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.

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.

I notice I write more often about Ju than anything else. I suppose that shows quite a bit about how I spend my time when I have free time to write - and that is with Ju at my feet or near by, being the descarado that he is. For a change of pace, here are some other random thoughts.


Lela has always been a picture licker. Recently my mom sent down some photos of the wedding and now I always have a calico fuzzy body next to my laptop, trying to lick them. I have no idea what is so attractive that she likes them so much. I hope she isn't slowly killing herself with this weird habit.


I realized I had always assumed that people kissing on television and in movies were faking it. Well, they are, of course, but I mean with no tongues and such. Not sure why I always assumed this, but it just seemed natural to me that since these people, despite being actors etc, had girlfriends/boyfriends/wives/husbands that they wouldn't possibly be really using tongue in that shot. I mean, I know it looked like a tongue, but wouldn't their significant other be upset? I have no idea when I lost this assumption, but I think it was quite recent.


This entire year has been one big adjustment in responsibility for me. I started really teaching, really planning, and really "being in charge" of other people who work in my classroom. I never see myself as a boss. I am not comfortable telling others what to do. I suppose it takes some getting used to. I ended up doing the same thing with the DI program. I have been working with my team for over a year, but to really get the program started, I wanted to get others trained and have other teams and get school support, and some how in all that I ended up coordinating this program for the entire school. Not that I don't love the program and want to see it succeed, but I didn't mean to sign up for this - I'm not good at managing people, teams, not letting emotions show or get involved in what I'm doing. It's not anything I ever trained to do. Some days I wish I could just quit, but then what would happen to the program? Maybe someone else will volunteer for this position next year. It's unpaid and stressful, so I doubt it.

It's fascinating how here the leaves all fall off the trees in the spring, instead of in the fall.

What am I hungry for? I just keep eating and nothing is satisfying. What is it?!