Skeeters

Catherine might be a lean, mean, skeeter-killin’ machine, but I am a skeeter magnet. In the last week, I have received over 18 bug bites from the knee down on BOTH legs. That is more than 36 bites on just my calves and feet! The itching, with cortisone cream, became unbearable in the last 24 hours. So, today I went to the pharmacy and the pharmacist handed me magic in a bottle! The cream I have now stops the itching for quite some time and makes life bearable!

In other news, Catherine and I are almost brasilieras. Today we accomplished a list of necessary requirements for life to function normally here. First, after our excitement of eating beans and rice wore off (we hadn’t had beans in a while, and we honestly missed them), we headed into town to register with the federal police. Although waiting for our turn took a while, the process was relatively quick. We were fingerprinted with the newest technology yet: ink was rolled onto a metal plate, which was used to ink our fingertips for the documents. Now, in about 4 months, we can go get our Brazilian IDs (we are only here for 9 months, and 1 has already passed). Next we headed to a different yellow federal building to get CPFs. A CPF is like the Brazilian social security number, driver’s license number, and tax ID all rolled into one number. Pretty much, if you want to buy anything in Brasil, you need a CPF. So, once this was taken care of, Catherine and I headed to the main shopping street to buy an individual internet modem that plugs into our laptops. For the first time in Brasil, Catherine and I have unlimited access to all the internet we want, wherever we want, including Facebook. However, this means we actually have to work now that we can access whatever we need.