Come and Gone....

I suppose no news is good news, right?  I promised a post in March to tell you how our February had gone, but seeing as February is ancient history, I'll keep this post current.  As much as we are in a tropical country which people may equate with relaxation, we are getting caught up in actual daily life, which is busy no matter where you are.

We notice more and more rainy nights, and even some days.  Signs we are heading towards "winter."  The girls took some time out to enjoy the puddles....

On one of the sunny Saturdays after Shaun's birthday, we headed to our friends' house to celebrate.  Jonas is drinking to dad too!

Seth loves to carry "Babyland" over to his bed before he sleeps for the night.

Jonas seems to enjoy Babyland as well.

Jonas never lost his baby hair, so the stuff he was born with just kept growing, leaving him with a wispy mullet at the back....

 

And a wispy matte at the front.  So we took matters into our own hands.

A little spiky, but it will do.

Seth had a major injury.... could've used stitches I think, although it doesn't look that bad here.  I'm trying to find the glue that doctors use instead of stitches for his next accident.

Palm branch house the neighbourhood kids built on the road.

Skyping with Uncle Randy and Aunty Lorene, and finding out the super exciting news that they are expecting a baby!

Then we had to bring the laptop outside to show them our new babies.  Red-footed tortoises. 

One of them Seth got for a birthday present when we were here four years ago.  We left it with the gifter, when we headed back to Canada.  Now we get it back, plus the gifter needed us to take care of hers for six months!  They seem to be settling in nicely.

He's working on crawling, however tiled floor can be a dangerous place to practice!

 

So life is good and busy.  The kids have been going to school every morning, and they all just went through "exam week."  It sounds like they all did as well as could be expected, in some cases better than expected.  There was a lot of initial anxiety as the kids settled in, which was hard to deal with, and I was second-guessing myself about forcing them all to go.  However, they are all able to chatter away in Portuguese and it makes me so proud to see all their hard work pay off.  The past 3 weeks there has been a day off of school a week, with a Saint's day, then Easter and Tiradentes, and next week is Labour Day (May 1st).  The funny thing is, as a private school there needs to be 800 hours of schooling a year, which works out to 200 days.  (Public schools have this requirement as well, but it is definitely not enforced).  Because of the World Cup, apparently the schools need to give a month off of school, where there is typically two weeks.  So the school can't take as many days off here and there as usual, and this year the school year goes until December 23rd, a week later than usual.  However, next week Labour Day is on a Thursday... I guess someone decided that to have a Thursday off is not a good long weekend, however, there aren't enough school days to take the Friday off.  What's a school to do?  Add an extra day of school this Saturday!  And give the parents notice the Wednesday of!  So our kids have five days of school this week and we get a long weekend next week.

Shaun and I are staying busy.  When the kids head off to school I typically do some laundry, and plan and then make lunch, which I've taken to calling supper because it's our hot meal.  I relax a bit with coffee and my computer, Bible study, and bemoan the fact that my dearest loved ones are still sleeping, because that would be a perfect time to catch up with them.  Sometimes we shower three times a day, and we all enjoy the cold shower now, surprisingly.  Jonas is eating still approximately every three hours during the day, which takes up a bit of time.  When the kids get home from school there's often a bit of homework, which they finish up in no time, we eat, read, sing, etc.  Sometimes I can't believe how long lunch takes.  In the afternoon, I am trying to do some English work with the kids every day.  By the time that is done, it's time for showers, walking to the bread store to buy bread, make and eat supper, read a chapter of an English book (currently Little House in the Big Woods) and head to bed.  It's a good life, yet exhausting.  I think it's still the heat that makes the days tiring, and I wonder if I'll ever get used to that.  Every day is equivalent to those hot summer days back home where everyone says "It's too hot to cook!"  However, our air conditioner is set to 23 or 24 degrees Celsius, and it feels cool to me.  I wonder how cold I'll be when I end up in North America once again, as I was talking to a friend who said her thermostat was set to 21... to heat the house up!

Take care everyone, and I'm not promising anything, except an attempt to be more consistent :)

A Buggy Life

Yesterday evening I walked around to the back of the house in the cool darkness.

"Shaun, can you turn on the light back here?" I call.

A moment later the dim light around our porch flickers, and I go to the washing machine to collect some clothes.  On the way there I run into this large, brown bug... yep, you got it, a cockroach.  Fortunately here they have been few and far between.

It made me think that to give you a clear understanding about how bugs invade every aspect of our life here, I'd retrace some of my steps throughout the day and get down in the dirt.

So at three this morning, I wake up to Hazel lying beside me.  Who knows why.... I apparently sleep through it, but it probably ranged from "I'm cold/hot" to "I have a sore toe" to "I had a bad dream."  I roll out of bed onto my sandals.  Yes, I keep them beside my bed.  You don't want to step on a bug in the dark.  I go to tuck Hazel back in her bed (we only have double beds here, so you can imagine having a child or two crawl in with you is not overly comfortable).  On the way back to our room, I make a pit stop at the bathroom.  I check inside the toilet and notice an ant climbing around inside.  Definitely not the first time this has happened.  Always check inside the toilets before you sit down.  I kill it before I make use of the toilet.  As I sit there I notice a number of these ants scurrying around.  These type are slightly bigger and do not walk in a line, taking stuff away to their far off anthill.  They always seem a bit aimless and I'm never sure what they are doing.  But they come out at night and I'm leaning towards the belief that they are a type of termite.

I came to that conclusion a few days back when I opened a window on our wooden front door and underneath was a pile of these type.  I noticed a couple carrying eggs.   The door is weaker in spots and I'm pretty sure they are eating away whatever wood we have in this house.

Anyways, I crawl back into bed and wake up bleary-eyed to get the kids off to school.  Flies buzz around the breakfast table.  This is Shaun's pet peeve.  Mine is the mosquitoes.  We "electrocute" with our mosquito-killing electric badminton racket around the doors, windows, and above dark shelves and bags before we get going for the day.  

The last few days we have seen "dengue" mosquitoes.  These are mosquitoes with black and white striped legs.  Dengue mosquitoes do not necessarily have dengue, but it is only this variety that can carry the disease.  The interesting thing is, these mosquitoes are ones that bite during the day.  We attribute it to the pool at the house across the street, which a family from Recife comes and uses sometimes on holidays and weekends.  It is full of dirty water.  Shaun sends Seth over the wall to pull the plug on the pool.  Hopefully that will eliminate some of the peskies.

After the kids get off to school (at a leisurely 7 a.m.), I do my at least once daily load of laundry.  The area by the washing machine outside is dark and shaded, and therefore full of mosquitoes resting by this time of day.  As I go to take down and fold the load from yesterday, I see a shadow of something between a sheet.  I bravely move the top layer aside, praying silently that it is not too disgusting of a bug.  Phewf!  Just a locust.  These are very large green "grasshoppers."

In the heat of the day (starting at around 8 in the morning and ending around.... never....) the bugs seem to rest a bit.  Except for the regular suspects: ants.  There are ants in the sugar.  How many we've accidentally eaten I can not be sure of, but they are teeny tiny ones with clear back ends.  As we walk around our beautiful veranda, there are piles of dirt every morning along the cracks in the tiles and against the house.  Our house's foundation is slowly being eaten away.  These are mostly a smaller black ant.  And they bite.  We can't rest on the steps in front of our house because there's a anthole of these type located nearby, and they bite as they explore.  It's not a matter of sitting still and they'll leave you alone.  Oh, no, they nibble on everything.  And it hurts!  We have these under our clotheslines as well, which definitely encourages quick "hanging-upping."

The next most consistent part of our day is shutting our back door around 4 p.m., which has reduced the mosquitoes entering our house in the early evening.  We get the kids off to bed, and sit at the table for as long as we can handle the mosquitoes on our hot legs.  Then a refreshing cold shower and off to bed we go, checking the kids rooms once more for mosquitoes before we head to bed.

There's a few more instances of bug sightings, however, I'd be exaggerating to say that it all happens in a day.  However, there's the large moths here and there, wee little spiders (similar to the farmhouse we lived in back in Cloverdale), small grubs and grasshoppers, little juninho beetles (similar to lady bugs), and much much more that I can't really describe.  You'll just have to come see it yourself!

Now if you think this is bad (or maybe you think this sounds like nothing) don't be alarmed.  We have become so used to the ants on the ground we hardly notice, and the mosquitoes have been controlled to the point of barely there....  And on the plus side, we don't even jump when something lands on our arm, we just calmly brush it aside.  However, if it's something flying around I can't say that I don't duck and scream just a little.

Next post:  miscellaneous reptiles, mammals, and unidentified vermin....