The Day before New Year’s Eve.

I woke up pretty early today. It was my maid’s last day. She quit, because she is going to a hairdresser school and she will open a beauty saloon. So, here I am back to cleaning, laundry and ironing (this is the worst for me), until I can find somebody else to help me.

I spend the day walking around and running away from the sun. It is too hot. I will go for a swim in a few minutes, but I won’t commit the same mistake as I did yesterday. Even though, I worked all week, my boss released us at noon yesterday. So, we went to buy white balloons for the New Year’s Eve and we came back home. It was really hot so we decided to go to the pool at 2:30 pm. The water was really warm and I couldn’t swim as much as I like. When we came back home, we were so sleepy that I didn’t want to do anything else, I relaxed a little bit and off I went to the groceries store and to the nail saloon.

As you might have read, the New Year’s Eve in Brazil is a huge deal, especially because we are in the middle of the summer. So a typical Brazilian party takes place by the beach and most of the people wear white clothes, buy new under wear and NEVER eat any kind of bird at the dinner.

I will follow just a few of all these superstitions. I will wear new underwear, eat shrimp, drink champagne with grapes, but my dress is red (no white for me).

Tomorrow we will head to our foster parents house by lunch time and I will take pictures for all of you to see the New Year’s celebration.

Happy 2007 everyone!!!

Fabiola

PS: Check the Christmas pictures on my album.

Free of the shadow!!

I guess I will be back for good.

The truth is: when my husband went on his annual check-up in November. It was discovered a cyst on his thyroid. The doctor ordered a lot of lab work and image exams.

He went to a specialist in thyroid and she said that he needed a biopsy.

Only the word biopsy freaks me out, because my brother had cancer when he was 17 years old.

So we tried to schedule an appointment with the recommended doctor here in Salvador. But his schedule was completely booked up until January 20^th. My husband was getting a little tense with the situation and as a sign from God; he had to go to a business trip to São Paulo. I was really relieved, because he could schedule the biopsy on the best lab in the country. So he did the exam on Dec 16^th and we got an appointment with the best thyroid doctor in Salvador on Dec 28^th.

So, we went with all the results to this doctor yesterday and his biopsy was negative for cancer. I cannot tell you how lighter I am. He will probably need to remove his thyroid,, but at least the “cancer” word was cut off from our vocabulary.

I guess this is the main reason why I’ve been so out of the blogsphere. Plus excess work ; )

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.

Christmas with the foster family

I’ve been telling you about my foster family for a while, but I’ve never told the real history about them. So…

My father and my foster mom did an exchange program in the late 60’s / early 70’s. They went to Harvard to study for 2 months.

The program chose 2 students from each Brazilian State, they would be the future leaders of the country. From these groups, there are a lot of Brazilian Politics, Economists and so on..

In 2004, they had their first national meeting in Rio de Janeiro. My father and Angelica sit side by side on one of the dinners. They started to talk and she told him that her husband was from Germany and she used to work in the Itamaraty (Brazilian Government Diplomacy) , and now they are retired. They spend 6 months of the year in Germany and 6 months in Bahia, more specifically in Guarajuba. (It is close to where I live). So, she asked my father my phone number, but I had forbidden my father to give my number to any of his friends. My father asked her phone number and gave it to me.

I am really ashamed to tell this, but I postponed the phone call for almost 3 months after my father gave her number to me. And one day I told my husband: I will have to call her and we will have to stop by there sometime.

On November 14^th 2004, I called her and she asked us to go to spend the day with them on Monday (it was a national holiday). I accepted her invitation and my husband was really mad at me, because I accepted.

As soon as we arrived there, we realized the huge mistake that we did of not calling them soon. They are this wonderful people (Angélica and Manfred) and they really adopted us as their own children (They have only one daughter, who lives overseas).

Even since this day, we’ve been enjoying their company all the time that they are in Brazil. On Paulo’s last trip to Germany, he spent a weekend with them on their apartment by the Reno River in Düsseldorf

This Christmas won’t be different. We will be with them.

Merry Christmas!!!!

I am finally done!!!

As we should say at 47 minutes on the second half… I finished my 6-Sigma Project and I am now Green-belt certified… IEIEIEI!!!! I filled all my goals this year. I am so happy.

MIA - II

Dear Blog Friends....

I've been working my b.... off to finish my 6-Sigma Project... but I will be back next weekend....

MIA

I know I’ve been MIA, but I’ve been working so hard and I got a huge sore throat, with its friend flu and a fever, that it is driving me crazy.

And I still have to deal with all the Holiday Season Celebrations. I already went to two Christmas parties (Grad school and Company party).

Last Saturday, there was the Grad School barbecue. It was great. One of my colleagues offered his parent’s house (thanks Chico) and we hired a Barbecue Man to cook for us. It was perfect, perfect food, perfect company.

Yesterday night, it was the Company’s party. We went to this Typical Northeast Food Restaurant. I couldn’t believe the atmosphere… It reflects exactly the scenes of the Northeast country side. The waiters and hosts were dressing like Lampião. And the food…. Don’t get me started… Coalho cheese, Torresmo, Surubim (kind of fish) baked with banana and coalho cheese, carne de sol with coalho cheese, cassava puree. And for desert Brazilian flan and Ambrosia (dessert made with milk, sugar, egg yolk and vanilla extract). (What a crime to my diet…. But I’ve been behaving really nice on that department). And to top it all we did the Secret Santa with our group. But it was like joke gifts, not real gifts.

The guy I picked has the terrible habit of been in the sun without any protection. It seems that he never heard about Skin Cancer…..So I bought him a huge, but I mean huge sun umbrella. Really colorful and really tacky. On the other hand, I received from my Secret Santa a really bad taste CD I’ve never heard of the guy and I don’t dear try to listen to it.

Tomorrow, I am going to my Foster’s Family house in Guarajuba and we will spend the day with them.

I hope you are having great weekend.