Locked INSIDE the house?

Folks.  I'm locked inside the house.  Yes, you heard me.  I am unable to leave my house because the door is bolted shut from the outside.  What the hell kind of security is that, you ask?  Well, I was hoping someone could answer me that very question! 

Y'see.  Locks in Brazil are a tricky thing.  Don't expect to come and find your 'easy to open-easy to close' simple North American key locks.  Here you've got the world at your feet in terms of options for locks.  In our old house, we had the Hotel-Style "once you shut the door it's locked and you can only open it with a key" lock. 
Now, we have the "star-shaped key that can only open the bolt if the little dot on the key is facing up and whose lock can only be opened and closed WITH said key" complicated as hell lock. 


So the issue is that Ro and I left the house together last night and both took our keys.  We had a grand time shopping for new stuff for our apartment so I was understandably high-on-buying when we got back, and I left my key in the car.  This morning he went to work and we both forgot that the key was still in the car.  Well, being the safety advocate that he is, he locked the door to keep me safe inside.  (I know, what a good guy!)  And when I went to leave the house to go to my classes... well, without my little star key, I can't get out! 

So here I am ... trapped inside my own house.  I started to wonder if maybe it was a ploy to get me to clean the house or something... "Oh, you can't leave the house?  Ohhhh well... I guess if you have to stay in you could do the dishes!"

Mm hm. 

Oh, I'll do the dishes alright.  But don't be surprised if one day next week you discover your precious little star-shaped key is missing, the door is locked and I'm laughing at you from right outside the door!  At least I know that if my husband ever tries to escape I have a way to trap him.....

New Apartment Comes Complete with All Amenities Plus Ghost

So, my apartment is haunted.  I'm absolutely certain of this fact.  Alright.. let me just back up a little....

So we moved into our own apartment all by ourselves!!  Yay!!  We've been living like adults again for almost two weeks and it's spectacular.  Tonight as I walked home, I looked forward to picking up some groceries on the way, tidying up the kitchen, cooking and then ironing.  Yes.  I am now Dona de         MINHA Casa.  And while we're on the subject, I prefer not to call myself "HouseWife"... rather I prefer to call myself "AwesomeWife".  AwesomeWife does it all and also manages to fit in a glass of red wine and orange Fanta (delicious, swear to god).

So, on nights that Ro is partying it up working and I'm left to tend the house all by mah-self, I feel the ghost's presence.  Let me just back up again for a sec...

We rented this apartment by a stroke of luck.  Seeing as it's almost impossible to rent an apartment in Rio unless you have a fiador (co-signer) or you're a millionaire and can afford like 4 months of rent up front.  Also, rent is also very high and your average salary definitely doesn't match up.  So Ro has a friend whose father passed away (unfortunately) but offered to let us rent the apartment without all of the normal necessary requirements(fortunately!).

It's not in the best location ever - it's still just as far and maybe even more difficult to get to places by bus.  But it's ours.  And it's haunted.

How do I know this?  Well, I don't.  I only think.  But I swear swear swear that sometimes, only when I'm in my bedroom, I feel someone enter the room.  I feel it so strongly that I look up thinking that Ro has come home to surprise me!  The other thing is that my cat goes into crazy stare and meowing spells.  Just now she was sitting in the office (which was the father's room) just meowing and staring at a spot on the ceiling above the window.  Ok, so sometimes she's looking at a bug but when I went in just now, there was no bug to be found.  She stayed in the office for, like, 15 minutes.  Shivers.  

THEN, I was sitting here all scared and all of the power went out!!  I was suddenly sitting in pitch black thinking 'for sure the ghost is to blame' but then I heard Familia Favelinha next door start yelling and laughing and screaming so I knew it wasn't just me.  Thank you to my Little Favela Family for always making noise and making me feel like I'm not alone.

So anyway guys, I gots a ghost and I don't know what to do!  I tried to just accept living together with my new ghosty friend but even making silly jokes doesn't take the icey cold fear in my heart go away.  And P.S. We already did a spirit cleanse before we moved in so I hope it's just that it's taking a little while for Ghost Dad to pass.

Here are the options I've come up with for coping with my fear.

1. Continue watching Home & Health Channel all night as I have been doing because What Not to Wear and 10 Years Younger DOES make me feel safe and happy.
2. Stay up until Ro comes home at 3 am.

Actually that's all I got.  I'm really spooked over here!!

Christmas Time in Canada

Oh goodness guys... it's so good.

So, I'm finally catching up on blogging after literally being offline since I left Brazil on December 20.  A lot of the blogs have really been capturing my feelings of Christmas in Brazil last year (my first one, popping the cherry)... the strange/guilty feeling of annoyance and anger and the heat and 'un-Christmassyness' of it all.  Those feelings were creeping up again this year.  My parents knew it.  My friends knew it.  My dear loving and patient husband knew it.  So my parents did the most awesome thing and offered me a ticket home for the holidays.

How could I say no?


I was going crazy to know how it would feel to be back in Canada and to experience the notorious 'reverse-culture shock' for myself.  But, to be honest, it hasn't been difficult at all for me to reassimilate.  Everything is pretty much how I imagined it....

Sure, I've noticed some things that I'm missing from Brazil (ie. Bakeries, good manicures, an abundance of fresh fruit and veg, my HUSBAND) but I have confirmed that certain differences WEREN'T inflated in my head due to extreme saudades.  Things like amazing customer service, friendly strangers saying hi, excuse me, thank you, letting each other cross the street or change lanes, orderly driving, big giant hugs hello, lots of ACTUAL multiculturalism/language EVERYWHERE...

But although I was going crazy missing these things and also going a little crazy being the 'different' one, I'm kinda missing that part now!  I miss speaking Portuguese and I miss the feeling of achieving a comfortable quality of life.  In Canada, it just exists.  You don't really have to work for it.  In Brazil, it's something to be proud of.  Something you can measure in huge strides and see how far you've come.  I miss eating healthier in Brazil.  I actually miss the routine of "home".

I miss Ro.  A lot.

God, will I ever feel satisfied in one place again???  Have we all now shot ourselves in the foot by living in two places at once - Home and Second Home?  One place will always be missing something and offering something else.

As for now, I have one more week to enjoy Canada.  That means a real snowy New Years in a hot tub with lots of flowing red wine, friends and more family time.....oh yeah baby.

P.S. In case you wondered if it feels somehow colder to me now after a year in Brazil, I can only say it feels amazing and I love winter.  White snow, brown snow, yellow snow, bring it all on.  But on second thought, a nice day at the beach with a cold beer and my husband wouldn't be so bad right about now.....

o fim de semana sempre passa muito rapido!!

Sunday night already... I could go to sleep right now! This weekend was one of the most entertaining/event filled weekends I've had since moving to Brazil. Serio!
Let's start with Thursday. Ro took the bus out to Botofogo to meet me after work so we could have a few chopp's and then catch an Anima Mundi film. The festival is playing animation films from all over the world. The set we went to see included two films from Canada, two from Brazil, an American, a Japanese a... Danish? British? I'm not remembering very well anymore. Anyway! We saw a bunch of different short animations which were all very... interesting.

Actually the whole thing really made me question whether or not I really enjoyed the films themselves or just the concept of going to the festival. I did LOVE the idea of going there... being amongst the artsy society of Rio, the bohemians, the creatives. But the films themselves were a bit out there - even for me, and I'm pretty open minded to the weirdest shit.
Y'know when you look at a painting that everyone has titled 'a masterpiece'... it's like a huge black circle with red streaks of paint all across it with one, single, tiny yellow dot in the middle that is supposed to represent something? And you are thinking to yourself "I don't get it." That's kind of how I felt with some of these films. One was about a man who hated to waste anything, who suddenly discovers a tree growing out of his head. In the end people start going to this tree as it blooms and having fun, partying, drinking, and end up leaving tons of garbage on his head. He gets so angry that he rips the tree out of his head in a giant rage. Then he has a big hole in his head which turns into a lake and the same people come back to go swimming and littering some more.

So umm.... I don't get it. I mean I get it. I get the symbolism. I also get that sometimes you aren't meant to get it. It's the creator's art and it's for them to understand sometimes.

Anyway, I DID love drinking chopps on a Thursday with my husband in Botofogo and going to the film festival after. Sometimes the idea of it is all you need.

Friday we went to see the Christ for the first time since I've arrived in Rio! IT was a beautiful day for siteseeing and the Christ was really impressive. Yep, that's all I have to say about that. Instead, here are some pictures.

SATURDAY, as you may have heard, I met up with Jim, Rachel and Greg for chopps in Copacabana. Guys, thanks for such an awesome afternoon. What I thought was especially great though - in addition to speaking at a normal speed with common expressions - was that BECAUSE we all live in Rio and therefore speak the same Brazilian slang, the conversation was also littered with these everyday Portuguese expressions we now use here in Brazil that are only REALLY understood by another foreigner living in Brazil. From the two kisses hello to the 'ti, ti, ti', to the 'opa' to the brushing off hand movements, to the mais tres chopps, and then mais quatro chopps (when Greg arrived) and, of course, finishing off with a nice saidera. This is what's nice about hanging out with other foreigners. We can talk 'foreigner' and we can also talk 'native'. Rachel, I don't know how you went to another party afterward. I definitely fell asleep on the bus on the way home.

Ladies and Gents, please schedule into your day planners the event on August 20-22 or 27-29. www.carnavaldasculturas.org, Rio's annual multicultural event by the beach. I know it's far for some of you (very far for some) but it would be a GREAT weekend away and you know we will all make time for each other!

What a great weekend!

Birthday Love

Ro's birthday today - 28 on the 28th.  It's a special birthday that only happens once in your life!  Ro's mom and sis have gone on a lil trip to see his dad on 'the ship' (he works on a ship).  So it was just the two of us.  But having the house to ourselves for the first time in - Jesus... like, I'm talking 7 months here... we haven't had a house to ourselves for the whole day in 7 months.  We were pretty happy to spend the day at home.

On your birthday you are allowed to have a servent.  Seeing as I definitely indulge in my birthday servant allowance, I am happy to be Ro's birthday servant too.  This means all of the obvious things.  No cooking, cleaning, washing, chores of any kind, work of any kind, moving of any kind (if you so choose). 

So, I woke up early to cook some breakfast - pancakes and eggs - and to bake a cake.  Only problem was, when we went to use our maple syrup (care of familia Canadense), it had mold in it!! BOOOO :.....(  Then, the cake I was baking turned out really flat and not cake-like at all. I swear it was more like a brownie than a cake.  So the morning was off to a rough start (for me at least).  I always set myself up with high expectations which isn't a great thing because any element that is off sort of ruins the whole experience for me.

So anyway, yadda yadda yadda,  Brazil game 4 started.  Made some more food.  Drank some beer.  Won the game! 
Now Ro is at work which is always sad on your birthday.  I'm just hoping that since everyone probably got trashed during the game, they won't be able to make it out to a restaurant of any kind and Ro will be able to come home to me! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY LOVE!

10 month-iversary lovliness

March 9 marked 10 months of Ro an I being married. I think time is finally starting to feel real to me. For a long time, especially at the start of our relationship, it felt like so much time had passed and no time had passed at all. It's all relative I suppose, if you consider that in the first year of our relationship we accomplished more than most people do in the first 5 years of theirs? Within one year, Ro and I met, moved in together, got engaged, got married, and moved to another country. Thaaaat's quite a bit of action in a very short period of time. Maybe now that we're here, that we're a bit settled with no real plan of going anywhere soon, maybe now I'm able to fully feel the effect of time gone by. It's a good feeling now, it feels like we're really together and have real substance in our experiences, in our feelings, and in our life.
So, to celebrate, we went out for dinner at this nice sushi restaurant called Manekineko. We'd been saving up our appetites to eat there because it's a little pricey at R$60 for each to eat the rodizio (all you can eat), but it was definitely worth it. Great dinner, great talking, we looked good - I am so in love. After we got home (by which time it was already 12:30!!) and writhed around with stomach aches lazed around for a bit, we decided to watch a movie.

So, I had just downloaded "The Blind Side" for which Sandra Bullock just won Best Actress. *Side Note* Maybe I'm risking getting arrested by declaring this, but I love downloading movies and music. I download all of our movies.
This movie runs about 2 1/2 hours in length and we started it at 2 a.m. Yeah.
The funny thing is, Ro doesn't last through movies. We could start a movie at 6 pm and he would almost definitely fall asleep before the end. He has seen half to two thirds of many movies.
But this movie is really good and we somehow managed to watch the entire thing which led us to being awake at 4:30 in the morning and not entirely sleepy... and what better thing to do when you both don't have jobs or anything to do the next day AND live right near the beach? Why, put on a pot of coffee and go watch the sun rise, of course!

So we hopped in the car with our camera and drove down to the beach (10 minutes of walking at 5 in the morning is far too much walking, I'm sure you understand). At this point, I'm going to keep my feelings of this beautiful experience to myself. But I will share the photos so you can catch a small glimpse for yourself. These are the rare, private, really special moments that Ro and I share that make me understand our relationship further and add that substance.

hott in herrrrre (so take off all your clothes)

It's freakin' hot in here. There is an oscilating fan in my office, an enormous industrial fan outside my office, the air conditioning is on and my legs are STILL sticking to my chair.

If I was in Brazil I might be ok with this but, clearly I am not, and so what the hell???

Something is definitely wrong with the cooling system in this building but they won't do anything about it - and if it's hot for me sitting in the office, I can't imagine what the members who are working out are going through. Sorry members!

So this weekend was a very Brazilian weekend for us! I'm so so glad I stopped being a baby and went to the party at Ro's bosses house. a) I had a great time and b) it got me so excited about Brazil again
The last 3 weeks have been slightly rough for me - I was having serious anxiety about leaving and all of the challenges and mishaps that are sure to happen were becoming daunting and overwhelming. Language, family living, relationship building, location, the list goes on... BUT after this weekend I was relieved (surprised?) to know that I understood a good 60% of what people were saying in Portuguese and ALSO that the drunker I get, the more comfortable I am with trying to speak!
Solution = always be a little bit drunk, all the time.
The party was nice - everyone was really friendly and good dancing and caipirinhas were enjoyed. My husband makes the best caipirinhas, p.s.
And I'm sure you all know what a caipirinha is, but for the future readers who don't, it is a traditional Brazlian drink made with Cachaça . The actual word "caipirinha" is the diminutive version of the word "caipira", which refers to someone from the countryside, being an almost exact equivalent of the American English hillbilly. HMM! I don't think Brazilians think of hillbillys when they drink this drink but it may be due to the fact that a SIP of one gets you retardedly drunk, in pure hillbilly fashion.

So where was I? Oh yeah, I was really drunk. And so, the result of said drunkness was of course a nice li'l hangover Sunday morning. I feel so lucky on Sunday. I get to spend the entire day with Ro, waking up late, making eggs and toast, getting showered and dressed and go for long walks anywhere. This Sunday we walked to the closest Wendy's (it's all I can handle post alcohol for some reason), ate, walked up to Praça Dundas, looked in Future Shop (where I witnessed the most amazingly bad attempt at shoplifting - soooooooo obviously stealing stuff guy!!), then streetcarred it over to Little Italy where we had tix to watch O Mistério do Samba at the Brazil Film Fest! Watched an awesome Samba school play on the sidewalk - beautiful sunny day, live samba school and my husband?? GREAT day!

The movie was sooo nice - it explained the story of the velha guarda do Portela and had some fantastic shots and of course, beautiful sambas. We both really enjoyed watching it in the old Royal theatre - it's amazing how you can take a holiday in your own city sometimes.
Then we walked home and passed through Kensington Market, which Ro hadn't been to before and I hadn't been to in a long time... Sundays are Pedestrian Sundays which means only foot traffic and lots of cool entertainment.

Phew! We did a lot on Sunday and afterwards felt so excited to be in Brazil. Do you know it's only 6 weeks left until we leave?? Is that even possible??? Gah!! I can't believe it. Uma cosa à tempo. First, move to Brampton. Then, move to Rio.

Revisao

OK Officially we are leaving DECEMBER 14! what what!! We bought our tickets today after discussing the fact that a little more time here would give us a bit more money and would also give us a bit more option for seat selection. Ro doesn't like flying... AT ALL. Actually, I've never experience fear and anxiety of flying the way he has it. It kind of stresses me out because he just can't relax, can't sleep, everytime the seatbelt sign dings he is ALERT, his hands are sweaty, talking nervously about nothing. It's so strange!! He is like a different person. Possibly this is the only thing that interrupts his usual calm, rational, demeanor.
Soooo looking foward to a stressful 11 hour flight :S

Last night we put up post-it notes around the condo to help with my vocabulary. This morning, while getting ready in the bathroom, I've become very familiar with the vaso, the espelho, and the pia. :D Tonight, while we're on the sofá watching televisao, I'll work on the sala de estar. :)

Whoever guesses what all those words mean correctly gets a special prize from me.

There needs to be more weekends like these...

Well, Monday... it's you and me again. I can't say I really like you all that much as you take away my two favourite days, Saturday and Sunday. But it is what it is...

I feel like I was able to tap in a little closer to my husband this weekend (not that it's difficult - he's incredibly easy to talk to).

Sometimes alcohol helps you open up and express those nagging feelings... for me especially because I tend to overanalyze things to the most granular detail. Alcohol just helps these thoughts flow a little free-er....

I am learning that marriage brings about this completely different level of communication and understanding and acceptance. I learned this weekend that he has a clear cut impression of what our communication style should be like - totally honest, totally open, and able to talk about everything, even the awkward stuff (or maybe especially the awkward stuff??) ;) Everybody wants that - but can everybody put aside their own self awareness to actually implement this? Especially when it means you need to be able to accept this level of brute honesty, which I know could easily be misinterpreted as criticsm.
I think it's beautiful. What an amazing concept - that you can be your complete true self with your partner and not feel judged. That you have these insecure, seemingly idiotic feelings and tendencies, and it's ok. Your partner tells you you're allowed to have them and even better, tells you they want to hear about them (and actually means that). This is a totally rare form of existence in my experience. It sure does help me get my fears off my chest though... and I truly appreciate and need that in my partner!

On another note, why is the paperwork for Brazilians to become landed immigrants to Canada SO UNBELIEVELY IMPOSSIBLE?? Wow... it's like, another level of impossible. We are expected to provide pretty intimate details of our wedding, who attended, what it was like, where it was... we even need to talk about who proposed, how they did it, where, why, what etc. It's like they want to see pictures of us consumating just to prove that we're legit. Haha, I think we should actually do that - throw in a couple of X-rated photographs JUST IN CASE... just to cover all angles. haha...

Anyway, feeling pretty happy right now! Lots of things to do before we go but we are also pretty booked up for the next couple months which will make the time go by so fast I'm sure... so many mixed emotions! Ahh!!!

One more thing I feel happy about - that amongst all of this madness, in my head and otherwise, I feel completely totally safe, like nothing bad is going to happen. :)