First decent post!

Hi guys!

I just realized I can put a title up there.

To night I was talkin' too my parents (the Brazilian ones) 'bout colege. I've to study English too get an best ACT/SAT score and aint do no mistake too get my scholarship over theire (OU Bobcats!). Whell, its goin' be hard, butt writin's a goood way too keep up the language, so...


I'll try to not post so many food pictures... I'll try. But here are some:

American pancake in Brazilian kitchen!

Some people didn't like it (way too sweet). And some others (like me) loved! Yeah... I'll miss syrup.

Better than pancake is waffle, but I wont buy the iron. You can get it here for 40 bucks. But I don't understand, why get a waffle iron if you don't have the maple syrup...?

Today I tried to bake no-bake cookies. It didn't work, but it tasted good! But I wasted some peanut butter... my precious... I get it right next time.






A good, old fashion style barbecue. Good meat, good grill, good season, and no barbecue sauces.

I heard that I don't talk too much about people, just food and cats. We had last Saturday a family reunion kinda.



That's big part of my family. Left to right: Guilherme (brother), Gabe, Reginaldo, Nenê, Nair, Renata, Janete (mom!), Dolores, ? (the little one, was born while I was out), Dorival (dad!), Débora, Ronaldo, Nilza, Simone, Lorena and Melissa.



I showed my trip to New York City. I'm still counting, but I think I have about 35,000 pictures from my year in US.
And, yeah, that's a plasma TV. It works with electricity and there's no monkeys involved. And, yeah, it's probably assembled in China (that may be the most international thing we share).


And I also got to play some Dulcimer. I'm far from good, but still trying.

Dulcimer is a American instrument (I brought from there), even though a lot of Americans do not know what is it.

Comes from the Latin "Dulce" (or Portuguese "doce") that can be candy or sweet...
Sweet sound.




Come on, I had to have a cat here.

I have 5 Brazilian cats (Pepê, Toco, Lívia, Romeu and Gato or Little Joe) and 2 Brazilian dogs (Drica and Lola), all tike (or tyke? Idk. Like no race).
Then 2 American dogs (Dallas and Sammy) and 3 American cats (Sheba, Teco and Ninha).

And now we are getting the coldest days in the coldest winter on the last 16 years! We reached 48 degrees Fahrenheit already! It's freezing!



Talking about cats, a few hours ago Toco went to sleep over my laptop's keyboard... That is how it was. We almost lost some pieces but now it's all right. But it wasn't a problem. I just had to contact Dell over the US and ask'em to send my host parents the pieces, then ask'em to send'em to Brazil and then try to put'em together... Really easy...

The next picture is special to Judy. That's my backyard in my new house. We have this 29ft Imperial Palm Tree that reaches 88ft in the end... (no coconuts by the way). And That's Toco watching the sunset.




















Ok, that's a little bit of the life here.

Now I started having my reverse homesickness, which makes me feel that I'm just coming as an American exchange student, putting up with all the weird people and culture. Like a foreign.

Can you imagine looking at your closest friends like you do every day and asking yourself... "Who are they?".

Yeah, and all the people and places that I left there. People I wanted to know better. Girls I wanted to... know better. Cities...
And by the way, Brazilian beer tastes better and American. And by the way... I know because my friend told me, so it must be true...

Well, my school starts August 1st (it was just a month winter break).

I'm still learning some stuff on how to use the blog. But for people that aren't used to it, you can write comments on every post. Here in the bottom you click over "comments" (or "Comentários").

Ok, cyall.
Enjoy your summer.
Gabe.

PS: What's the temperature over there?
PPS: How can I make peanut butter?
PPPS: I think it would cost US$20.00 just to ship peanut butter down here, plus its price.

Hey folks!

Thanks already for the e-mails! (Well Fred, It's sad you don't want to participate in the Green Card project... but that's fine... Have you ever been to San Francisco?)

Today was another lazy day with all these plane crash thing all the time (by now I think a lot of you already heard about it). And I finally finished packing! I put all my ex-24-pound package of candie in a box (now it's probably like 18 pounds, or less - and that includes some tootsiepop leftovers).

And now something about Brazil that can creep some Americans out and make them never come to our country:

Yes, that's pringles. And, yes, it costs R$8.46 (R$ is our money, Real, that is like US$1.90 <-> R$1.00).
This price probably reduce a lot the number of American tourists coming to Brazil, opening a big lack in our economy. Maybe that's what make us an underdeveloped country, who knows?

This one on the top is... PANCAKE! Ok, we call it pancake (panqueca) but it's our version (it has grounded meat inside - we do not have Syrup). It's actually a wrong name for the french crap, I mean, crêpe.

I'll show some other Brazilian food later, like Brigadeiro (no, Brigadeiro is not a cowboy! But it's a nice try). But don't worry, this wont be a food blog.

By the way. THEY LOVED REESE'S CUP! That's terrible! I brought like 2 or 3 packages and they are almost gone! (actually, I hided what's left).
And we just finished the second peanut butter jar. One more to go.... (I got here less than a month ago!)

Does anyone have the homemade peanut butter recipe? I got once from Alyssa but I forgot...

Well, that's all folks! (oh, the Looney Toons say here "É isso aí pessoal!")
Yee-Haw!
Gabe.

Yay! I'm back! No plane crash, no problems (OK, not actually nooo problems, but it's a long - and good - story)

I'm back, and as normal, I didn't call anyone! I'm a terrible contact-keeper (is that a word? Or a kind of carrer?).

I'm sorry if I take 2 weeks to answer an e-mail or even a MySpace comment, that's how my brazilian mind works - really slow.
BUT, I love letters. That I do. And I write long ones.

I've picked this picture to start the blog because that was my Brazil restart. That's the first time this year I've seen my mom and my brothers. That's a good beginnig. (And look at the cowboy hat! Yeeehaaa!*)

It's 1 a.m. here in the land of Brigadeiro so I wont write too much in this post. Actually, this is a kind of a test to see if people are actually interested to see more of Brazil, since I have never showed barely any picture from my country. Tell your friends, family, WOW companions, workmates, pets, MySpace known (and unknown) friends, cops, U.S. government, EVERYONE! (ok, nevermind about the government) about this blog.

I'll put more news later. And once in a while I'll call some random people from US to say hi while I have money.

And, nevermind... I don't remember birthdays. But I'm a great boyfriend! (just in case if anyone is still interested on the Greencard project...)

Next post is going to be better with more pics!

And, please, leave comments! Any stupid ones! Nothing can be more stupid than what I write...

cyall later,
Gabe.

*Oh, we were discussing among the exchange students... How the heck do you spell "yeehaa!"? Any idea? (I would expect a good answer or from my dad Steve or from my calculus teacher, Mr. Krile...)