Ju says "You don wanna eat a my bala!" Like a subliminal message - it's not that he doesn't want you to eat it, it's that YOU don't want to eat it. Not sure if it's a confusion based on English chunks or if he really means to say that.

Getting ready for the big number three here. I've been making trains out of poster board and puffy paint for the decorations, and have gotten small blisters on my fingers from stuffing balloons with candies and small toys for the balloon pop game. This year we opted to have a feijoada instead of a churrasco to save some money and feed more people, but since it's a four day weekend, a lot of them are traveling anyway and won't come. I am thinking for good karma, we will have to take some of the left overs and give them out on the street.

The big present this year comes from the grandparents - a real bed. Sure will beat sleeping on the crib mattress on the floor. At the moment, he wiggles around so much, he is usually on the floor by morning.

Back in January (like 2 days after the new year, when I was still on the island, not taking the ferry back because we didn't want to wait in a line all day) I broke one of my molars on some churrasco salt. It was kind of a freak accident and actually I think it had been broken for a while, since it was sensitive to hot and cold for a couple of years, or had had a hairline crack or something, and the salt probably did it in. It took me a while to figure out that it was really BROKEN, so it was only about a week later that we called the dentist to figure out what to do. My dentist was booked up until after Carnaval, so I made a quick visit to one of my husband's student's offices and she put some putty in the hole and took out the broken piece so I could at least drink liquids without pain. About a week later, she squeezed me in between some appointments and put in a temporary fill with some semi-hard putty, and took an x-ray of the tooth.

Two weeks after that, still having pain, there was an opening for my dentist and I went with all the info from the previous dentist to see if I could have it fixed for real. She took another x-ray and decided it would be best to do a root canal and then a crown. But she doesn't do root canals. So off I went to a friend of her's office who does to make an appointment to do the root canal. This friend didn't have room for another two weeks. So two weeks later, I did half the root canal, but she didn't have time to finish before the next patient, so I had to come back again two weeks after that. Now that it was done, I could finally go to my dentist and do the crown. I made the appointment and was able to get in about a month after the root canal was finished. She took the mold of my teeth to send to the lab to make the crown and prepped the tooth, but I had to make an appointment for two weeks later so that she could request that my dental plan liberate this procedure. This was on Wednesday of this week.

Then yesterday I got an "emergency" call when I got home from my dentist's assistant telling me that there was something wrong with the mold for the top teeth and could I please come in and do it again right now because my dentist was going to travel for the holiday and the whole thing would be delayed by a week if it didn't get done. So I left directly from my water bike class (still wet, having no towel), amazingly got a bus that took me to Itaigara (a mall near her office) and rushed up to do the mold again.

I was in a hurry to get home and liberate my nanny (who has already stayed later three days this week because of all this mess), so when I missed one bus (Campo Grande R1) and the second one wouldn't let me on and I saw the state of the complete gridlock traffic of rush hour, I just decided to walk home. It's not that far of a walk (about 25 minutes) and there were plenty of people out and about. On the way I passed a guy dressed in rags and his shopping cart full of cardboard listening to an MP3 player, eyes shut, bobbing his head to the music. On another street I encountered a pair of shoes, one partially broken, left sitting neatly together near a wall for anyone who might want them. And as I was almost home, I was nearly run over by none other than the bus (Campo Grande R1) that I had missed back at the mall. So all in all, I didn't loose any time by walking, and in fact saved myself R$2.

So another tax day comes and goes. I didn't file... Again... Haven't actually done it since I moved here. I know I should. I know it's probably easy. But for some reason I just can't bring myself to do it. Even with the "economic stimulus package" attached to this year's return. If we ever move to the States, I'll have to file a lot of back returns. Not sure what the implications with that are.



Yesterday on the way home from school, we passed a large traffic jam going in the opposite direction. It had been caused by some kind of incident with a large truck full of plastic crates of 1 liter beer bottles, perhaps swerving to avoid a car or actually running into one, the result of which was at least 10 of the cases falling off the truck into the street and onto the cars behind it. The whole area was littered with broken brown glass and beer. Cars had windshields smashed in. The entire TWO lanes of traffic (on a major road that connects one end of the city to the other) was completely stopped as no one wanted to drive over all the broken glass. It seemed to have just happened when we were going by - the spilled beer was still foamy. I didn't bother to watch the news yesterday, so I have no idea how long the traffic jam lasted.

Part of Ju's prepping for school is working with his fine motor coordination. He has loved to paint and color since he was 1 and he has been beading with pony beads for the last 4 months. About a year ago, I got him some plastic (yes, even the blades) safety scissors to practice with, but after a few runs, they wouldn't cut anything anymore, so I started letting him use the pink handled kid's scissors that Sheila left here two years ago. Mostly, he would just cut little pieces off the edges of papers and that was interesting for him and I let him make little messes all over. Then they disappeared and he went over a month without cutting anything. This past weekend I bought a new pair of standard kid's school scissors for him and now it seems somewhere in this month of no-cutting-time he has matured to a "cut strait lines through a piece" stage and is now making many paper strips here at my feet.

Now having been a victim of credit card cloning in Brasil, I had to take a day off work today to go use the notary at the American Consulate in Salvador to file my affidavit for Visa. For those of you unfamiliar with our consulate, it is only open from 8:30-11:30, Monday through Friday, which conflicts with most work schedules for those of us who work full time. So I set out at 8 AM to get my stuff taken care of, with the loose plan to head into work when I was done. Once I got there, filled out the form I discovered that the fee was R$54 and I had only brought R$52 with me. So I packed everything up and returned home to retrieve R$2, walked back, paid my fee, and was finished with the whole thing by about 11. Now, however, it was a bit late for me to go into work, so I just stayed here and took care of Ju because our nanny is sick. I also hoped to do some report cards, but again, I cannot seem to access the H drive at school and so here I sit....

Today I wandered around a toy store, looking for new things for my classroom. Ju came. He was reasonably well behaved and left without a tantrum AND without getting anything. It was amazing. Now... could I risk taking him into Toys R Us next time we visit the States? hmmmmmm.......

A conversation with Ju at 10 pm last night (he napped from 1-about 7, so he went to bed very late):

"mommy, what's this?"

"It's a shell."

"A shell. It's a snail?"

"Well, there was a snail in it, but it's dead now. It left."

"It's a snail there. See the antena? It's not dead anymore."

"No, it's gone. That is the point on the shell, not an antena."

"It's a point on the shell. The snail is gone."

"Yes, it's gone. Put it to your ear. Do you hear the ocean?"

(he puts it up to his ear)

"I hear it. I hear the ocean in the shell. I hear a car."

"I think you heard the car pass by on the street. But do you hear the ocean?"

"Yes, I hear it. The ocean's in there."

"The ocean is in there?"

"Yes, the ocean is coming out. The ocean's coming out of the shell. It's in there."




Kids are so cute! This comment goes right along side the day he saw the window open and the rain was coming in on the floor and said "It's raining, mommy. It's raining in my house."

Do these headlines about "Tibeten suicide bombers" and the Chinese accusing Tibet of "terror tactics" sound ridiculous to you? Also, do they sound familiar? Tibet, the symbol of peace and democracy and meditation - why would they be terrorists? Hmmmmm, I wonder if the Chinese learned these terms somewhere and decided to use them to their advantage.... Where would that be?

I know some people are waiting for a long report on the DI celebration this past weekend in Rio. I promise, I will try to write something long winded and explanatory, at some point, but right now I have to play catch up with my classroom, and try to reorganize my life so I can function. In short, the kids did great, I loved the experience, and despite all my belly aching and complaints, I WILL do it again next year and I WILL love it and it IS worth it. If you don't know what DI is, check out the program and get involved!