Tommorrow will be already one week since we left our ... wish I could say - "our neat one-room flat"... but I have to say - since we left our corner in my youngest brother's room! Very nice of him to give up such a big part of his property for his sister and her husband.. but... I am sincerely appreciating the HUGE appartament where we can stay now. We even have one spare room for our guests, which is a luxuray I have never had in my whole life! I love it! Slovly my conquering technics are starting to win more and more of the theritory. Few days ago I was able to clean all three bathrooms from all the empty and almost empty bottles and tubes and strange looking things (which, I suppose, used to be a bar of soap) and free the space for my two pieces of cosmetics, Thiago's face "shaving thing" and newly bought foot cream. Now, also the bathrooms are mine! Taking over the kitchen is the most hard part of this conquering battle. But slowly I was able to put the trash bin below the sink instead of it being 100 metres away, hidden between thousands of cleaning supplies in our loundry room. One more thing - no offence to all my Brazilian friends - but what is it about covering ALL the surfaces and everything standing on these surfaces with hand-made, embroidered towels and little cloths???? Very beautiful towels but - I'm sorry, if I have a juice maker in kitchen, I want to SEE that I have it in kitchen! So, I'am steadily taking away all the cloths and towels, which takes more than one day, and now our kitchen looks more like a place for prepearing food instead of a Latvian souvenier shop. Today my wonderful mother-in-law (bless her heart) came for a visit and seeing all the "mess" I have made in kitchen kindly brought me to a drawer - A WHOLE BIG DRAWER - full of another neat and hand-made, embroidered towels just in case I didn't know where they are and wanted to "pamper" the kicthen surfaces again with colourful flowery cloths! "Depois, depois! Muito obrigada!" (Later, later! Thank you very much!)

Brazil is an amazing country! The life style people are having here is... so different!! You know all those TV shows that show us how particular things are made, how everything in the world works?? Well, they really should make one serie on "How can a whole nation be always late for everything?" And I would record this show and watch it again and again and again.. till maybe after the 10th thousand time I will finally understand. Yesterday we were invited to an English class in nearby Language school where my husband used to study before comming to Latvia. (Hm... at the end of his first letter to me, he wrote: "SORRY MY INGLISH, IS TERIBLE".. and even though I wanted to be polite and say - no, it's not so bad.. i just couldn't, being scared of going to hell for heavy lying.). The classs was supposed to start at 7.30. Guess at what time we leave the house?? 7.35. It takes us about 15 min to finnaly arrive at the school and the time now is close to 8.00pm. We enter the class ... and... - NOBODY is there. We wait for 2 min and the first teacher with 2 students arrive.. in course of 15 more minutes the rest of the students and the other teacher have arrived as well and the class can start. It was very nice class, I enjoyed talking english instead of Level 1, Page 1 Portuguese of mine! At the end of the class the "other oriented proffesor" presents us my first Brazilian alcacholic drink - CACHACA! Nice of him! Oh! Did I mention - the class ended on time! As my bonitao of a husband explained after: "We need to respect the finish!"

Life in Rio de Janeiro is so unrealistic. You have the most incredible beauty mixed together with violence and crime that steals your night sleep. Well, my hysbands night sleep. I am very imune to all the danger around me. Maybe because he is overprotective or maybe because Brazilians only like to exagaret everything. The first "advices" I received on my arrival was 1) If you hear a gun shot, fall on the ground, 2) If you are being robbed, dont argue but give all your money. I must say I haven't heard any gun shots in all my time in Brazil (including my both previous visits) and nobody has ever tried to ask for my money or my golden grand-grand parents wedding ring. But... my husband is convinced that in one of the following nights our appartament will be visted by a local robber who has worked hard to acquire quite a mythical nick name - SPIDER MAN. He is known to climb up the walls using the little verandas and balconies and enter your appartament and to.. I dont know what he can do in a dark appartament during the night when the house is full of people.. but anyways - "Love, don't laugh. Last year he "robber" an appartament of acquintaces of my parents and two weeks ago he "roober" another edifisio (a building) very close to our home." Scary.. That's why all the doors are checked 10 times before going to bed and also few times during the night, not talking about the nightmares of a Spider Man stealing your kitchen supplies and bed linen.

I promise to put some pictures soon. We forgot cable at home and I cant get the pictures out of camera :) Byt my brother-in-law "has all the things". The only problem - everything takes SO much time over here. Yesterday two guys came to put internet in our home and it took them 1.5 hours. After the first 30 min I left all 3 gentlemen and went to read my book. After I returned, all them were sitting at the table and chatting about the real meaning of life. "Love, you can make some food? They haven't had a lunch today!"