Our long (for São Paulo) drought has been broken. Fine rain is penetrating anything that can be penetrated today. The air is crisp and I can actually see the edges of buildings. This photo is what our sky looked like at 5pm. A powerful sun, still fairly high in the sky, reduced by pollution and dust. We'll breathe better now. The week was one of coughs and sore throats with the dust and pollution. Somewhere in all that, I got myself a cold. Blegh. I'm not sure if it was from the girlie who was liberally sneezing her germs onto every surface of the bus or from the guy in the one-square-meter lift who felt the need to call his maid on the lift's phone to tell her what to make for him for lunch, so that he could shake the flu he had. I mean, it was so much effort to pop back into his apartment to tell her in person. It's way more fun to distribute your germs on a phone that other residents use too.
This was in the building where I met my new student. She's a paediatrician - oh the stories she can tell! - and really sweet. She wants to improve her English, as she's studying Kabbalah (made famous by Madonna) and their meetings are in English. Her eyes lit up and she excitedly pointed out my bookmark I have clipped to my folder: "You can if you Believe you can". "That's exactly what we believe!" It seems that my lessons with her will be very interesting.
My cell phone died on Thursday. It literally got crushed. The LCD screen had excessive pressure applied to it. Jurgis eventually opened it up. He wanted to know where I might have done that. I suggested he takes a bus with me one morning. Now I have a bit of a problem. My students seem to have no idea how to connect to a land-line. They either call or text me on my cell. The cell is also important for random things like calling to find out if I must get bread on the way home or calling the student to tell them I'm on the wrong side of a flooded marginal (highway) and may be somewhat late. Buying a new cell phone was one expense that I definitely do not need right now, but it's funny how one starts justifying a new purchase. I spent some time surfing through cell phone models online. Two things happened. One - I realised how out of date my little cell phone now is and two - I realised how many super-cool features the new ones have at less than what I paid for my old one. So I bit the bullet... I'll be paying for it for the next millennium, but in two weeks, I'll have my new cell phone, a fairly basic model, but some folk will be glad to know it comes with a teeny weeny little camera ; ) Sneak pics, folks!
Our national lottery was won last night - R$92 million. I got one number right. I think it's trying to tell me something.
Our neighbours were having a shindig that lasted most of the night. Jurgis said he was tempted to get up onto their roof and pelt them with eggs. Last week, they seemed so nice. They keep this up, war may just break out. Of course, they're sleeping the day away now.
I think the only way I can catch up here is by going to my contacts one by one and seeing what they've been up to. I must still prepare lessons for the week. On the bright side, kinda, Tuesday is a public holiday, so I only have the teens once this week *does the Snoopy dance*
