Time Flies

Time certainly has flown by recently, and I really wish I was able to post more on the blog here. We still unfortunately do not have internet at home, and as you can plainly see, that has made it difficult for me to keep everyone updated on here. It turns out that the guy with our modem sold it to someone the day before he had an appointment to come set up our internet. It is just one of those kinds of things that you get used to the longer you live here, and you almost don´t even bother wondering why in the world he would do that. As if that is not annoying enough though, it turns out there is no way to find another modem in the whole city cause it was the last one. So we are out of luck until who knows when... 
Anyway, I still need to post about our awesome vacation with friends to Alter do Chão, which was a few weeks ago, and we´ve been out on a boat trip and had some fun party nights with friends recently, too. I guess the proof that we actually have tans now will have to wait.
Just to give a short update for enquiring minds, we returned from our vacation right around Carnaval time, and I went back to rehearsing for the opera festival soon after that. A lot of things get put on hold around this time of year here because of the planning and celebrating of Carnaval. The orchestra had more than a week off, and all of Jay´s work was postponed until post-Carnaval time. Now that we are into March, hard to believe!, Jay has begun teaching English lessons to some friends of ours. So far we´ve traded services (free haircuts from one, a closet from another) for some of the lessons, but we are hoping to get some actual cold, hard reais one of these days! I had my first interview all in portuguese last week at the music conservatory- not too painful, and I will start teaching there in a couple weeks. We´ll see what happens with Jay´s teaching there, but he should be starting soon, too.
I will try to write more frequently on here, and hopefully I can post some pics sooner than later. Here´s to hoping this week brings us a modem!!!! ;)