I feel like a little library :) I have all these little stories in my head I want to tell you. But my library has been closed for a while. You would ask - Why? And I would say - "Eh, it's Brazil baby! You want, you work, you don't want, you don't." No, actually I was waiting and hoping to finally get a cord for my camera to put here some pictures.. but today I realized, it's not gonna happen. So I got a new camera to take new pictures :) Puxa vida! (Terrible life!). And instead of hoping that one of my in-laws will find the cord, or, find the camera... which I can swear is at their house..I decided just to keep writing :) Since I'm under something similar like a house arrest, there is not much things to do around here. My daily evening cake is in the oven, husband is comfortably placed at the TV screen where he will spend as much time as it takes for my cake to be ready and I can let the rest of the world know how is my world doing :)

Last weekend we spent in one hotel-fazenda taking part in our first married people camp organized by my loving husband's church. Very beautiful place with many swimming pools, a "hammock garden" in a nice shady place and so much FOOD!! It was nice rest all together but for me it was also one of the most funny experiences here so far! And it's again about these countries' ability to survive under chronicly being late. Ok, for their defence I must say that they had a nice schedule included in all the welcome packs. They even used Bold and Underline to show the times when everything is starting. But the fun part starts already on the first evening at the big meeting. After a nice worship we all are waiting for the guest speaker to come up and teach us on some marriage wisdom. Few minutes passes by and the pastor of the church comes in front to give, what I assumed to be a guest speaker introduction speach. But don't worry - life in Brazil would never be so predictable and borring! It turns out that our long awaited guest speaker FORGOT TO COME. Hm... "Whas it THIS weekend??!!!" No worries!! The local pastor knows a lot about marriage and sex to make the evening pass really fast with lots of laughter.

 

Every evening of the last week I heard one and the same sentence from my husband: "Love, tomorrow I will start a new life! Running and excercising!" One of the goals of starting this blog was to document how our "short-term missions" are going one of which was "Loose to win". So far we've been only winning... :) We have set a goal for my bonitao (most handsome husband :)) to loose 10 kilos in these 4 months. And I so wish   I could say - 1 off, 9 to go, but ... hm... no... actually now we should set another goal - to loose 11 kilos :) But, don't loose faith! We have lots of strange looking "excercise tools" at home and he WILL start running after "the war" is over! Ok, ok, this needs a bit of explanation. Last night we received news on TV that the federal police is going in the slums to "take out" (read - kill) some of the drug dealers and other banditos because last week they have been protesting against the strong police presence in their "market places" and bringing a lots of trouble in the city. So, it was advised to not leave the house since it is always unpredictable where the shooting would take place. And of course, we stayed home. Today the situation was even worse. They said in the afternoon news that already 10 people have been killed in these shootings. My father-in-law is calling after every 10 minutes to make sure I am safe and his son is taking a good care of me (read - locking all the doors and hiding the keys). He is!! BUT, asked about when he is going to run, my querido says "After the war is over!" :) How can you not love him??!

But my second mission - A dinner in honor of Latvia's 92nd birthday - was a success!! I have beautiful pictures in my "other camera without a cable and a hope to find it".  So, maybe I will add those some days later. But, I have to say that it was a struggle. Not because I am scared of a kitchen, no, we are good friends... but because it turns out this country DOES NOT have sour cream, double cream and some other important things to make a nice Latvian dinner. I even had an informative Skype conversation with my Brazilian best friend. I showed her all the unknown ingridients in my shelves and fridge but none of them was what I needed. So our dinner was not 100 % Latvian but the cake had Latvian flag on it made of the red grapes and bananas and we sang our anthem. I made peppers stuffed with mince and rice, garlic bread and a simple cake. We had some really lovely people over and it was a good night! Tommorrow we are having our small house group meeting at our place and I am planning to make "pīrādziņi" - a Latvian pastry with special kind of bacon, onions and spices inside. Based on my bad experience with sour cream and whipped cream I almost gave up this dream thinking that it would be impossible to find this special, really fat bacon over here. As far as I know, Latvians are the only people eating "that white part of the bacon". But, today we went to the nearby (of course, because it's a WAR outside) shop and what do I see - BACON FATIADO! My lovely, beautiful BACON FATIADO!!! Hurray for pīrādziņi!!

SURPRISE OF THE DAY
I even don't know what surprises me more - the relaxed way how people treat any problems or the amazing parking skills they show!! As for the parking skills - I am almost shure that a Brazilian can park on the top of a vulcano not getting hurt by the flames and ashes. And they have to - taking in consideration the way how they drive and totally ignore any rules, it's is an undescribable luck if you find a proper parking space. The story goes like this: we are arriving home after visiting some relatives and my precious husband is parking our 38 years old fusca-preta. The fact the the small parking place is full does not create any negative emotions, gestures or thoughts. Continuing our conversation and humming one of his Brazilian love songs he parks the car... exactly in front of two other cars!!! I wish I would have a picture for that!! So now the two other cars are trapped between a wall, other cars on their sides and our black Beatle from the back. On my shocked look and unarticulated sounds, he only smiles and says "If they want to go away, they just push my car aside! Most important thing is to rememeber to leave the car in neutral and don't use the hand brake!" As simple as this! I remember a time when I had parked my car in Riga at my friend's house in a space that was reserved for another lady and how the next morning she put her car right behind mine so I can't get out and spend all her morning and afternoon walking in all the apartaments of a big building to search for this awful criminal! And I had to pay her 4 lats because "just a sorry is not a currency in these days"! Puxa vida!!

WORD OF THE DAY
LARANJA - orange :) Simple but important! The knowledge of this word was later cemented in my memory by a freshly made laranja juice by my husbendinho and a laranja cake :) Nice way how to learn new words!!

Well, my cake is ready and my husband is distracted from his video games - time for some fresh pepermint tea and a movie!