I’ve been trying to post pictures on this blog, but so far the internet connection has not allowed me to do this. I’ll keep on trying though.

All is well with us. I mostly have stories to tell about our car and driving in this crazy city. We have gotten up at 4:30 four times and tried to have our car inspected in three different parts of the city without success. Once we were too late because they only inspect a dozen cars each day in that municipality, once our tire punctured on the way to the inspection and twice the line was already too long at 5:30 in the morning. We’re going to try once more in yet another municipality on Monday morning and I’m not going to give up until it’s done, although I think it’s ridiculous that we have to take our brand new car for inspection ourselves. Also, there is a lot of confusion (muita confusão!!!) and aggression going on around the inspection sites and it seems like we’ll end up paying a lot of money for this although it’s supposed to be for free.

Another car story. We actually paid four or five street kids to bore and screw into our new car! We had to have all lights and the back window secured with metal straps because apparently these are very popular commodities on the street and therefore often stolen from cars that are parked downtown. I have a strange feeling that it’s exactly the same kids that got paid for securing those things that are steeling them, but I really don’t care as long as they don’t steal stuff from our car ;-)

The other day we bought a Chinese DVD with nine pirate-versions of American action movies. On the cover it says: “Extreme enjoyment of super-perfect!” I don’t think it can get any better than that! I even thought it wouldn’t get much better than perfect, but apparently I was wrong ;-)