A chronicle: I have moved to Brasil...

Internet interruption

2011-08-14T14:59:00.001-03:00

We decided to upgrade our Internet to 5MB from our 300k. Oi advised us
of a possible interruption in service of up to 72 hours. We went 8
days with nothing and after an hour long service call to Oi we have
been given a temporary signal of 300k until .... I don't know when.
Two guys came out to look at the problem, which means one climbed up a
ladder and opened a box, said there was a problem and then climbed
back down and left without fixing it.

Spelling by Ju

2010-08-31T18:09:00.000-03:00

As part of the literacy process, at least in Portuguese class, the kids are supposed to sound out and spell words to try to discover how to write. I really like this process and we have been doing it a lot just to play. Today some of Ju's homework has to identify things that begin with the letter R and write the Rr underneath them. Just for fun, he sounded out the words for some of the pictures and tried to write them.

Ring - R i (not shown, this was added after this picture was taken)

Robot - R A A (interesting here he only tried to write the vowel sounds)

Road - R U T (T and D are articulated in the same place, so this for me is a win)

Ribbon - R B N (not bad)

Rake - R C

Rock - R C

Owl - A O U (I especially love this spelling, it really sounds like owl if you say it with a Bahiano accent)

We chatted about why rock and rake would have same spelling as he wrote here. It's also interesting to see how he is sometimes focusing on vowel sounds, sometimes on consonents, and sometimes includes both. I seem to remember only writing the consonents at this age, making my journal indeciferable when I looked at it years later.

30 at 30

2010-07-04T12:04:00.001-03:00

I have no idea if the internet has created such a thing as this. I suspect so. If everything goes well, I'd like to read this again when I am 50.

Here are 30 thoughts/facts on my 30th birthday.

1. I still don't feel like an "adult," but after yesterday's fantastic party, I definitely feel like it's actually my birthday.

2. I have a pair of jeans that I bought when I was 17 and worked at Meijer that still fit and I still wear, even though they are risqué and lace up the sides.

3. It's about 72 today here in Brasil and I am a bit cold.

4. I love to eat sushi and would eat it everyday. Salmon and tuna, mmmmmmm. Seaweed, mmmmm.

5. After living in Brasil for six years, I have reprioritized what I feel is a want and a need, just in time for things to arrive in Salvador that we have not had access to.

6. I still like to wear miniskirts because I think my legs look good, but I don't like how my butt touches where ever I sit down.

7. I love doing waterbike. It is the best exercise and I think everyone should try it. I feel like it is what has gotten my asthma under control and helped me destress over the last two years. Plus I have muscles in places I haven't ever seen them before.

8. I used to only wear tall platform shoes and now I prefer flipflops. It has been so long since I wore regular shoes that touch my heels that nearly every time I wear them, I end up with blisters no matter what the shoe.

9. Someday I want to have a small house on a decent piece of land in Chapada, where I would have a garden, orchard, and some goats for milk.

10. I love to sew and am determined to make all my own clothes from now on, either from fabric or adapting used things to my liking. A friend said "you are all kinds of cool at 30, sewing up a storm" - I loved this statement.

11. Yesterday we had the best party here, by far the most fun adult birthday party I have ever had. I credit my wonderful friends and spectacular husband for making it happen. I certainly didn't do much ;).

12. Doing art with Ju is a great way to spend an afternoon.

13. Three cats in one house is definitely enough cats. Ducey, Pila and Lela have amazingly different felinalities and contribute to a well balanced household.

14. Machines I cannot part with - my laptop, my camera, my sewing machine, my ipod.

15. I have known and loved my husband for eight years and he is the best man I have ever been with.

16. I absolutely must drink a cup of coffee in the morning or I just feel like I am coming down with something all day.

17. My favorite thing to eat is a honey crisp apple, even though we don't have them in Brasil and I rarely find them in MI when we go.

18. I love teaching little kids. They are so interested in everything, everything is exciting...

19. This year's world cup has ignited a real love for watching soccer that I never knew I had. Brasil is infectious, yes, but there must be more to it.

20. I believe in the Destination Imagination program. It should be made part of every school curriculum in a major way.

21. When I eat apples in Brasil, if they are really good, I eat the whole thing and leave only the stem.

22. I spend too much time reading craft/art/DIY blogs and such online, being inspired by what I see, but rarely getting up off my butt to do what I read about. (But I'd really like to)

23. My kid is bilingual. Our whole house is bilingual. We mix English and Portuguese in every sentence every day. I still would love to study our language habits. (and it has been hard to not write Portuguese words into many of these list items)

24. Being a Quaker is a huge part of who I am, even though it seems like it's such an unknown fact in my life and where I am.

25. I often fall asleep 8:30 at night, wake up at like 11 and stay up until 12:30, then go to bed again. I am pretty sure this is not conducive to health.

26. I only wear glasses because it feels like too much time to go have my eyes examined and get contacts here in Brasil. I wish things weren't so far apart and complicated down here.

27. I miss having pink hair, but feel like it wouldn't go over well down here.

28. If I could do any job, it would be creating window layouts like those in Macy's in NYC. So cool! I would also enjoy making theater or movie sets. Or maybe those big scenes behind glass you see in museums.

29. A perfect lunch is a big salad of baby spinach and spring greens that has salmon, mandarin oranges, chopped walnuts and Gorgonzola cheese. At least, that is what I feel like eating at the moment.

30. I love my friends, even though we hardly see each other. I have no idea where I would be without internet.

Stuck on sewing

2010-05-23T22:25:00.000-03:00

It is like an addiction. I start one project, finish it, and just seem to find something else to do. I have a notebook full of drawings of things I want to copy, or project ideas I thought of and jotted down. Today I made a cape, fixed some shorts with a hole in the butt, and almost finished a doll whose clothes I will make tomorrow. Also on the agenda for this week - fix the curtains upstairs or maybe make new ones, make at least one more tunic dress (so comfy!), as well as finish the scraps shirt I began at the end of April. And I really should go to the dentist soon.

So the city is shutting down...

2010-04-15T13:51:00.002-03:00

Apparently everything is currently so flooded from the rain that the city is at a stand still. So far today, I have heard that:

- some bridge fell or was completely covered by the river that it no longer exists, in Laurel de Freitas
- Bonoco (major road through the middle of the city) is shut down because of flooding, in Rio Vermelho
- Some other road in to Rio Vermelho is shut off, so there is basically no way to get in there there.
- Rivers across the city have crested and cars are under water
- the governer has declared a state of emergency and is asking for people to stay home until the rains have subsided and flooding has gone down (fat chance)

Despite all this, we did have power the whole day here, it didn't even flicker off! I am impressed with Coelba's work this time. As I type, everyone is trying to leave school early, taking advantage that the rain has subsided a bit to run down to the bus stop at the end of the road, or maybe swim to it as the end of the road is usually under water on days like this.

Those poor people at the UN conference must be water logged by now.

*** evening update - the rain has stopped and it was sunny and somewhat warm this afternoon, but I did see on the way home that the bridge over the river on the Orla by Clube Bahia is collapsing. I wonder if it will last much longer.

It's almost 6 a.m.

2010-04-13T05:42:00.002-03:00

and I hear birds for the first time in days. I wonder if this means today we will see some sun, after almost a week strait of rain without end. I actually see sky out there. Amazing.

Is there power?

2010-04-11T19:26:00.000-03:00

There is no website, there is no webmail. Is there power? We will only know tomorrow.

Rain day project

2010-04-10T10:25:00.001-03:00

March was hugely overwhelming with activities. I'm glad it's past and I can get some of this art in my head out into the real world. There is something very satisfying about thinking about a project for so long and then having time to make it a reality. Yesterday school was canceled because there was no power for the second day in a row (the first day we held class for the entire day without power, with all the doors open for a breeze, letting in the rain and wind - at least we had water!), so I spent some quality time with my sewing machine and playing with fabric dye.

I have a small collection of ankle length skirts that I want to turn into dresses. One of them was a hugely ugly salmon color, a simply designed rayon thing with big pockets that I think my mom picked up at the goodwill or somewhere. I don't have a picture of the original article because I only thought to share the project after I had finished, so I cheated and took photos of the scraps left over - gah, see how gross this color is?

Salmon looks great on me, but I really detest the color, and I couldn't just give it away - look at the detail on the skirt embroidery! It had to become a casual house dress (i.e. something I would wear at home and to the beach, but probably not out to a restaurant), so I cut some arm holes down the sides, maintaining the elastic in the waistband to make the top stretchy just in case.

I cut out the pockets that were luckily made out of the same fabric, and cut them into strips to fake some bias tape to make the straps.

I pot-dyed it with brown and green, the combination of which has hidden most of the hideous salmon color, or at least muted it, which is fine.

It was pretty easy to do this by trial and error copying another dress I have that fits about the same on the top (minus the elastic). My one regret was to have used the white cotton thread. It looked fine with the salmon color, but after dying it was pretty obvious how crooked my stitching is. Also, the dress could be a little shorter, as the sack look only works so well with certain lengths, especially for short people like me.

Art

2010-04-03T17:45:00.000-03:00

I am plagued by too many ideas and not enough time. Today I took a few hours to paint with fabric dye on my $5 Old Navy Ts, turning plain old ho-hum shirts into GREEN messages and something I am calling CAT OM that I was inspired to make after browsing Burda for a while. CAT OM might go so far as to be recreated on some other articles because it is just kinda cool.

ooooooooooom, meditate with felines......

On the phone

2010-03-31T19:33:00.001-03:00

When I first moved down here, cell phones were the newest thing. It wasn't yet like it is now, where everyone has one, sometimes several, and may not be able to pay their electric bill but they do find a way to have this one essential extension. Many I know have more than one, and each one is for calling very specific people, in certain circumstances, or to those with the same provider. With this new found techno freedom, there is of course always the risk that someone will decide to point a knife or such at you and ask you to hand it over, as happened to me 6 months after I got my first one. And when some unknown person ends up with your cellphone, they then can take it and use it to call your loved ones and try a "golpe" - try to convince the person they are calling that you have been kidnapped or otherwise compromised, asking for money or tricking you into giving valuable information for them to use at a later time. My email box used to fill up with warnings about these golpes - how to not list phone numbers as "home" or "husband" or "mom" or what not, how to check if the person is okay in other manners, how never to take anyone's word for it that you can't see and don't know on the other end that what they say is true. My second cell follows a lot of these indications (although as it is now so old and obsolete I doubt anyone would bother trying to steal it anyway) and I have learned to be extremely cautious on the phone when people call here.

All this caution has made it very difficult to communicate anything of use on the phone, however. People call and want to know who called them from this number, but they don't want to give their name, and I don't want to give my name or the name of anyone else in the house, the conversation kind of going like this: "someone called me from this number, who am I talking to?" "It wasn't me that called, so I don't know." "Who are you?" "Who are you?" "I'm trying to find out who called me from this number." "Well, it wasn't me, must have been someone else." "Who are you?" "I prefer not to say, who are you?" "I just want to know who called me from this number." "Sorry, it wasn't me." "Okay, thanks anyway. " "Yeah, sorry." And so what was the point of the phone call? No one leaves voicemail because it counts against your very expensive credits to listen to it for many plans. Many people figure if there is a number on their phone that called them, if it is that important, the person will call back, while at the same time you call and figure your number registered on the phone, so eventually someone will call to find out who that was that called and have a conversation much like that above.

I even had a golpe phone call once, after my maid's daughter's phone was stolen (for the second time). About a month after or so I got a tearful phone call from a woman claiming to have been robbed. Of course it caught me off guard and I accidentally gave the daughter's name before some guy got on the phone and wanted to know "what is the person at this number to her?", but luckily I figured out what was going on at that point and refused to answer. I then called my maid and asked her to check on her daughter and make sure she was okay, which of course she was, but then I felt tremendously idiotic for having fallen for a golpe when I had always been so cautious before. I hoped that by accidentally given the girl's name I had not done any damage that might enable the person with her phone to use this information to fool someone else in her phone list. I never heard of anything happening after that, however.

At one point during college, some guy in Hawaii accidentally called my apartment in East Lansing looking for a girl who had previously been at that same number. We got to chatting just for the heck of it and kept in contact for a few years after, occasionally writing letters and exchanging pictures, although we never did meet and lost track of each other once I moved off campus. Still, for the bit it lasted, it was fun to think how I found a friend by accident just because he called what was my phone number. (yes, I recognize that now with social media and whatever you wanna reference online, this kind of thing is quite common and not at all unusual) I will never have that experience here. You can't trust that unknown person on the other end of the phone. Actually, you can't in East Lansing either, but it seemed much more productive to talk to people on the phone at that time than it does to me now here. Or am I too paranoid?

**** Edit update ****

Apparently something similar is now happening on facebook. Who knew?

If you were in my movie...

2010-03-14T21:26:00.000-03:00

March has become an immensely horribly busy month for me. I can't remember March ever being so distinctive before. I have managed to pack (not by my own planning) two major school events and the MA course into a 3 week period, along with agreeing to sew 45 kimonos for my current students, 25 berets for my son and his classmates and teachers, traveling to São Paulo for a weekend training, not to mention taking a group of 23 students and almost as many parents to São Paulo at the end of the month for the DI Celebration which involves countless meetings with parents and students involved, and don't even get me started on the last minute additions to this trip. Actually, I didn't pack any of this, it all seems to have packed itself. I have been running on 4 hour sleep nights for the last three weeks, been sick twice (still recovering), and one of my bottom wisdom teeth has decided to break surface which has resulted in some of the worst tooth pain I have felt since I cracked my tooth two years ago and an extremely swollen face. I'm hungry and I don't want to eat because even opening my mouth hurts, let alone chewing. I have read almost all of our course text book in a matter of two weeks and only stopped reading because I found the first 60 pages of the last chapter are missing. I'll have to chase those down tomorrow. Today I took 5 quizzes online, wrote two papers, did 3 discussion questions and read two articles. And I still have more to do. Oh, and I cooked some soy chicken with carrots for our snack during the course tomorrow. I'm not even going to go into what I have to do for the course this week, it's really not what I want to think about right now. When I got home yesterday, I took a five hour nap and hid from all social contact for the entire day. Then we watched a movie that was absolutely one of the worst movies I have watched in a long time. It felt really good to not work for a bit. Today was homework day as I neglected to do anything productive yesterday save dream of getting my PhD.

In the morning, I usually listen to my ipod in the van, rather than chat with my colleagues. It's a good way to start the day, just watching the sun on the water on the way to school, and I can almost just feel optimistic about the possibilities for the day. Sometimes I imagine I am in a movie and the music is the sound track, and what might be the next obstacle in the plot line. Everyone's life seems a bit movie like I suppose. Some more than others (my dear friend of the dourado mamão could sell her story for a novela, although unfortunately her experience is not far off the norm for new arrivals- come to think of it, I'm not sure when I got so passive about the things that really used to get to me). I also think of very interesting things to write on this blog, although they seldom get written because I am in a van and no where near a computer with the necessary speed or time to write. But I did remember the movie thing and I did take time out of my reading and writing to write about it, just so you all know I'm not dead.

Ju speak, February 16, 2010

2010-02-18T18:11:00.000-03:00

If I fosse a bombeiro I could apagar that fogo.

How to do laundry with a four year old (when the maid is on vacation)

2010-01-19T11:23:00.010-03:00

To do laundry with four year old, follow these instructions:

1: get all laundry consolidated at the top of the stairs.

2: throw, toss or otherwise utilized gravity to ensure the laundry begins it's decent to the floor below.

3: alternately, you can ride the laundry down on your butt (just make sure there is enough to cushion your bottom if it's like mine). Wooden stairs make a great laundry sledding hill.

4: if you are four, bury yourself in the laundry, it's fun.

4.5: break for lunch.

5: sort into piles of whites versus things that will bleed with darks, and light colors, also towels and sheets.

6: spend all day loading into machine, and then slowly painstakingly hanging them all on ceiling racks which are really hard to pull up.

7: wait 3 days for it all to dry, by which time there will be more laundry to throw.

I remember my mom yelling at me for doing this on her carpeted stairs, telling me that it would ruin them. I will never have to fight this fight.

2010-01-18T13:22:00.001-03:00

In the spirit of writing my blog in the style of other blogs I am currently reading because that always seems to be what I do, here is a small tutorial.

Upcycle that skirt into a dress (but you can still wear it as a skirt too, woopee!)

Do you have a lot of India style long skirts stashed away? I remember giving many away to friends when I moved down here, only to need them when I was pregnant because nothing else would fit! I have quite a collection of them down here now, several that I have acquired since moving. I used to wear them quite a bit too, but I find that now 1) it's just too hot to wear something down to my ankles for the better part of the year; 2) when I walk on the street, I have a tendency to carry the skirt up off the ground due to the vast amount of grossities left on the sidewalks here that I just don't want on my clothes and; 3) climbing up and down stairs with or carrying kids and wearing long skirts is a bad combination resulting in tripping and falling, stepping on the skirt and either ripping it or pulling it off my butt.

I have gotten tired of me as the hippi-girl with long skirt and tank top look. I have been that girl for more than half my life. Most of the time I wear knee length dresses here, because of the heat. STill, I love these skirts, they are SO comfortable, so while staring at my collection one night, I decided to see if I couldn't turn one of them into a dress using shirring, as I have been experimenting with it lately. As this was a first attempt, it didn't come out as perfect as I'd like and I was unable to add the ruffle I wanted to the bottom because I stupidly did not measure anything before making it (live and learn), but it came out okay. I hope it can give new life to the skirts you have stashed away and don't want to part with.

You will need -
Scissors
Sewing machine with zigzag stitch
A long skirt
Thread that matches said skirt
Elastic thread
Seam ripper
A ruler, if you are so inclined to measure things
Pins

Select your skirt. If it's ankle length and you're not exceedingly tall, there is no reason it can't become a dress that will fit you without showing off all you have to offer.

As I am on the small side and there is a LOT of fabric in many India style skirts, I ran a simple stitch all around the skirt to maintain the broomstick pleats and make the circumference smaller on the top. If you are more well endowed than I, or feel like you need more space on the top, feel free to skip this step. With my machine, it takes about 5 inches in on a 37 inch circumference while shirring. Everyone's body shape is different and you may need more space than I, so I'd recommend doing one line and double checking that you can still fit it over your hips to pull it on. All this sewing I did with the garment right side out so I could see how neatly the stitches lay where they would be seen.

I sewed 14 lines like this, and I would recommend NOT just going down in a spiral like I did because it became really confusing when I was shirring with the elastic thread later on. These lines are about 1/2 inch apart. Yes, this part kind of takes a while, but I felt much more secure doing it this way.

Now that you have your basic shape (and have double checked that you can pull it on over your hips - it should fit loosely around you), you can chop off the waist band and hem the top (I liked the frayed edge and left it unhemmed). Often times these things are old and nasty, but if you want you can try to salvage the elastic using your seam ripper.

Hand wind your elastic thread onto your bobbin. This seems like it will take a long time, but it really doesn't. Don't wind it tightly, just try to keep it wound as it is on the spool, if that makes any sense. When you pop the bobbin into it's casing, be sure to pull out a decent amount and hold onto it when you begin sewing. You won't have to pull it out and stretch like you do for waistbands though.

Your top thread is the same, but now your bottom thread is elastic, do you see? You will use a wide zigzag stitch now - on my machine it's the widest of the three options for simple zigzag.

Now you get to follow those lines you made earlier, but this time zigzagging over your running stitch with your elastic thread underneath and the cotton thread on top, again with the garment RIGHT SIDE out (so you're elastic stays on the inside, where you can't see it). Obviously, one should generally experiment with any stitch or technique on your fabric before starting your project to make sure your tension is okay and such and to see how the fabric will lay with different stitches. I didn't so this at all because I generally just wing it and live and learn. When you complete a line, just stitch over a couple inches, put up your pressure foot, move it over and continue on the next line. I didn't once cut my threads (except when I ran out of elastic thread and had to rewind the bobbin), but rather trimmed at the end. It worked pretty well.

Be sure to get your cat to help you hold the dress down.

Once you finish all the lines, you are pretty much done. Big busted women may want to add ribbon ties to keep everything where it's supposed to be. I am not one of these.

If you want to go all out and have no waste at all from this project, you can chop up your waist band into a ruffle (be sure to measure first or you will end up ruffleless as I did - to compensate, I took the seam ripper to the bottom seam and made it frayed as the top - not my best idea ever...). First use your seam ripper to remove your waist band elastic. You could also use scissors to do this, but as someone who has in the past fought to carefully removed an old nasty waistband without ripping the thin cotton fabric, it was very satisfying to just really rip into it. To each his/her own.

Ew, nasty old waistband.

Now cut this circle somewhere so it becomes a strip, and lay it out strait so you can further divide it into multiple strips. I made three here, but that was not enough. I would recommend at least 4 for the average width skirt. If they are different widths and thicknesses, no worries - just cut them in half or thirds and you will distribute this unevenness evenly.

You can make your ruffles as gathered as you like. Some people have a gathering foot for their machine, which I am sure would be useful for this. I just push up small pinches of fabric as it passes under the presser foot, which works okay. When you come to the end of a section of fabric, just stick another one on to the end and continue gathering. I love this style ruffle - it ended up all over my white dress for new years as well. Once you're done with this ruffle, pin it on the bottom of the skirt and stitch that puppy on.

And there you have it - a dress from a skirt. Just tug it down to your waist to wear as as skirt again.

2010-01-03T09:35:00.002-03:00

I keep having to write this, but yes, yet again, I am not dead. A bit tired, yes, but not dead. The problem is I feel most inspired to write things in the afternoon, when, generally, I am not usually anywhere near a computer. This may come from my deep found need to avoid actual responsibilities I have to accomplish, like cleaning, planning and laundry. Also, it's vacation and rather than sit and type things I have been sitting and making things (sewing, cooking and otherwise, and admittedly also spending time in FARMVILLE on facebook which is admittedly a stupid way to spend my time, but I like it).

Recent discoveries that have taken my life into a more sewing machine based direction are oneprettything and threadbanger. If you aren't familiar with them, you should check them out. I made several xmas gifts based on ideas from these sites. Ju is the proud caretaker of Boogie the monster (also known as stupid creatures) and his small cat friend Cookie. I made them from his rainbow boutique crib sheet and the legs of a pair of pants that turned into capris and then turned into shorts. I made my dress for NYE out of some lovely fabric my mom gave me for my birthday. It took me three days of thinking and staring before I began to cut and sew and I changed my design 4 times while working on it and in the end used nearly EVERY SINGLE SCRAP of fabric I had cut - even the very small pieces were cut into strips and sewn into the ruffle style I have recently become obsessed with. I used this same ruffle technique to make a garland for our Xmas tree (still have to take that down) and to make gift bags. It's not very interesting but it looks really nice when it's done. I also learned shirring which as opened up new design possibilities.

I promise something more insightful later. Maybe.

2009-11-01T19:39:00.004-03:00

Yesterday was Halloween. We went to the mall. We bought a Christmas tree. Since the Halloween party at school was moved to the 6th, I am still finishing Ju's snail costume. Halloween here is only about scary characters and none of his friends can understand how a snail is scary and tell him so. I am feeling distinctly unHalloweeny, which is very unlike me as it was always my most favorite holiday ever. I hope it kicks in for Friday. I am working on a sort of costume for the night party - something involving this top hat and vampire teeth. For the day I think I will be an owl at school. That is, if I can finish the costume on time. At least I have the hat as back up.

2009-10-29T18:51:00.004-03:00

Conversations with Ju -

Ju enters the bedroom, completely soaked in his clothes.
"Ju, why are you all wet?"
"I have to fix my hair. We are going to two festas!"

Reading a Halloween book, and seeing that the main character just went into the "witch's house" in the story and decide to predict what will happen next in the story.
"What do you think will happen?"
"I think she's gonna get him and put him in her panela" (pot)
"Oh, you mean her cauldron? Yeah, maybe. And then what will happen?"
"She's gonna make him be a.. a.. a sandwich!"

In other news, our Halloween comes late this year - due to the long holiday weekend coming up, the school decided to move our party to the 6th of November. This is good because I have more time to finish Ju's snail costume. But it's pretty funky already with all the Xmas decorations up, only to get worse the farther into November we go.

2009-10-13T21:35:00.001-03:00

Haha, I always wondered what the words to that song were...

2009-09-09T21:05:00.004-03:00

Over the summer, Ju learned a song at Quaker meeting. It is a song I sang as a kid, written by a local folk singer called Carol Johnson. What they did in first day school that got him to learn it when I had sang it to him for years before hand, I will never know. This song is called "Love Grows." His first version went like this -

"Love grows, one by one, two by two, three by three and four by four...."

After a month of this, he had corrected it and would sing it at random in the car whenever he felt things were getting too quiet.

Then the other night, as I was putting him to bed and staying with him "just for five minutes, please please because I love you" (and then he bats those long eyelashes at you and gives you a silly smile), he began to sing it, whispering, in Portuguese. He sang the entire chorus, it seems, completely translated by himself.

"Amor crecer, um by um, dois by dois e quatro by quatro"
"Amor crecer, faz um ciculo e vai bater na sua porta na frente"

When I asked him later in the week if he had sang this song at school, thinking maybe his Portuguese teacher translated it (I shared the song with the whole school a couple of years ago and now everyone from grade 2 - 7 knows the lyrics and sang it for a school wide presentation), but he insists he figured it out himself. I will have to verify this, of course, before I get too excited about how cool this is.

2009-09-07T23:14:00.002-03:00

Queimadas, for those wondering where it was. I loved it.

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2009-09-02T21:26:00.002-03:00

Hi all, I swear I'm not dead or lost or anything. I spent my usual month in the USA in June/July and just have not gotten back into the swing of blogging quite yet. I promise more stories soon though. Lots more. Just let me get through my current MA course and the start up of DI and I swear I'll get back into it.

2009-05-23T11:26:00.006-03:00

Sometimes in the afternoons, Ju and I will do sort of research projects to figure out how things work, mostly focusing on science. We spent some days looking at videos of tornadoes and hurricanes and discussing them because of the recent weather patterns.

He has always be very fascinated by the elevators in the mall, watching them go up and down, so we made our own elevator on the stairs one day to learn about pulleys. It was a good time for Ju and for Duse who thought that we had hung string that moved just for him to play with.

Ju got annoyed several times as Duse would quickly knock our string off the pulley with his constant pawing, but I think all in all the activity was a success.

2009-05-23T09:01:00.002-03:00

Ju generally wakes me up early on any given day when I'd rather not be up early. It begins with him running into our room, getting on me in bed, usually asking for me to look at this thing he made with leggos or playdough or grabbing a cat who was pleasantly sleeping on my legs or my hair. He will run in and out of the room for about 20 minutes, and then begin telling me to get up because he wants breakfast. Usually I can waylay him a bit if I don't want to get up quite yet and he finds something else to do until I go downstairs. This morning was much the same story, except when I rolled over and told him to give me a few more minutes, he took it upon himself to get what he wanted. I could hear him moving things around downstairs, and eventually I heard the sound of granola being poured in a bowl. As the granola is kept on a shelf above the sink, I decided I had better get up in case he was doing something even more dangerous than climbing up on the kitchen counter. He must have been really hungry and unwilling to wait for me, got his stool from the bathroom, used it to climb up on the counter, got down the granola and the cashew nuts, climbed back down, got his own bowl out, served himself half the container of granola (about 2 cups) into the bowl, and was just about to put milk on it which he had gotten out of the fridge on his own as well. Although it's nice to see him so independent and it may mean I get to sleep in in the future, it may end up being an awful waste of food. Maybe it's time to put a scoop in the granola, and perhaps take it out of the glass container and put it in plastic instead.

______________________________________________________________

As I was typing this, we had this conversation.

"mommy, look, the car is on the pedga."

"it's on a what?"

"it's a pegda."

"a playdough?"

"no, a pegda!"

"a peda?"

"no, a pega!"

"a what? a prega" (nail)

"no! a peda!"

"a playdough?"

"no! something else, hard!" (hits his fist on the floor beside the car)

"oh! you mean a pebble?"

"yeah, a peddle."

2009-05-09T20:13:00.002-03:00

We went to the supermarket today to do our big bimonthly shopping trip. To pass the time, Ju and I wandered over to look at the fish on ice. There were some whole salmon and some red fish. One of the red fish was chopped up into fillets, yet still connected by the skin and with the head attached. Ju and examined it and had the following conversation.

"Mommy, why's it like that?"

"All chopped up? Why do you think it's like that?"

"Because the tubarão came and shwish shwish swish." (motions what I think is swimming)

"The shark came and cut it up?"

"Yeah, he cut it."

"How did he cut it, do you think? With a knife?"

"No, he did it with his sail." (he has been studying dinosaurs at school and is probably thinking of Spinosaurus)

"Oh, you mean his fin? On his back, right?"

"Yeah, he cut it with his fin. He came and went swish swish swish."

2009-05-06T18:42:00.001-03:00

Ju has figured out ANY is part of the negation of English, so he says things like "Mommy, there is any cars coming. We can cross."

2009-05-06T18:29:00.002-03:00

More rain.

A friend had told me yesterday her house was filling up with water - today I heard she lost everything. There was over a meter of water in her house. I can't get in contact with her and I want to know how she is and what she needs. She has two boys.

2009-05-05T19:41:00.002-03:00

Are you paranoid about swine flu? We sure are. There are stories passing left and right about confirmed cases (there have been no confirmed cases in Brazil, as of yet), paranoid parents wanting me to tell them about every sniffle or cough that I witness in the class, people canceling their trips to Disney, you name it. At the moment I can feel myself getting a cold of some kind, nose feels like it's filling up with something, feeling a bit tired. Just watch, I'll go to school sick tomorrow and the parents will assume I caught swine flu just because I am American (yes, seriously, some of these parents think that way and I wouldn't put it past them to tell people they meet as much as well).

And lets not even worry about the rain (more on This Week in Bahia). It has been raining a lot lately, as it usually does at this time of year. The last week of April had more rain here than was predicted for the entire month. It's still the first week of May and we have already surpassed our expected rainfall for May as well. It has been raining pretty much nonstop since Saturday. Today the whole city was a giant traffic jam. I had kids who were supposed to go home at 12 still in my classroom at 2:40. Parents couldn't get to the school to get them, and the ones that were able to arrive where then stuck there with no way out with all the flooding. By 12 several people were out digging canals in the playground to try to direct the water around the building instead of into the preschool classrooms. I tried to make it an educational experience anyway and took the kids in small groups to look around at what was happening to the grounds. On the news they recommended that one not drive on the roads that usually flood during heavy rains - they listed every road that is a "main vein" to get to anywhere else in the city, except the Orla, which is two lanes in each direction. The mayor, or someone, advised everyone to just stay put at home for their personal saftey, lest they end up floating away in their cars. Mostly people were just stuck wherever they were at 10:30 when the major rain really began taking hold. Ceilings caved in, houses collapsed, lakes and rivers filled up, taking over roads flooding houses. And this isn't an unknown phenomenon - it happens nearly every year. Why nothing is done to improve drainage is beyond me. I don't want to think about it too much because there is nothing I can do to change it.

Ju's 4th birthday, by some miracle, was clear, cool and miraculously rainless. We got a bit more involved with games this year and sent the kids running all over to find the hidden 4s we had concealed all over the garden after a rousing game of pin the baby stegosaurus on the mommy stegosaurus. One of my favorite parts of Ju's birthday is to have my best friends here in one place for a day. Two of my girlfriends always stay till late (they are the LIXO as we say here, they go out with the garbage, when the party is over) with kids and husbands and everyone has a great time. I learned my lesson from last year and used only non-dye-running materials to decorate and therefore was able to actually enjoy the party. Ju was the only one to go in the pool, initially because he dropped a new car and it sank to the bottom (did I mention that he swims to the bottom of the pool by himself now?) and then I think just for the joy of trying to get the other kids wet. It wasn't exactly pool weather as I was cool enough to leave my hair down, but I think he is slowly turning into a fish, or perhaps a bobcat - don't they swim?

We have been reading The Missing Piece Meets the Big O. Ju has many parts of it memorized and likes to practice the exchanges with me at odd times during the day. He also can pick up the book and "read" some of it to us. He has learned several phrases and words just from watching things like Oswald and Sesame Street on DVD and now I see he is beginning to get more of them from books as well. The book fair is coming up at school, so I hope he will finally get to acquire a book of his choosing. I am curious to see what his tastes are and what they may be based on. He loves all the books I have chosen for him in the past.

I have been sewing a lot lately, creating things that come to my head during water bike. I don't have enough time to do them all justice. Eventually I will put some photos.

In other news, I see my Sandal boots have arrived in the States, finally. Come on USA, get with it - they came in and seem to have gone out of style almost a year ago!

2009-04-21T17:47:00.001-03:00

"Mommy, you insane!"

"I'm insane?

"Yes, like the cats."

Well, at least I know where he learned that one.

2009-04-20T13:43:00.002-03:00

As tomorrow is a holiday and today we had off because our school administrators wisely assumed that few students would come to school on a Monday before a Tuesday holiday, I got up early and went to the 6 AM water bike class. I absolutely love water bike. I feel energized and de-stressed when I leave. Anyone with the opportunity to try it should, in my opinion, and I am constantly badgering people here to come check it out (haven't succeeded yet, though).

Walking back from class at 7 AM, I found myself in the company of at least 50 other people, mostly women, possibly many of them housemaids, on the way to work. I enjoy walking and prefer it to taking the bus if the weather and distance permit. There is a woman who has a juice stand near the pool who was doing a small breakfast rush. A little farther up the street there was a woman all set up to sell "mingal" - kind of pourage like warm sweet breakfast liquidly thing. At the end of my street there is a guy who sells some kind of bread and coffee which I never noticed before (possibly because I rarely walk so early in that direction). It was so pleasant to walk with so many people, I wonder if they found it as pleasant as I did.

2009-04-19T21:00:00.003-03:00

Some fun Ju logic from the last weeks:

Reading The Lorax one night with Ju, he noticed the picture of the Lorax lifting himself away by the seat of his pants.
"Mommy, I (mimes grabbing himself by the seat of his pants), I can fly?"

***

During the recent (recent being like in 2008) mayoral elections, there was a jingle for "Nilton 50" that got played so often one could sing it quite easily. My husband took the tune and the slightly modified the words to sing a song about our nanny, Neta, calling it "Neta 40" because she is 40. Ju loved this song and would sing it to her all the time and she adored it (we are SO lucky to have such a great nanny, but that is a story for another post).

One morning this week my husband sang another modified version - "Juju 40" and the following conversation took place:

Maridão - "Eu quero Juju quarenta!"
Ju - "Eu não sou quarenta. Quarenta é de minina. Eu sou quarento!"

For those who don't speak a romance language, there are feminine and masculine words in Portuguese. One cannot use a feminine adjective to describe a masculine object (like Ju evidently realizes himself to be), and Ju realized right away that that "a" at the end of "quarenta" did not match the fact that he is a boy and hastened to correct his father's mistake. He is beginning to become aware of grammar, at least in Portuguese- cool!

(He still says "It didn't was me" though, and "I did see it there, mommy. Yesterday I did see it." )

2009-04-13T20:17:00.001-03:00

I have not posted recently not for lack of things to write about, but for lack of wanting to write about whats on my mind because it continues to piss me off. None of what I want to write is pleasant and so I don't write it.

2009-03-22T13:49:00.002-03:00

I just noticed the other day that Ju is now producing the "lh" of Portuguese - he no longer says "Olla, mommy!" but "Olha, mommy!" For those unaware, this particular phoneme of Portuguese is similar to the sound of putting the sound of l and y together in English and is difficult for Americans to get right. Many people here have told me they can always spot a gringo because of their lack of proper "lh." Mine is okay, if I do say so myself, but it hardly holds a torch to my not-even-four-year-old son's who gets to speak it naturally. Since I find that I generally find that I follow the same kinds of time lines for speaking Portuguese as children here do (i.e. a child will not use the past tense correctly until around or after age 4, I have been here for more than 4 years, and I find I am using it mostly correctly and innately), there may be no hope for me, as I have been in Brasil longer than Ju has been in existence.

2009-03-21T08:02:00.002-03:00

I have been living here about 5 years and I generally can hold my own in Portuguese, although occasionally on the phone I have trouble with people who don't understand that they need to speak slower rather than louder. I was trying to spell something on the phone yesterday - I generally have no problem remembering to say the letters in Portuguese rather than English, except for a few like Q. But what to say when you want to differentiate between things like B,V,D,E etc? I found myself reverting to names, rather than words - V de Victoria, B de Bernardo. I could not for the life of me come up with the usual things like we use in English like B as in boy, V as in valentine. I have no idea what the "regular" words used in this kind of context are. I should probably find that out.

2009-02-22T07:43:00.004-03:00

I suppose as part of being a Quaker, I have always had a strong anti-war, anti-violence view of everything. I am constantly trying to instill this in Ju, although it can occasionally be challenging here. When he was given a bunch of made-in-China war toys (plastic hand grenade, knife, gun, etc) there was no question that they would become a donation for kids in the street. I refuse to have anything like that in the house. He is not allowed to watch Power Rangers, Spiderman, Batman, or any of those fight-and-kill violent styles of programming. (I cannot understand why anyone would expose a child so young to these kinds of ideas, although it seems to be the norm here at least in Brasil.)

People here allow boys to be much more wild, misbehave much more, and in general seem to discipline them less about proper human behavior, in my opinion. Girls are put on a much shorter leash. There is a certain view that boys "need" this kind of play where they kick and wrestle with each other, that it's a boy thing and I will never understand. Maybe so. But how much of this is what boys NEED and how much is what we put upon them with expectations based on society? Boys are given toy guns, girls are given dolls. I know I've had this argument with myself before and it never seems to resolve itself. And there is always the view of "well, all these other grown men grew up playing these games and they turned out okay, so why does it matter so much"? I could ramble on about this forever.

Anyway, there were some things I liberated after a time, like Looney Tunes, thinking that they really weren't that harmful. Woody woodpecker is very popular here and all the kids disappear from the outside area of the condo at 6:30 to go watch it. I hadn't really paid much attention to the content of these cartoons, having watched them myself when I was about seven or so. It's just a cartoon, why does it matter? But Ju's behavior at school and with us (direct disobeying of rules, lack of respect for other people's space, hitting and bothering people) has gotten so bad in the last several months, I have been forced to reconsider that age old argument that violent cartoons are bad for your kids. The Looney Tunes characters do horrible things to each other - hitting with mallets, blowing each other up, pushing off of cliffs, getting run over by cars.... And Ju laughs. He laughs at all of it. It bothers me that he finds this funny. I never put much stock in it before, thinking that kids know the difference between real life and cartoons, remembering how I felt at that age when some adult made a comment about how these violent shows were affecting children, thinking that these adults assumed we were all stupid kids who didn't know the difference. Maybe for a seven year old this is true. Maybe. But perhaps for a three year old, this division is a little fuzzier. Certainly when I saw Ju begin head butting people after watching Woody Woodpecker, I started to rethink this line.

So now the Looney Tunes DVDs are banned. Woodywood pecker has gone the same way as Power Rangers - not allowed. We just got some new video tapes of Dora and the Magic School Bus and something called Yo Gabba Gabba that Ju absolutely loves. The desire to have him relate to "normal" Brasilian boys at school by being able to talk about the same characters and play the same games is usurped by my concern that he may end up in the principals office because he broke some kid's nose by head butting him. Lets see if TV really makes a difference.

2009-02-20T17:27:00.001-03:00

"Mommy, I have a 'ien.'"

"You have a what?"

"A... a... a this" (points to my ring)

"Ah, you have a ring."

"Uh huh, a eeng."

I feel like I've had this conversation before.

2009-02-14T23:12:00.001-03:00

My Sheils is back!

2009-02-10T19:28:00.003-03:00

Lela, the cat I brought from Michigan, won't touch anything except cat food and raw meat, and occasionally some cooked chicken or lunch meat. Ju's two cats (Brasilian vira-latas) eat nearly everything that is put in front of them - meat, bread, oatmeal, raisens, apples, mango, papaya, jack fruit, carrots, peas, if it comes from our plates, they will eat it. They are both rather persistent at asking for hand outs as well, which makes it seem a bit like we have very agile dogs living with us, except that they climb up on the table when we're not looking and steal the food from our plates.

2009-02-07T12:43:00.002-03:00

"Where we going, 'eing'?"

Ju uses this word frequently now, when talking in English and in Portuguese. "Hein" is like 'what' or 'huh' depending on the context. It's quite common in conversation in Portuguese, but when he uses it in/with English, it makes him sound like someone from the U.P., eh? I am a Michigander (still don't like that word, I am not water fowl) but I am not a Yuper. My son, however, is beginning to sound like one.

2009-01-25T12:49:00.003-03:00

Sewing. It's something I always watched my mom do as a kid. I did it by hand for many many years due to an irrational fear of sewing machines (much like my fear of ovens) and their ability to do some horrible damage to fingers if one wasn't careful. Last June I spent $100 on a 3/4 (easier to transport) sized sewing machine, finally determined to conquer my fear and make good on my comment of "well, why pay for that dress/shirt/shorts/whatever-fill-in-the-blank when I can make it." It sat quietly in a cupboard for the last 6 months, until, finally, with three days left in my vacation, I decided to try to play with it.

It still smelled new, the whole three bobbins it came with were still inside their plastic bag inside the removable arm that allows you access to space where you insert them (the name of which still escapes me). I took it out and then went on a hung for the manual that I had left out next to my computer all those months ago, that I read and reread trying to convince myself that I was perfectly capable of using this machine as it had come highly recommended by a friend who bought the same one for her four year old to begin sewing on (come on, if a four year old can do it, I sure can, I told myself).

Where is it? I searched all over, took books down from the shelves... nowhere is this simple manual, so comforting. Hmmm, now what. Well, if a four year old can do it, it can't be that hard. I just randomly tried to thread it, thinking it seems too simple, I must have missed a spot. Okay, let's try to fill a bobbin instead. I dropped some thread on the spool peg. Now what. Okay, here's a hook and another little peg that look like they make it run strait at the bobbin peg. Oh, I remember I have to pull out this round thing on the side. That I do remember reading. And.... Yes, the bobbin is winding! Success! So I had managed to bungle my way through making a bobbin.

So, let's try threading again. Having given up on finding the manual at home, I tried online - Janome does not even list this machine on their site. The manuals site has nothing either. Hmmm, is this really a Janome? Not sure. But I do see some one has posted on a forum that there are guide arrows on the machine, showing you where to thread. Sure enough, there they are. So I thread according to the guide arrows. Hmmm, this seems too easy. There's a little hook there above the needle, since it's so easy to pass the thread in there, it probably goes there, now through the eye and.... Now how the heck do I get the thread from the bobbin to come up? I know it has to go through that hole on the bottom. I try several things that I now can't remember, and nothing works. I am sure this is the key to making this machine work.

Suddenly my husband finds the manual stuffed in an envelope with other random papers from the desk area. From the manual I see I have to thread the machine (which I did correctly, yeay me!) in order to get the bobbin thread to come up, okay, so far so good... And at last I managed to get the thread through the little hole.

Ju watches me do some practice stitches on some random green fabric (the only scrap fabric I have) and gets extremely interested in how the machine moves, what parts do what, and watches avidly as I sew my first project - a dress I have been sitting on for about 6 months. The more I sewed, the more I got creative about it until what should have just been a quick hemming job turned into a shortened dress with triangular inserts that make it spin out flat to show off your underwear (if you're into that) with puffy pockets and straps. Actually I'm still not sure about the straps. And after discovering that I am not all that hot at sewing strait, I decided to do some "decorative artistic" stitches along the bottom and other raw edges rather than hemming. I'm pleased with the result and eager to do more. I just wish fabric weren't so expensive here.

2009-01-09T06:22:00.003-03:00

And wouldn't you know it, but as I finished my massive cleaning fest yesterday, it seems one of Ju's kittens knocked over the same potted plant on the veranda that has been knocked over twice before. The pot is (was) made of a dried coconut shell held together by some steel wire in the middle. It is now splintered beyond repair. The plants are no loss really, since they had been torn from the pot and ripped to shreds several times before, probably by the same mystery kitten. They were just barely hanging on. I guess it's a sign that I have one too many pots up there in the middle of the kitten highway.

In other news, apparently the huge massive snow that I am so sad to miss this year trapped my mom in GRR and then again in Chicago and then she got stuck in Miami because she missed her connection. Anyway, now she's there and we are here, up early but not in a rush anymore to get to the airport. I didn't sleep very well between the kittens bounding in at 2 a.m. and some kind of security alarm going off around 3:30 and continuing to sound for another half an hour, so it will be good to get a nap in too. And I'll have time to clean up the mess on the veranda.

Ju is watching Planet Earth, again. At least if he's glued to the T.V. it's educational, as shown by this conversation we had yesterday:

me - "Ju, it's time for a shower and bed.

Ju - "Why?

me - "Because it's dark out and time for sleeping."

Ju - "Why's it dark out?

me - "Because the sun set and that means it's time for sleeping."

Ju - "It's dark out because the terra esta rodando." (the Earth is turning)

me - "Yes, that is exactly what's going on. The Earth is turning and that's why it's dark out."

2009-01-08T19:16:00.003-03:00

This particular vacation, I am spending a much better part of my time (where does that expression come from anyway, it makes no sense!) cleaning up the house and playing housewife. I don't feel particularly deprived of vacation fulfilling these duties because I spend pretty much the rest of the year not doing any of it except an occasional floor sweeping or load of laundry. We give our maid her 30 days of vacation at the same time I have mine, and my husband takes off a few weeks and we get to hang out as a family, go to the beach, and maybe travel for a couple of days somewhere outside the city (leaving lots of food for the cats). As my mom arrives tomorrow for a two week (the remainder of my vacation time) visit, I have been making an extra effort to have a "Brasilian clean" house, rather than just "American clean." This means sweeping daily, walking the floors with a wet rag to pick up spare specks of dust, doing most of the laundry, and cleaning the bathrooms. All of this has taken most of this week to complete and I am much more in the groove of cleaning up.

Our bathroom has a lot of issues. The sink leaks, the toilet has gone through some flushing problems, and now the shower faucet is broken, so the only way to turn it off is to shut off the water completely from the bathroom. Even with this "emergency handle" shut off, there is still a great amount of leaking going on and my bathroom is constantly wet, dripping, and has recently grown a lot of mildew. I just noticed how bad it had gotten and took bleach and a scrub brush to it, hopefully to better my sinus and asthma problems, which have been bothering me for some unknown reason (at least until now). Nearly all rooms here have a drain in the floor - this greatly facilitates cleaning your floors. You can empty the floor of objects, fill up a bucket with bleach water, spread it around and then scrub with a broom. Sweep all the water into the drain, then rinse with clean water, and presto - super clean floors! I spent over an hour in each bathroom that gets daily use today and am now waiting for the floors to dry. (Well, the one in my bathroom won't.)

No matter how often I sweep, the floor looks dirty again about half an hour later. Everything is left open here all the time - doors, windows, and there are no screens to keep bugs, leaves, etc. out. Dust is a constant problem. So is cat hair, now that we have three cats in the house.

These cats of Ju's have taken over. The climb up anything that will support their weight - nets, hammocks, curtains, plants, things hanging on the hat tree - and seem to have no fear or respect for human tendencies. I sweep the floor, and they follow me from room to room, trying to get under my feet, having no fear of the broom. I hang laundry to dry on the veranda and they climb up on top of the rack and take a nap on it, knocking several pairs of underwear and socks down in the process, covering everything with cat hair. I go to open the door to take out garbage or sweep and they sit down right in front of it as invisible forces of resistance and don't even jump up out of the way when it starts to move, but rather resign themselves to "riding" it like little floor dusters, staring at me with bemused expressions, completely unconcerned. When I clean out the cat box, they hop in as I am scooping and dirty it further. I don't blame Lela for being cranky with them - they are like Ju, they seem to respect no limits.

I have no idea how to end this post, since I have been trying to write one for several days, but always seem to be uninspired when I am sitting here at the computer (which is far less frequent than most of you probably think).

Off to put Ju to bed.

2008-12-28T23:48:00.000-03:00

For your amusement.

2008-12-28T20:12:00.003-03:00

Am I on vacation? It sure seems like it. So far I have completed two sewing projects, made more than 6 dozen sugar cookies shaped like stars, made pizza twice, bread sticks, soups, created a ginger molasses chicken dish (to be eaten tomorrow, we'll see how that turns out), made Christmas ornaments for the tree with Ju, started beading some bead strings for the tree, gone to the beach, had a churrasco, gone to the mall on several occasions, gone sailing, lost my glasses in the ocean while sailing, got new glasses (Brand name is Detroit, who knew?), cleaned the floors several times, but have yet to do laundry. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I WILL do the laundry.

2008-12-14T15:37:00.003-03:00

Sorry for the long absence. My MA course took over my life and I only recently escaped.

So news in the life in Brasil department in brief:

Was briefly sued for racism by one of the student's mothers because I asked her to talk to her daughter at home about not trying to take home toys from school in her backpack after one of my assistants caught her in the act of putting some of them in her backpack. After three weeks of limbo, the mother went back to the police station and stated she would not pursue the charge (under the threat of the father who said he would stop paying for the kids' school if she did), but has not gone back to sign any papers to that effect so the case remains open. I have since had a long talk with this mother and become somewhat of an ally (or maybe that's my misconception, I don't know) to her and am trying to help her family open up the lines of communication. I don't know why I end up with these irrational acting people as parents of my students. Our population seems to be over run with them.

Bought new washing machine because ours was filling the kitchen with water every time we ran it. Two weeks later canceled the order with Ricardo Electro because they failed to deliver it in the time they said they would (in 48 hours), and then bought the machine instead with Laser Electrico who we always buy from and we should get it on Monday. Ricardo tried to give us a different one (better) for the same price as we had been in and out of the store several times to inquire about why it had not been delivered, but we canceled anyway because we would rather not they get any money. About time since we have had no way to wash clothes for more than two weeks and Ju just got over this vomiting fever thing.

Everyone at school and here at home has had this fever thing, sometimes with vomiting, and sore throat. Ju's class had only half attendance the week before he got it because it seems to be so contagious. I have it now, it's not fun, but I prefer to have fevers and let my body do my thing if I can stand it.

One of my best friends in Brasil has moved back to Salvador, but isn't sure she is going to stay here. I am glad to have her back in my life though and have spent a lot of time with her over the last several weeks.

One of my other best friends in Brasil has returned from her semi-hiatus when she was too busy with work and we have gotten together to chat and hang out and it has been awesome. It's only now that I realize how much I missed having really real friends who are my friends because we have similar spirits and love each other rather than that we were thrown together because of circumstance or because we fell like we "should" be friends. Maybe this is why people outside of their culture often turn to religion and become so involved with people from their church. Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass.

School is almost over, just one more week before we have a whole month off of vacation. I am looking forward to catching up on my art work, playing with my sewing machine, and then having my mom visit in January, when I will finally get to go to Chapada.

Ju's kittens are growing fast and continue to be tolerant and take nearly everything he can dish out at them. They have recently gotten into the habit of unplugging my alarm clock and I hope they don't make me miss my transport to work in the last week of class. They also defy gravity, hang from the window nets, and steal everything, even lipstick from my purse, and turn it into a toy. They are like dogs and eat everything too, eggs, bread, fruit, juice; your plate is not safe anymore.

I have yet to do any Xmas shopping at all.

And this concludes another news brief.

2008-11-09T20:01:00.003-03:00

Today, after more than 4 years of living in Brasil and swimming in some not so clean ocean waters, I was stung by a jellyfish. It made my whole arm hurt and left a line of welts in both places that it touched me. I have always been anxious about jellyfish, I suppose from having read somewhere that there are some that the venom can kill you. Now that I've gotten that hurtle out of the way, I suppose I can move onto bigger and better things like venomous snakes or something.

2008-11-02T17:50:00.002-03:00

While giving Ju a shower the other night, he began making some really strange sounds that reminded me of his language about a year ago when he would sound a bit like he was speaking Japanese. He would make all kinds of phonemes from both English and Portuguese, having long "conversations" with his toys while he was playing, never sounding like he was speaking either language. When he suddenly began making these sounds again, I asked him

"What language is that? It doesn't sound like English and it doesn't sound like Portuguese. What language are you speaking?"

"I'm speaking 'ingrés'!"

"'Ingrés?"

"Uh huh, ingrés."

I suspect this may be something along the lines of "English spoken by friends at school who say things in a different way and call it ingrés" but I can't be sure. Some sore of weird 3 year old interlanguage.

2008-11-02T11:43:00.001-03:00

"What's this for doing?"

2008-10-26T22:21:00.003-03:00

One of the consequences of where I work is that we get to know some rather influential (i.e. rich and connected) people here in Bahia. For the most part the relationships aren't life changing, but once in a while you meet some really nice people who you wouldn't have rubbed elbows with otherwise and you remember that the rich are people too.

We spent the afternoon with some of these people, discussed politics (well, my husband did, I just sat there and listened), ate crab, and swam in the pool. This particular couple are very special people and genuinely nice, even if they do vote with the right.

Today part of the discussion turned to the French champagne we were drinking. Apparently it is impossible to buy in Brasil anymore because they bought the whole stock and the importer has not been able to get anymore into the country. Specifically, some of the conversation went something like this:

(bottle comes out and is poured for us at the table by the pool and another guest remarks)

"Oh, wow, where did you get this? Have you been saving this for Bob?" (Bob is another guest)

"Oh, no, there are only about five bottles left. It's a crisis, really. They haven't gotten anymore."

"Yes, you don't find this in Brasil anymore. What will we do with this crisis? It really is terrible."

I wasn't really paying that much attention to this conversation until the woman said something about "this crisis" and then I sort of perked up, thinking maybe she was referring to the global economic situation and feeling I could finally contribute to the conversation. I admit that sometimes when I really miss things from the States they are often edible, but I'm not sure I'd call a lack of French champagne a crisis. It really is a different world when you have enough money to create a certain level of lifestyle. I'm just happy if I can get Granny Smiths of decent quality and some nice mint chocolate.

2008-10-19T20:50:00.003-03:00

Our next module of the MA has been postponed. Apparently the professor's passport with the Brasilian visa stamped in it has gone missing in the mail. Some how this had to happen to someone somewhere along the way in this process. It's such a typical story in this kind of situation, one that I myself experienced during my preparations to move down here. Documents getting lost in the mail. Se la vi! This is why I liked that extra chore of driving to Chicago back in the day. My paranoia got the better of me. I'm feeling rather indifferent to the fact that I have an extra two weeks to accomplish the homework and finish reading the last chapter of the book. Life goes on. It's just adding to my procrastination habit.

2008-10-12T09:20:00.002-03:00

Ju singing this morning: "Down by the station really in the morning, see the puffy little engines all in a go. You can see the puffy little engines there all in a go."

2008-10-11T15:55:00.003-03:00

"Mommy, do the nose!"

(I squeeze his nose hidden under a cloth he has over his face)

"and the mouth."

(I comply)

"and the eye"

(I comply)

"and the testa"

"The forehead?" (I say as I comply)

"No, it's not a forehead."

"The testa is a forehead." (I touch his forehead again)

"No, it's not a forehead. There's no four there."

2008-10-07T19:21:00.005-03:00

About 3 years ago, I made a large flower out of wire for no apparent reason. It consists of a large hollow ball shaped out of colored wire and large petals in 2D. It has floated all over our house and finally found a nice home attached to a random nail in the upper corner of the window box area outside Ju's room in January of last year.

Today I noticed there was a bird right on the net first thing in the morning. Ju and watched if for a while until it flew away. We noticed it was stealing the grass of an old nest in the pitanga tree outside the window.

Just now I went to open the window to refresh the room before Ju goes to bed and a bird seemed to be confused, trapped in the upper area, trying to escape this surprise. I glanced out the window and saw this:

Said bird has decided this is a great place for a nest. It would be too, as long as Lela doesn't figure out whats up there. I think I may have discouraged the poor thing from coming back though, by scaring it so much opening the window like that "BANG." Let's cross our fingers that it comes back. It's a really great use for this previously useless flower.

2008-10-05T20:14:00.003-03:00

Some other interesting Ju words:

"In-dentro" - a mix of English "in" and Portuguese for the same word "adentro"

"Oh-ni-buhs" - a mix of English "bus" and Portuguese for the same word "Onibus" (last u pronounced as a long oooo)

2008-10-04T14:26:00.002-03:00

Play with Ju today, we built a "cake" out of the pillows on our bed. Then we had the following conversation. (for those who don't speak Portuguese: molhado is "wet" and melando is "dirtying")

(I am laying across all the pillows)

"Okay, mommy is going to take a nap now. Want to nap with me?"

"No, it's a cake. You are mollando."

"I'm getting molhado from the cake?"

"No, the cake is mollando you!"

"Oh, the cake is melando me?"

"Yes, the cake is mallando you! Get off the cake!"

"I'm stuck. I can't get off"

"I'm going to shave you off the cake." (Ju then proceeds to make a buzzing noise with his lips and "shave" me with his fist. I think he got this idea from the "shave the sheep" circle game that he did during the Mary had a Little Lamb unit. Eventually I get up off the pillows and the game is over.)

2008-09-30T20:49:00.001-03:00

Too many things to do.

2008-09-23T19:43:00.001-03:00

Is this for real?

Nope, it's not.

2008-09-21T11:49:00.003-03:00

Ju:

(who left this cup on juice here to spill?, why are cars everywhere?)
"It didn was me!"

(it's time for bed, go sit down, put away that toy)
"No! I don't!"

Do all English speaking kids say these things, or is it a bilingual thing?

2008-09-15T23:00:00.000-03:00

Ona-key passed away in the early hours of this morning.

2008-09-13T11:39:00.005-03:00

There is playdough of various types all over my house. Little bits and pieces that Ju has used for all kinds of things - stamping cars in it, making it into "food" on his play stove... Now he has discovered that the nice wooden letter and number stamps make very clear marks in it when he squishes it onto the floor in front of the T.V.

"Mommy, look, they're sliding."

"Oh Ju, everything is going to get massinha all over it."

"It's alright mommy, we can wash it."

He is also trying to figure out death, since we watched "Thomasina" and the main character, a cat, dies and then comes back to life. It's hard to grasp this concept, since kids this age have to experience things to understand them. He has been making comments like "My mouth is dead. It won't eat." or "The spider is dead" (his hand is frequently a spider that gets into mischief all over) as his hand lays palm up on the table, motionless, and then "It's alive again!" as it moves. Many times in the past, he used to say something didn't have a "pila" (battery) when it wasn't working ("my mouth don't have a pila!") and these associations are now linked with death - something not moving means it's dead. From the perspective of a three year old, I'm not sure it can get much clearer than that. Maybe he will get the idea, finally, when we have to take Ona-key to the vet later this week, although she hardly moves now.

2008-09-12T16:45:00.003-03:00

The Ona-key saga continues - she now has two open wounds on her left paw that have been open wounds for almost a month now, and today the other paw opened up. She now has a huge bandaged on each of her front feet. Today, while trying to wash her again (as she only sleeps in her own pee, it's become quite a frequent event), she bit me. It wasn't a malicious bite I am sure, just a reaction to being sprayed with the hose in the shower, which I am sure she doesn't like much. It's not very deep either and considering I was in the shower at the time and was able to wash it immediately, I doubt there is much risk of infection. When I came back down with my ring finger bandaged, I told Ju that Ona-key had bitten me, to which he replied "I'm angry with the Ona-key. She did a coisa fea!" and folded his arms to show his mood. I explained to him that she didn't mean to bite me, that it was because she feels sick and doesn't like to get wet, but he still insists he is angry with her. I'm surprised he didn't say she had to go into time out or something. I can't help but feel happy at his anger about an injustice done to mommy, despite the cat not deserving it. It is cute.

2008-09-01T18:19:00.002-03:00

Ho hum, four of my students have come down with chicken pox so far. Poor things. I may have caused an epidemic, at least in my class it seems. This means mountains of paper work for our poor nurse and my superintendent is freaking out, not to mention my principal.

My mother had told me over the weekend that she thought I had shingles. This just goes to show me I should always listen to my mother when it comes to stuff with my health. She's generally on the ball, even if she is 4,000 miles away.

2008-08-31T17:17:00.003-03:00

My quarantine is over and I have been back at work. It's always fun to sit around at home and have me time, but it's horribly boring when you can't leave the house. During my stint as a couch resident I found I was often cold in the morning, so I took up drinking a lot of tea (also because I some how had it in my head that I would expel the virus from my system faster if I kept trying to fill myself with liquids). I went through most of our supply in a matter of a week and went to restock today while we went grocery shopping. I came across one called "Misto" that has apple, caju, something or another of rose and a few other things. It's quite good, slightly sweet, and strong. Sweet is important because I discovered somewhere in the last 4 years of living here, I have stopped liking my tea with sugar (except when it's Earl Grey with milk), lest I put a tad too much in and kill the flavor of the tea.

The DI season is about to start - will I handle it better than last year? I sure hope so - if the first week of school / traveling back from the states with 300 lbs of luggage hadn't given me a shingles attack, DI certainly would have.

2008-08-19T11:02:00.003-03:00

Yes, indeed, I have shingles. Now I am stuck at home for 7 days taking antivirals, B vitamins, putting compresses on my back.... I hate not working. On the upside, I'll now have lots of time to do all that reading for my MA, which thank goodness I am not even behind in yet! However it remains to be seen if all the adults in my class have had chicken pox yet, and if they have not, then I will probably not be able to complete the course. Being out the money for the course, plus for medicine, plus not knowing what is going on in my classroom for a whole week - ug I hate this!

2008-08-18T20:00:00.002-03:00

I started itching last Wednesday. Just a typical itchy spot. Then it got redder. Then it got bigger. Then it got little blisters. Then it spread to other points on my back. Then some of the blisters turn red and scabby and really gross looking. It started to burn and pulse painfully. I spent most of Sunday trying to dry out the blisters with a salt paste and got salt all over the house as a consequence. Now tomorrow morning I am going to try to emergency squeeze myself in between some patients at the dermatologist to see if what ever this is is 1) contagious and 2) something that can be treated. I'm a little more concerned about #1 right now, since it looks distinctly like Chicken Pox. But I had chicken pox when I was like... 5 or something. I still have the scars. I remember it, sort of. I was already at work for 2 weeks, 3 days worth of it itching - I hope none of my kids get it.

In other news, I have just returned from my first MA course, to be completed in the next two weeks. I have to type discussion notes for two chapters and read an additional article by tomorrow. I'm glad I at least already read the chapters - that helps.

2008-08-10T11:56:00.001-03:00

I'm alive, back in Brasil. School has begun again and next week I start my MA in Education. I promise someday I'll actually write a post about life, just not today.

2008-07-17T14:09:00.002-03:00

Ju-speak has gotten pretty good since we have been here - he is even able to respond to questions about the past - what did you eat for dinner, what did you play with... He also is telling me things about the past without provocation - in reference to the bear on his toothpaste tube "I watch this with Neta in my home" and in reference to a robin in the tree "I have a this in my Brasil" (he has a bird stuffed animal that is NOT a robin, but it is mostly black and yellow, which I suppose looks like similar colors to what we are looking at here).

Today we were swimming in the pool and I was trying to get him to try to touch the bottom on his own. Usually I have to grab him and shove him under because he doesn't know how to dive and go DOWN, just under a bit. I was telling him to just jump off the steps and point his feet so he'd go down and bounce off the bottom and he said "No! I don't have a pilla! Forget it!" ("pilla" is Ju-speak for "pilha" - battery). We also witnessed a bird flying into the window and breaking it's neck, so we buried it and had a little bird funeral. Yes, this is how I spent my childhood too.

We have spent our days hanging out in our pajamas until we feel like going in the pool and then spending time in our bathing suits until we feel like having lunch and then maybe showering and maybe going out to visit people when they get out of work at 5 or 6. There really is something to be said for spending your days doing NOTHING.

2008-07-08T14:21:00.003-03:00

I wasn't really intending to post while in Michigan. I have hardly been online and haven't been keeping up with any other blogs or forums or anything I normally browse. Today Ju and I were to head up north. My mom has rented a cabin up there and we were going to spend the rest of the week up there, walking in the woods, going to nature centers and basking in the wilderness that is the U.P. We were supposed to leave yesterday, but some storms came in and I wasn't all that hot about driving in them, so I put it off a day. Everything was packed and ready to go. We started off and merged on to the highway and came upon a semi-truck in the right lane. I went into the left lane to pass it and in the split second I took my hair down and glance back at it, it had veered a bit into our lane. I swerved to not hit it and the truck started to fish tail. I have never fishtailed in this truck and I think I was over correcting for the center of gravity. I lost control and hit the brakes and turned the wheel. We started to turn around and I saw we were going to crash as it happened and yelled to Ju to hang on tight. We did a 180 in the median and tipped on our side, sliding about 50 feet, and came to rest on the incline towards the on coming traffic, which managed to tip us up right.

I saw the mirror come off as we slid backwards. I have no idea how I managed to keep my eyes open, but I watched the whole thing. We were lucky that we didn't roll over and over - going about 70 at the time we started fish tailing, that was what was most likely to happen apparently. I have to credit Christopher with the innate reaction to turn the wheel and hit the brakes to do a 180, which is what probably slowed the car and kept it out of oncoming traffic. We didn't even have any airbags deploy. I was still holding the wheel when we stopped and Ju still had his bagel in his hand. I turned around and asked if he was okay, and he said yes. I asked if he was scared and he said yes. "But are you okay?" "yes." Shortly after he finished eating his bagel while a nice man who stopped in the side of the highway called my dad on his cell phone and he told us to drive to a nearby supermarket to wait for him. The car still drove fine and I put it in 4 wheel drive to get out of the ditch, did a U-turn, and then a cop came so I stayed to talk to him before we both drove to the supermarket to wait for my dad.

The cop was very nice and talked to Ju and showed him the siren and the flashing lights. Ju was fine and very interested in the car and everything the cop said to him. After about 20 minutes, my dad showed up and we talked to the cop a while longer, he finished his report and told me that I would not have a ticket (thank goodness) and that if the car was driving, we might as well take it on home and deal with the insurance. It is now at a body shop in the village and I won't see it again before I leave. It needs 3 new panels, painting, some balancing and a new mirror. Still waiting on the estimate.

I still am amazed at how calm I am through this kind of thing. It was the same way when Ju got his stitches - my husband was freaking out and I was talking calmly to him, trying to make normal conversation. This was the same way; I as able to calmly explain what happened, tell details, remember reactions, and I think that cool reaction helped Ju to not seem to be freaked out at all. He didn't even cry, whine, or anything. He just kept eating like nothing had happened.

The thing that sticks out in this whole mess is the background feeling I had this whole time about something not being right with this trip. I was tense about the directions, where I should go, maps, GPS, the route, getting lost... If I hadn't been going up there to be with my mom, I would not have decided to make a drive like that on this trip, alone, with Ju. I have been really tense about it. The universe/God sends signs about this stuff, energies, feelings... If you don't follow them, you see what happens. This trip was apparently not meant to be for me this time around. I am supposed to stay close to home. So here I sit, no car, lots of food that I bought for up north, watching T.V. with Ju and walking around outside. There is something to be said for down time.

2008-06-22T09:38:00.003-03:00

Last night we went to a Bobby Mcfarrin concert. I have to admit, when my husband said "we're going" to this concert, the night before I leave to visit the USA for a month, I wasn't all that thrilled. Yes, it was a late night and I am going to be extremely tired on the plane, but WHAT a concert! It was awesome! If you've never been and have the opportunity, do so - well worth the money. Our seats were in the 3rd row and people were invited to the stage to participate and he had local musicians up to sort of jam with him... I would go again in a second.

Now, I am off to the airport, flying to the USA. Not sure how often I'll post in the month I am there, just because I will be busy visiting people, but really what would I post about visiting the States when this blog is about me being in Brasil? Not that you could tell much about Brasil from this blog anyway, since it lately has become more about Ju. In anycase, it won't be much worse than my average one post a month I'm doing at this point. Not really.

2008-06-10T18:15:00.003-03:00

Last night we went to the birthday party of one of my students. Kids birthdays here are often in "kid's buffets" where you can rent out the place for the evening for a certain price, have your choice of foods to munch on, pop, beer, etc. The places are decked out with big climbing toys, small time rides, ball pits, and video games (think Chuck-E-Cheeses but imagine you could rent the whole place and not have to help pay the bill at the end if you are a guest). It's usually a good time, the kids are reasonable safe (at least, usually one brings the nanny or the maid to keep an eye on them so you can socialize - I am not one of these people, however) and they get really really tired and totally crash at the end, which is nice.

So last night's birthday was at one of the venues near my house, so I could walk there with Ju without too much worry. I didn't take a purse or any valuables, as we would be coming back at 8 pm in the dark by ourselves. All I took was my key chain with the house keys. When we arrived, as it was a closed building, I parked my keys on a table out of the way of the main adult's area and followed Ju around as he played. About an hour later, I saw one of the guys who worked for the venue walking around swinging my keys, so I chased after him to claim them back. He told me he thought they belonged to the owner of the place. Whatever. I took them and left them on a bench near where Ju was playing. At the end of the night, they were still there and we got a quick ride home from a mom and that was that.

I didn't even think much about it until today when I got home and went to unlock my door again that I noticed the key chain was lighter. I used to have a small collection of key chains - a Korean mask given to me by an ESL student, a key chain I got as the end of year gift from The Impact (the radio station I worked for in college), a DI key chain I bought in Rio in March, a US Rowing rope, and a self defense tool that Ju thinks is a pen but is actually stolid steel that you can jab into the side of someone who tries to bother you (or where ever you want to jab it). After closer inspection of my key chain, I saw The Impact one was missing. My house keys had been on there. My house keys were now clipped into the belt loop clip of my DI key chain.

I am rather sad because it was a sentimental gift that was stolen, but still you can't help but appreciate the consideration of whoever stole it; they took the time to take BOTH my house keys off the and make sure they remained with the the rest by clipping them in. This is one of the nice things about Brasil - even the thieves are considerate like this much of the time. I hope who ever took it is happy with it, since it was a heavy duty thing and good quality. I took it as a sign that it was time to let go of all that clutter and I am now down to my DI key chain, the rope and the "pen." If I ever happen upon it out in the world, however unlikely, I might say something to the possessor, but I would not ask for it back.

2008-06-04T20:54:00.002-03:00

I spend a small amount of time everyday thinking about how different Ju's childhood is from mine. And probably how completely different it is from my husband's as well. Culture is such a big deal, traditions... everything is all mixed up in this house. It's like a 3rd culture is being created right here. I wonder how much impact it will have on him later in life. Will he want to move to the States? Go to college there? Will he look fondly back on his childhood in Brasil and remember when he could swim naked in public or pee in the bushes and everyone would laugh, or will he lament that we didn't have the money or access to go to things like theme parks and libraries (well maybe that last one is my own personal lament based on my childhood memories)? Have I taught him to love books enough? Will he be polite? Will I ever get him to eat by himself instead of feeding him, as happens with most kids until age 5 or 6 here? Am I going against my own traditions and upbringing by adapting to these things that I so strongly disagreed with while I was pregnant and until I was working full time?

2008-06-02T19:40:00.002-03:00

Just a side note - I have become obsessed with this style of shoes. We have named them "chinel-botas" - sandal boots - for lack of a better name or proper term. I'm sure there is one, but I just haven't caught it in the right context. I now have them in brown (pictured), black (identical to pictured), and silver (in the back ground of the picture). I have seen and drooled over them in purple, but can't bring myself to pay a chunk of money for shoes that will go with 2% of my clothes. Red might be practical, or green. But I love purple. I haven't seen the like of them yet on sites based in the USA, so I hope I won't look too out of place as I tote them all over MI this summer when I visit.

2008-05-29T19:32:00.004-03:00

Warning to my conservative readers - there are naughty words in this post. Also, children should not be present for viewing of the video if English is their native language.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to my water bike class. It's at an academy near by our house and everyone goes there - my husband, Ju, and me - a various times during the week. We have a good relationship with all the teachers and the owner and it's been a great experience going there.

I need music to exercise - like most people. My usual water bike teacher downloads things online and brings mix CDs to play during our classes. She even went so far as to find cool down stretching music to play at the end. She has really been going all out.

Today was an exceptionally hard work out with bike, abs with leg weights on, and trampoline in cycles. In the middle of the class, right about the time I started my second abs set, a new song began to play that I had never heard before and I began to laugh so hard that I was unable to do very much. The main lyrics of this song consisted of something along the following:

I wanna lick your pussy
Put your pussy next to mine
my pussy likes a big hunk of meat in it

Then it changed:

You wanna suck my dick
I wanna lick your pussy
I wanna fuck your pussy

Mind you, as this is playing, blasting across the pool, there are numerous 7-14 year olds in various states of swimming or listening to teachers, parents, nannies, all sitting there listening to this song. I asked the teacher if she had any idea what was being sung in the song, which of course she didn't. I told her to ask my husband to translate it for her the next time he went to swim, because I just did not have sufficient slang Portuguese to do it justice.

This video about sums it up.

2008-05-22T20:39:00.003-03:00

Ju independence story number one:

About a week ago, I was chatting with my mom at Ju's request on the webcam. He enjoys seeing himself on camera and likes to show "gamma" things in the general vicinity, like toy cars, beads and sippy cups. For some reason (which we can speculate was that he wanted my undivided attention) he decided to take a whole mouth full of water and spit it onto the laptop.

Having a friend who is now on laptop # 3 due to similar accidents (that she was at fault for, having no kids to blame it on, although she has cats), I was quite concerned that this might completely fry my laptop and put Ju in time out on the couch while I tried to dry between the keys with a paper towel. By some stroke of luck, I did not have it actually plugged into the wall at the time, so there seemed to be no immediate danger. Ju began to cry sitting on the couch because he knew I was upset with him. I was mean while trying to talk to my mom about how best to deal with the problem but I could not hear what she was say and was afraid to type on the wet keyboard, lest I force some of the water through into the circuitry. I told Ju if he was going to cry, he would have to do it in his room upstairs, and took him up there and set him on the bed to continue his time out.

Back downstairs, I found I could pry some of the keys off and started drying up the water that remained. Ju continued to cry for another 10 minutes or so. After he had calmed himself, he came to the top of the stairs and called down "Mommy, I'm not crying anymore. I'm all done" and came back down. Still feeling angry at him, I ignored him and continued cleaning the computer. After a while he started asking me to put on Bob the Builder and when I told him that he was still in time out until I was finished drying the computer, he started to cry again. I ignored his crying and next thing I knew, he had gone back up to his room to finish his crying again, and then reappeared when he was finished. I didn't have to tell him anything.

The laptop survived okay, it seems, at least (knock on wood) there was no damage.

Second Ju independence story:

Weekends are for the family, parent's quality time being after Ju goes to bed. Late one night, as we were discussing our plans for the evening with Ju playing quietly in the living room, my husband mentioned he wanted to watch "the penguin movie" in reference to "March of the Penguins" which he hadn't seen. Ju has his own "penguin movie" ("Happy Feet") which he enjoys watching from time to time.

Unobserved by us in the kitchen, Ju proceeded to get his DVD case out, take out his Happy Feet DVD and jam it into the VCR. I think when nothing happened, he realized his error and started trying to get it back out. This resulted in both the DVD and his finger getting stuck inside and by the time I was able to get both out, he was quite freaked out and the DVD had a long scratch that now prevents you from watching beyond the first 40 minutes of the movie.

I have had this conversation with my husband before - that I would prefer Ju to know how to use things like the DVD player and the stereo to that if he decides to try to do things himself, he won't hurt himself. This argument was lost when he broke the last DVD player we had and almost got two tapes stuck in the VCR at the same time, so when we got a new DVD player, I never bothered to show him how to use it, not wanting to be blamed if he broke it. Now, at least, I think I have proved my point that he should be taught how to do things like this, if for nothing else than to prevent fingers from getting stuck in places they should not be. After he got over his fear of being stuck and fear of being reprimanded for "breaking" his DVD, I showed him which buttons to push. As of today, he's still afraid to do it on his own, but he is happy watching March of the Penguins instead of Happy Feet. He says he likes the music.

2008-05-15T21:41:00.003-03:00

"Papai, mamãe did a bagunça all over!" (Daddy, mommy did a mess all over)

"É, isso mesmo. Espero que você não seja igual mamãe." (Yes, that's right. I hope you don't turn out like mommy)

2008-05-11T10:54:00.001-03:00

Oh, and I forgot to add - Turkey, Cookies, and Chocolate sound like the same word in Ju speak. Had a hard time figuring out what he wanted to eat for breakfast this morning.

2008-05-11T10:03:00.002-03:00

I'm sure I've said this somewhere along the way already, but living in Salvador is a little like living in a giant college town. People drink and drive all over the place, there is a constant party atmosphere, and even in the middle of a family residential area, there may be a party that lasts until the sunrise with no apparent regard for others sleeping or consideration for the general population outside the house where the party happens.

Last night, or rather, this morning, there was a small party (like of 6 or 8 people) at a house across the street here. Not only was it loud and took place mostly on the upper veranda area so the sound carried over the entire neighborhood, but at about 4 AM they decided to step it up a bit and turned up some Justin Timberlake full blast and scream at each other over it as one guy danced drunkly. This neighborhood is completely silent at night for the most part - we don't even have much traffic noise and the bars on the corner are not loud or rowdy, so this sudden burst of song was enough to get me out of bed and glaring at the partiers across the street. And I know they can see directly into my bedroom, as they can see everyone's in our condo. I'm almost positive that they woke up at least half of the residents this morning. It makes me want to light bottle rockets aimed at them to scare the crap out of them. Or get my stereo going full blast and point it at their veranda now, to blast them out of bed with their hang overs. But of course, I am more considerate than that. And I only want to annoy them, not my neighbors.

Happy Mother's Day!

2008-05-07T21:24:00.004-03:00

Actual conversation this afternoon -

Ju - "Mommy, I wanna piranya." (referring to the hair clip)

Me - "Okay honey, you can play with one."

Ju - "Mommy, I wanna see a enwins."

Me - "The what?"

Ju - "I wanna see a enwins, in there." (pointing to the closet area)

Me - "You wanna see an engine? I don't think there is an engine in there."

Ju - "No, a enwins. There's enwints in there. I wanna see."

Me - "Ants? There are ants in there? I don't see any ants."

Ju - "No, a enwints. In there! The enwints. Enwings! I wanna see!"

Me - "Ju, I can't figure out what you are talking about. I don't see an engine and I don't see ants."

Ju - "Enwings! Enwingts! Da ... eawings. eawings!"

Me - "Oh! You want to see the earings in the box? Okay, now I understand..."

2008-05-03T12:32:00.003-03:00

Ju is now 3 years old. Time just flies by, doesn't it? We had our normal big hoorah on Thursday - a feiJUada. About 50 people came with kids of various ages. There was feijoada, salad, rice, kibe, pao delicia, brigadeiro, bonbons, etc. I spent some 3 hours putting up my home made train decorations (I spent an entire Sunday making engines and cars that had 3 and Ju all over them out of paper and colored puffy paint) all over the walls and by the pool, blowing up balloons and making the quebra-pot. Part of the simple beauty of the decorations included strips of crepe paper in purple and blue. They blew in the wind in a relaxing way and made the whole area look very festive. As an after thought, we added pieces of it to the backs of the chairs as well.

About an hour into the party, a sudden cloud passed over and it rained all over us for about 5 minutes. The kids were all playing train by crawling through several boxes taped together and they stayed inside the "tunnel" for protection for the duration. I didn't think much of it as it was happening, but as the minute passed, I noticed that the color from the crepe paper was running down freshly painted white walls all around us. At first I laughed until the possibility that the dye might STAY there was mentioned and then I promptly began worrying about the cost of having to repaint the entire outside walls of the condo. This basically dominated my thoughts for the remainder of the party as I followed Ju around, cleaning up trash as I found it and trying to keep Ju's toys from being lost in the condo as our living room was invaded by the party and the kids discovered them and consequently began wandering around outside with them. A kid I don't even know but who came with one of the kids we invited wandered around and had torn down almost all the decorations before I saw what was going on. No adults stepped in to stop him, of course. This made me incredibly sad.

At about sunset, I couldn't stand it any longer, found someone else to keep an eye on Ju and started looking for ways to remove the dye on the walls. I quickly discovered that there was no Veja or bleach or even Q-Boa in the house (how did that happen?), so I took out a bucket and dish soap and a dish scrubbing sponge and a bit of water and started scrubbing away. Surprisingly, the dye did actually begin to come off with a lot of effort, and I was quite relieved. Someone came by and said something to the effect of "good thing you're doing it now, if you left it longer it might not come off" - which unfortunately killed my plans to quit until the party was actually over, so I kept on scrubbing. I was soon joined by the nanny of one of Ju's friends and my nanny's sister and my friend the Lion who was nice enough to bring me a Guiness but I had not been able to stop and enjoy it with him. We continued to scrub our way across the wall for about 2 hours, and with the help of some borrowed Veja someone got from another household and some steal wool (which I think actually took a lot of the paint off the wall along with the dye), we managed to get most of the marks off the walls. At least it seemed that way in the dark, and I actually haven't had the heart to go out there and see if it's really gone in the daylight. After the walls were done, we had to do the chairs as well.

This entire process meant that I didn't socialize AT ALL, for the entire party. It seemed like every time I started talking to someone, Ju would wander off, or someone else would show up and need to be greeted, or someone else's kid would be trying to throw more of Ju's toys into the pool (where do these parents get off to when the kids are invading someone's house I wonder). At least Ju had a good time. The party only really got fun for me when most of the guests had left and the remaining few and their kids all crowded into our living room to watch Woody Woodpecker and play in a more controlled manner. Some of the people I love the most were those who stayed, so it was nice to have their company and relax at the end of the evening (the older kids even helped Ju finish opening his presents, which was fun for everyone).

Things I learned from this birthday -

NO crepe paper on the walls, no matter how pretty it looks - it has ALWAYS rained on Ju's birthday, every year.

Purple crepe paper dye is easier to scrub off than blue (which leaves behind a pinkish tinge) and black.

Do not leave the house open, as it is next to the pool, the party will inevitabley spill into it if I don't lock the door.

Hide all toys and objects that I don't want to wander around with kids.

Don't expect parents to keep an eye on their kids or ask them to not do things like tear down my sweat and tears hand made decorations. Or better yet, don't hang them low enough for kids to reach.

Since eventually the majority of the party goers were in or around the pool, concentrate things in that area next year to save time and clean up area.

Don't stress about not getting to talk to many people because I think I am just not meant to socialize until Ju is older. How much older, who knows.

The sad thing is, many of these things I should have learned last year. This year was supposed to be easier. About the only thing that was easier was the setting up the decorations.

2008-04-28T17:42:00.004-03:00

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.

2008-04-18T16:17:00.002-03:00

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.

2008-04-15T20:18:00.002-03:00

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.

2008-04-14T18:53:00.003-03:00

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.

2008-04-08T15:35:00.002-03:00

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....

2008-04-05T19:25:00.001-03:00

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.......

2008-04-04T06:30:00.002-03:00

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."

2008-04-02T06:17:00.002-03:00

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?

2008-04-01T22:27:00.002-03:00

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!

2008-03-25T18:37:00.000-03:00

Check out Earth Hour!

2008-03-23T21:31:00.002-03:00

Once every few months I get in a weird mood and wack off some of my hair. Generally, it looks okay afterwards, so no big deal. I just did it now, when my hair as been up all day and is not clean, and I think I might have screwed it up.

This morning Ju and I dyed Easter eggs with natural dyes - onion skins for gold and red cabbage for blue. It was a fun experience and made the kitchen stink a bit. I used the onion skin to tie dye a white shirt with a stain on it - it came out quite nicely. Ju is excited to eat the blue eggs for breakfast tomorrow.

2008-03-21T22:17:00.002-03:00

Every time we ask for a pizza from Pizza Hut, they screw it up. Every time. Every time we wait and wait and wait for it to come just to send it back and ask for another one that is what we actually asked for. Anywhere in the States, this would spell death for the managers and whoever was screwing up phoned in orders, but not here. Here it means I am hungry and it's 10:30 and I still have no pizza.

2008-03-21T16:31:00.002-03:00

One of the problems with living right next to the pool is that we get to partake in any and all parties NOISE until said party ends. Sometimes people just sit out there all day with the radio up loud on one end of the patio and sit and talk loudly over it at the other. The longer they are there, the more beer is consumed, the louder they get. One night there was a teenager party where so may people went in and out of the pool that it was a quarter emptied by the end of the night. Another time there was a party on a Thursday that decided to have karaoke start at 1 AM at top volume, which woke everyone up and was stopped immediately.

Today there is, I think, a family who has been out there since about lunch time. They have a radio, as usual, and it's blasting some god-awful station with lots of commercials, set up on the side of the pool facing our windows. They have put a table right beside the bathroom window and have been talking loud, as usual, and having rather lengthy verbal arguments about random things that proceed to get louder and louder until the grumpy looking 20 something man starts saying "porra" (fuck) every couple of words. The idea was put out that perhaps one of us should go into the bathroom and stage a very loud and stinky situation to get them to vacate the area, but the sporadic rain has kind of killed their party for us, thank goodness.

I feel safe in writing about this in the fact that I don't think any of them speaks English well enough for me to worry about them finding my blog and deciphering this post.

2008-03-18T21:40:00.002-03:00

I try to put Ju to bed on time every night - on time being somewhere between 7 and 8 pm, clean, teeth brushed, etc. Some nights he gets in bed and stays there and goes to sleep after some in the dark play time. Other nights he gets all the books off the bookshelf, plays with trains in the dark, or otherwise makes messes and gets out to ask me something repeatedly. I have started to have to ignore these constant "MOMMY!.... MOOOOOMMMMY?!" calls, otherwise he just keeps thinking up things to ask for or about and never goes to sleep. Last night was another one of those nights.

"Mommy? Mooooooommmy!"

"What?"

"Mommy, I wanna water."

(getting water) "Okay, here's your water. Now go to sleep."

- about 5 minutes later -

"Mommy! Moooooooomy!"

"Go to sleep Ju!"

"Mooooooomy! Mommy?"

"What?"

"Mommy, I wanna another pano" (pano is a cloth diaper - he has slept with them since he was a baby)

"Then get one. It's time for sleeping. Get your pano and go to sleep."

- another 5 minutes or so passes and the garbage truck goes by, making lots of noise as it always does -

"Mommy! Moooooooomy! Moommyyyyyyyyy! I wanna see a garbage truck!"

"Ju, it's time for sleeping. Lay down and go to sleep! No garbage truck!"

"Mommy! Mommyyyyyyy!? Mommmmmy!" (at this point, I start ignoring his calls and don't answer any more)

He continues to call for the next 5 minutes or so, then he starts to sound kind of like he's going to cry.

"Mommy! Mooommmyyyyyyyy! Help me! Help me, Mommy! Mommmy!"

So I got upstairs and see he has some how climbed on top of the dresser and cannot figure out how to get back down.

"Ju, what are you doing up there? How did you get up there?"

"Mommy, I see a garbage truck an uh, it was woooooosh, crash, an in a mommy's room an já foi" (já foi means it's gone)

"Ah, you climbed up here to see the garbage truck and it was noisy and then it went past mommy's room and then it went away?"

"Uh-huh! Yes. I see a garbage truck up there, waaaaaay over there."

2008-03-17T22:11:00.002-03:00

You know how negativity spreads? Don't contribute to it!

There is a certain family (who's son is sweet and lovely and I have nothing against) who has done nothing but complain about our school the whole year; the school "breaks up friendships" because the classes have to be remixed each year, the toys are not new, the class room "is shit," when we send notes home around the children's necks it's "horrible," and the school is always asking for money or donations for some thing or another. I've about had it up to the moon with these people, trying to placate their constant complaints just so I won't have to listen to them anymore. You'd think I was a horrible teacher, that the school was the worst kind, and that no one knew how to treat children. You'd also think that if they hated American styled schooling so much, they wouldn't have put their child in am American school. Makes sense.... This is not a case of this-is-our-district-school-and-we-have-to-send-our-kid-there - it's a private school and they can take the kid out and send them somewhere else any time.

In contrast, I have some wonderful parents who constantly want to know what they can do with their child at home to help him follow what he's learning in school, say they agree 100% with time out for hitting or breaking rules, and seem to genuinely TRUST the school and teachers to TEACH their child. And to give them limits.

Now, unfortunately, it's true that teachers try very hard not to treat the student based on the feelings about the parents, but it can happen. And at the end of the day, which child would you rather spend time talking to and interacting with? The one who's parents trust you and think you're doing the right thing, or the one who's parents think you don't know how to properly treat their child? Which child are you going to to out of your way for to enhance a teachable moment? Which child are you going to spend more time explaining the right and wrong way to? It should be all equal, I know, but sometimes when you have a class full of crazy kids, you hate to waste your effort and love on a child who's parents think you are horrible and don't trust what you teach or say.

I'm not saying that you always have to agree with your child's teacher or the teacher will not treat the child fairly, but think about the negativity you spread with constant complaints, and then think about where the negativity will spread to next, and you may see how much damage it can do.

2008-03-16T10:19:00.003-03:00

Ju woke up early one morning this last week and came down to have breakfast with me. I love these little moments we can have in the morning, except when I have to run out the door to the transport van and figure out what to do with him to keep him out of trouble until papai gets up or his nanny arrives. This particular morning, we were eating our bread with cheese and watching Lela who was watching some birds in the garage. Ju started telling a story:

"Ju is up there, waaaaaay up there and throw the rocks, wooooooo, waaaaaaaay over there. And ah, throw the rocks, wooooosh, wooosh, throw the rocks in the 'rua' (street in Portuguese), waaaaaay over there."

"Oh really, you threw the rocks into the street from up there? Well, we don't want to throw rocks into the street because you could hit someone in the head and it would hurt. We don't want to hit people in the head with rocks. People don't like it." I say

"No, I don throw the rocks in the head, no. I throw the rocks at the moon!"

2008-03-09T13:32:00.003-03:00

A conversation between Ju and I this morning.

"Mommy, I wanna banana."

"Okay, do you want it squished?"

"Yes, I wanna squished banana with teetee" (tee tee is powdered milk)

"Okay, here you go - Ju-ju has to eat by himself because Ju is a big boy."

"Mommy help you?" (he never says "help me" only "help you" because it is a memorized chunk of language)

"Mommy will help you at the end. Ju has to eat by himself now."

"No, mommy help you at the end, no! Mommy help you ALL the time!"

Of course, this last phrase was too cute for me to take, and I did end up feeding him the banana.

2008-02-29T21:12:00.003-03:00

Thunder! Lightning! Floods! Stranded cars! (HEAD LINE)

Last night we had a huge "big boomer," as my Bryan-Dad would call it. It's a rare thing here, thunderstorms. Not sure if that's a common coast thing or not, having only lived in MI before coming here, I grew up with thunderstorms and tornados and thought them a normal part of summer.

Here it's a big event. People get scared. And for good reason - these kinds of storms bring big rain, and despite this rain being a fairly common kind of event on a monthly basis, there is yet to be a good drainage system in place for most of the city, so entire major roadways flood (those of you in MI area, imagine what would happen if suddenly I-94 completely flooded out and all that traffic had to find another route for about 5 hours), walls collapse, sewers over flow, and mudslides in favelas kill 10's of people. Not the mention the accidents caused by the water standing on the roads, cars that entered and got stuck, sitting abandoned, or floating away to run into someone or something.

My husband told me an interesting story of his drive home yesterday. There is a major vein road called ACM (Antonio Carlos Magalhaes)that connects the Orla (the road that runs along the coast) and the road that runs to the airport (called Parallela) that ALWAYS floods during rains like this, always in the direction of those headed for the coast. What usually happens is that the traffic some how finds it's way onto the opposing side driving the wrong way and after a few horn beeps, everything seems to work out. Apparently it was so bad last night that traffic couldn't even flow on the Parallela bound side and it was all forced onto a side street that runs parallel to this road. This road is a one-way, Parallela bound road as well. Now that you read all that and didn't understand it, you can check out this map, zoom in, and try to see what I'm talking about if you so desire. If not, read on.

View Larger Map

What apparently happened is that the traffic from ACM ocean bound quickly diverged itself onto this road going the wrong way, while traffic going the right way (ACM airport bound) did the same in the opposite direction, both with the intent of getting the freak out of the mess of flooding, undrivable road. So this basically amounts to 4 lanes of traffic in each direction (2X4 = 8 lanes total) packing itself onto a 4 lane street with almost no roads to turn off on to, and meeting in the middle, nose to nose, and nobody could do a damn thing about it. You couldn't very well drive over the cars in front of you, but you couldn't back up either because the cars just kept coming up behind you trying to escape the flooded road. So you had another complete blockage. Like someone cut off all routes between the Orla and Parallela, because basically that is what happened.

My husband, by some miracle witnessed this and didn't get stuck in it (no idea how he managed that), thought it might be a good idea to call the traffic police to come direct traffic and get it moving again. So he called and called and no one every picked up. So he called the local cops (Policia Militar) and had the following conversation:

(phone rings)
(someone picks up but says nothing. There is back ground noise and some people talking)
My Husband - "Hello? Hello...."
Random Dude - "Hello!"
My Husband - "Ummmm, is this the Military Police?"
Random Dude - "Uh, yes, yes, it is."
My Husband - "Well, see, there is a huge huge cluster fuck of a traffic jam here and I tried calling the Traffic Police, but they don't answer. I thought maybe you could radio them or something and let them know that someone needs to ...."
(Dude interrupts) "You need to call the Traffic Police."
My Husband - "Yeah, look, I did that and no one picks up, but something has to be done here..."
Random Dude - "Uh, yeah, thanks brother, thanks."
(click)

I seriously doubt that anyone was called or notified. I suppose eventually the mess worked itself out. They almost always do. But lots of people were hurt last night, from flooding, falling, stranding. One of my coworkers had to walk all the way home in hip deep water because she couldn't get a bus home from class, then she fell down a mud hill and hit her head. We read today that the ambulance service here had no power last night, so they received no calls and were unable to be dispatched to help anyone.

And this is modern?

If someone could just figure out how to make a drain work properly, we could avoid all this.

Be sure to check out THIS WEEK IN BAHIA later for videos of the river that was a street near my house, tidal waves by buses, and some nice shots of the street on a normal day for comparison.

2008-02-28T06:23:00.002-03:00

Ju has caught whatever I have - flu, it seems. Last night he got feverish and started crying in his sleep and coughing a lot. My husband spent most of the night sleeping on his floor trying to comfort him and giving him little sips of water. This morning after my shower, I saw he had returned to our bed and was trying to get some real sleep. I went down stairs to make coffee and force myself to eat something (having the flu kills my appetite) and then I started hearing Ju calling me upstairs. I went into his room to find him in a fit of fever nightmare, sweating and crying "Waaahhhhh, Mommy, I want another shoes! Waaaahhh, Mommy, MOMmmy! I want another shoes!" Some kind of nightmare where I wouldn't let him wear the shoes he wanted to wear I guess. I burst out laughing when I heard what he was saying in his sleep. He is now sleeping fitfully in our bed with my husband. Poor thing.

2008-02-27T20:13:00.002-03:00

Definitely the flu. Chills, fever in the afternoon and evenings, swollen glads, coughing. I just want to sleep. Flee. ug.

At the of Ju's Bob the Builder DVD there is a small commercial for DVDs of Fraggle Rock. I wonder if they makers know that those of us that LOVED that show as young kids are now having kids of our own and will buy them out of nostolgia, having nothing to do with whether or not we think our kids will enjoy it. I want that DVD. Ju says he wants Thomas.

Mommy, if you are reading, it would make a great birthday gift for your only child ;)

2008-02-26T20:42:00.003-03:00

A few days ago, we took Ju out to play and ride his trike, and then to the mall to pick up a CD my husband had ordered. We dragged a long my friend the Lion, and eventually ended up at Le Bisquit; a rather Hobby Lobby like store for those who don't know it. This is a general "good behavior" tradition where Ju gets to pick out a new hotwheels car - besides, I LOVE this store: there are beads, stickers, school supplies, little toys, party favors, indoor fountains, yarn, etc - everything I could possibly want and be able to find in Brasil.

Ju waded through the general pile of cars and hadn't chosen one when I decided to go off and pick up a few things of my own, leaving him in the care of my husband. By the time I came back, I found he had chosen a small green car that looked a bit like a plane, a fighter jet looking thing, and .... a Polly Pocket car complete with Polly to ride in it.

Polly Pocket car has by far been the favorite new acquisition, getting time in the shower, going to bed with him, and going to swimming classes with him. He decided he wanted it to be a kitty car, so he had me draw a kitty face on the hood, and now he drives his small Siamese cat figure around in it (the Polly has gone missing in just 48 hours, I am not surprised and relatively confident he didn't eat it).

I try not to raise Ju inside of cultural gender roles, but I wonder what will happen to him when he starts school.

2008-02-24T10:48:00.003-03:00

Last night we went to the "Praia 24 horas" event to see some bossa nova played on a stage in the middle of the ocean (while the audience all sat on the beach). It was great fun - lots of food and drink vendors walking around, we met up with some friends, parking wasn't too much trouble, and you could swim out to the stage and tread water watching the artists sing and play right in front of you. I stayed out for half of one guy's set - I had forgotten I could just tread water like that for that long. (I actually think I swam a lot more last night than I really have since I moved here - I have a terrible fear of ocean currents and waves and rip tides that I'm not sure when and where it came from.) The event was well organized and safe and pleasant for a free event in Bahia; I was quite impressed. We even went so far as to take the digital camera for some nice random shots.

After we dropped off Isis and Vito (family friends; Vito is Ju's age minus 3 months) at 11:30, we came home and Gustavo had the great idea to skinny dip in the condo's pool. I have not skinny dipped here since I first moved here, mostly for fear of seeing my neighbors, or worse their kids, who are often out later than late. The good thing is that our house is right next to the pool, so anyone looking out of their windows to see us incognito would have to be doing it from ours - no worries there. I was rather nervous about it at first, since it's much easier to see that a woman is naked in the pool than a man (although because of tan lines this late in the summer, it is quite obvious) and I actually let my hair get all chlorinated in hopes that it would shield my embarrassment should we suddenly have company. After some time playing with Ju, who has gotten over his fear of going under the water after two months of swimming classes, I forgot I was naked until Gustavo pointed out that I had done so, at which point I started hearing voices and decided to get out before someone saw me. About 15 minutes after we got out, a bunch of teenagers took over the pool area until well after 2 am. Good timing!

Ju thourally enjoyed the experience and promptly asked to go swim naked as soon as he got up this morning. I explained to him that mommy and daddy can't swim naked during the day but that because he is small still, he can swim naked if he wants to, at home. He seems pretty excited about the prospect of going back into the pool and trying to swim, naked. Hopefully it will work the same way if I make him wear his sunga again.