Gone Fishing...

Okay, not actually fishing. We're back in the states for a little while. New blog posts will be back up mid July.

Couch comes up

We talked about this a while ago, but I never put up the pictures. We live on the 13th floor (did you know that most big buildings in the US don't have 13th floors? I found that out a few years ago taking the stairs in Atlanta. I went as far as to tell the concierge that they had misnumbered the stairwell doors, haha). Okay, so we live on the 13th floor, and Toby's aunt was throwing away two couches, and we said HEY! We'll take two  couches! Well when they arrived Toby was out, and I couldn't figure out exactly what the guys that delivered it were getting at, but pretty much they didn't fit in the elevator. So we had to bring them up another way. What other way? The window way, that's what! So we took the extravagant amount of anchor rope (like 600 meters or something), cut it in four pieces and hauled it up. I was on the ground crew, keeping it from blowing in the wrong porch. Toby and three guys (one is a guy that works at the building, the other was someone's dog walker, and I forget who the last one was, maybe the door guy) pulled it up. It actually went very smoothly. And now we have two more couches! For you to sit on when you come visit, reader.

getting ready to pull!!

Those facial expressions are priceless to me. This is while it's in midair I believe.

Couch, coming up.

And in through the window!

Year One

Whooo hoo!
Year one down, billions to go! We had our first anniversary yesterday. Pretty much a normal day for us. Beach time, a beer or two, a nap, dinner at our yummy neighborhood place. Pretty normal. Except year one is done. It's been quite a ride. Toby posted some stats on his facebook, but incase you missed out, we hit up 27 US states, 4 Brazilian states and 6 countries in our first year of marriage. Actually the US states might be a little off. But whatever.

And our tasty cake top traveled with us the whole time. It spent about 6 months in our fridge in Atlanta, then when we moved out mid December and traveled between Florida, Alabama and Virginia on our goodbye tour it came with us. It spent time in many people's freezers, lots of coolers, traveled in my carryon on our first flight to Brazil. Then when we moved mid January it endured the Brazilian summer heat without a freezer for two days (whoops) and then finally came to rest there for the last 4 months. I put it in the fridge to defrost on Saturday. And then we ate it yesterday. It seriously tasted exactly the same. And we also put our cake topper back on. It did all the traveling too. Almost everything that could break off of it did. Toby fell off, I'm hanging on by one arm. All the peaches that weren't wired on fell off. Rough trip!

Greenpeace

So something reeeally exciting floated by our house today.

I'll start from the beginning, because it was a really nice day. Toby's dad is in town and we wanted to take him on our boat. We've been having trouble with the motor and had already attempted to take it out once (at high tide on a stormy day, not a good idea). Last night (or maybe tonight) was a full moon, so the low tide was reeeally low today, and at perfect timing for going out for a jog on the boat. We got her in the water and running super easy. We headed out to some reefs (remember the city we live in is called Recife, which means reef) that are very shallow and only exposed at really low tides. So today they were. There were lots of regular fishermen standing on the highest part of the reef, and lots of spearfishermen in the shallows. We tied up to an amazing little island totally covered with coral (it was exposed about 3 inches, so most of the time it's totally submerged), crabs, hermit crabs, sea urchins and lots of seaweed. We've had such bad luck with the boat lately that we only brought one fishing paddle and no camera. So no good fishing, and no pictures. But don't worry, next time.

So back to the really exciting part. While we were out I thought I saw some sails, and there's a pretty deep shipping channel along our coast, so sometimes large sailboats go by. I very much enjoy seeing the big sailboats go by, but most days all we see are shipping containers. So we got into the house, showered and got ready for lunch and I looked out the window and the giant sailboat was there! It was huuuuge, with two masts and craaaazy sails! So I got out the trusty binoculars to get a closer look and guess what boat it was???? It was the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior!!! COOOOOOL! I mean, cool if you're into that sort of stuff, which I am, so really cool for me!!


Here is the picture I took through the binoculars. Through the binoculars I could see the rainbow on her hull, but I don't think you can with this picture. Click on it for a larger view. Then, after my amazing photography, a little more info on this subject.

She’s the first ship in our fleet designed and built specifically for Greenpeace. That means the Rainbow Warrior is not just one of the most environmentally-friendly ships ever made; she’s also a campaigner’s dream. We are thrilled she’s now fighting with us for a green and peaceful future.

After 22 tireless years at the campaigning frontline, the second Rainbow Warrior retired from her Greenpeace life on 16 August 2011.

The ship – which replaced the original Rainbow Warrior after it was bombed in 1985 – helped end nuclear testing in the Pacific, blocked coal ports and closed down destructive fishing operations (to name but a few).

It’s a very proud legacy – and the third Rainbow Warrior, which entered operation on 14 October 2011, is better equipped to carry it on than any Greenpeace ship before her.

Click here for the Rainbow Warrior's website. Also, I did see on their website the live webcam has pictures of where they're passing (I couldn't see me waving, shucks), and it looks like they were just in the Amazon, headed to Rio. Just think, if we'd gone on our boat ride two hours later, we would have passed right by her!!! Okay, hope you all think this is exciting as I do.

Bird in the house

People here have a few problems with birds. All the windows are open all day, so I'm not sure how they don't have much bigger problems. There are nets on a lot of windows, but to keep kids from falling out, not birds from coming in. If I were a bird I'd be all up in someone's kitchen eating everything. Apparently people leave their meat out to 'sun', which I haven't seen yet, but I believe they do, and this is just making it easier for the birds. They don't even have to go into the kitchen, just find the right window. Today we saw a HUGE bird, hawk or falcon, some sort of bird of prey, trying so hard to get something out of a window net. I think he eventually got it. I would be pretty terrified if I saw that thing trying to take my lunch. 

So anyways, back to the subject. I'm always trying to get pictures of birds, or at least the birds that I think are different here. The other day we got a bird stuck in our house for a little bit. We saw him come in quick enough to keep him on the porch. He flew around a little bit while I was opening all the windows, and then I snuck off and when I returned he had left. He did poop on the porch though. This bird is called a 'bem-te-vi', because that's the noise it's call resembles. Pretty bird right? There's a video of me getting scared too. Silly bird.