Interesting Tidbits

I thought after all my extended blog entries I'd run out of things to talk about.  How little I know myself :)

Here's some of the interesting animals we've seen recently.

A molting lizard.  This one was tiny, maybe 7-8 cm long.

A crab...in our house!  We are not quite sure how it got in...maybe it was living here the  whole time?  Either that, or animals just like to follow Seth around.  How does he find it behind the TV?  And can anyone tell me how common it is in Brazil to find a crab among your furniture?

After I swept him out of the house, our neighbour showed us how to pick it up so as not to get pinched (or is it pinced?). Hazel was not paying attention to the lesson, and later tried to pick it up by herself.  Fortunately it was a smallish one, but it still hurts apparently!  To me, their claws never looked too harmful, but my neighbour assured me that it would hurt, especially if it was a little bigger.  Seth informed me the large ones can pinch off your fingers!  Hopefully not the species we find around here!

A few days ago, we discovered many of these little monkeys like to play behind our house!  We've been going through a lot of bananas since then.  They are called marmosets, or sagui in Brazil.

Went for a walk on the beach, saw a number of these little jellyfish.  Thought it was more interesting than anything, until....

Hazel got stung by one!  You can't see them at all when they are actually in the water.   I was surprised that she didn't complain about it after the first hour, as someone we were talking to had been stung by a jellyfish in November and had to peel it off his arm, and he still has a scar.  The lighter line here has already faded so we can barely see it, so we are very thankful it was not worse.

Here's some pictures pre-jellyfish sting, of the enjoyable portion of our afternoon walk.  We went to visit the Vanspronsens, who were staying probably a 10 minute walk down the beach, which was another pleasant part of our outing.

I don't think we have other news.  We were planning to head up to Recife tomorrow for a wedding, but unfortunately our children are still not in the best shape to be staying up to midnight.  The wedding we went to a couple of weeks ago was scheduled to start at 7 and started by 8:15, and this one is scheduled to start at 8:00 so it may start by...?  All the people we know in Recife are going to the wedding, so we would be taking our kids.  If they were feeling 100%, it would be possible to do once in a while (like we did 2 weeks ago).  Three of us have bad coughs/colds, and to top it off, this may sound minor, but Lyla poked Seth in the eye today and he spent oh, probably 7 hours of the afternoon crying and staying in a dark room because it hurt so much.  He is okay if he is lying down and not using either eye, because I think the second it is moving under his eyelid even he is screaming.  I'm pretty sure it's a scratched cornea (or corneal abrasion if you want correct terminology), which according to my research usually heals by itself between 1-3 days.  We did an initial exam to make sure there was nothing else in it and that he could actually see out of it.  If it is worse tomorrow we may need to actually finally find a doctor, but I was reading topical analgesics can slow healing, although sometimes antibiotics are prescribed prophylactically.

Okay, so I am learning about all the animals of Northeastern Brazil, as well as a number of first aid/medical issues.  Oh, and throw in a bit of language learning, and becoming a school teacher on the side.  I guess my kids are really encouraging me to grow in knowledge! Such sweet kids I have.  I wish they would lay off teaching about all the medical stuff though.

Alright everyone, have a great night!
Brenda