the high school and try to use the library printer when there was a computer free. When ever I sent an email to our tech guys, there was never a sign if the problem was dealt with, fixed, or even acknowledged.

Today was the last straw, as I often have sent "please go have a look at the printer because it's not working, again" messages, and yesterday I sent one saying "someone please go put the printer out of it's misery because it has been dieing for a long time" - I had to print a small note to send home with the kids tomorrow. The document was a whole 4 pages long. Wow, 4 pages, what a strain huh? I sent it to the computer lab, where I was promptly chewed out for printing there as it isn't for common use. The broken teacher's printer isn't the computer lab guy's problem and we teachers need to go to the source of the problem and get them to get us a new one. Yes, I have been CCing the emails I send to the tech guys to our director every time, what more can I do? Rather fed up with this whole conversation (been under so much stress the last two weeks, I actually was close to tears), I returned to my room and wrote a lengthy email to both the tech guys, our principal, and our director, saying in short that the whole situation with the printer was ridiculous and totally unacceptable that 40+ teachers have no where to print anything and that some kind of response would be nice so we know that actually someone out there cares and is doing something about it. The director actually did come in, told me he whole heartedly agreed with me, and that something was being done. But when?

Instead of lamenting that the blogs I read are not updated as frequently as I'd like, I suppose I should update my own. I have been so busy and had so many things to write about, I end up not writing at all. Also, Ju is a distraction. And I have other excuses, but I can't remember what they were...

Ju is actually forming full sentences, even if they aren't grammatical. I haven't really heard him doing it in Portuguese because he doesn't talk to me in Portuguese anymore, but yesterday he said this: "kitten papaya no want it" which translates into "the kitten doesn't want papaya." This sentences is probably the result of all the times he has thrown food at the cat, trying to see if she will eat it, and my telling him that she doesn't want it or doesn't like it. The interesting thing about this sentence is that he isn't recalling an utterance exactly from memory, because then it would probably be grammatically correct. It doesn't seem to be translated from Portuguese either, because the order would be different. I have no idea how normal it is, having never interacted much with native speakers of English who were less than 5 years old really (not counting baby sitting years - who can remember what happened before high school?), but it's really cool to see him take these sudden spurts of development in his language. He has also started saying "I sorry" when he does something wrong, and comes over and kisses me and says "I love you" if I am angry with him (how do kids know this makes us forget the broken DVD player, just for a moment?) . Which reminds me - today he broke the DVD player, no one is sure how, so getting him over his Thomas and Sesame street addiction should be easier now.

Well, we didn't go to the island for the vacation weekend because of the rain. Just as well I guess, since I had to spend most of yesterday recovering from going to an all night party and having a bit too much cachaça. I don't understand what happens after you have kids - it's like your whole biology changes. I used to be able to go to the bar, drink till 2, get up and have 5:20 practice for crew, go to an 8 am class.... Now I have one beer and feel hung over for hours afterwards.

Brrr, why is it so cold? I don't remember it being this cold in the last 3 years since I have lived here - I am drinking hot coco and wearing socks!