life goes on....

The drama with our furniture hasn't ended. Ponto Frio charged tonis card twice on the one transaction so he had to get in and yell at them for like an hour. Later that night they called us to say they would give him cash back. We then went all the way into copacabana and went to the store. They finally did give us the cash but we had to wait a half hour for them to find it. We then went shopping but it was so late all the furniture stores were closed. We took another Taxi to Rio Sol which is a large mall. They didn't have any good furniture stores so we ended up going to a jewelry store and ordering are rings. We got plane bands of white gold. It would take a few days for them to arrive. We then had Pizza at the food court.

A few days later i went with Toni to his clients house. Her name is Aparacida and she made us a wonderful lunch. She warmed up rice and beans. The beans in Brazil normally contain some sausage or pork. She fried some eggs and served them with peas. She fried everyone a steak. For desert she served oranges, watermelon and Dulce pudding with coconut. I was really full. I left and went shopping as Toni did her hair. I found a really great CD store called Modern Sound. It is the best CD store I have found in Rio so far. It had a great collection of Brazilian and Import music. I bought RBD ( Mexican group ) in Portuguese and Rihanna for Toni. I met up with Toni and we went to the beach. We sat in one of the restaurants and drank beer. I finally got to go into the water which was freezing cold but still great. The waves were really big so I didn't go to far from the beach.

Later we went Table shopping again. Unfortunately the only table we liked that was cheap was Ponto Frio. Toni had to talk to the salesgirl for an hour because she kept on one to make us pay for insurance which we don't want to pay for. She would say it protects the chairs if they break. We would tell her we don't care. Finally we did get it rung up. She still charged us 30 extra raeis but we were to tired to care.

Friday we went to see the Lawyer. The anti discrimination laws that protect Homosexuals have only been around since last February so the lawyers are still getting used to them. We had two lawyers that were really nice ladies in there early 30s. They said that for the formal proposal we have to be together a year. That means we have bank accounts and pay bills together. Of course we just started living together so it basically means I can't get a work visa until after a year. I also can only stay in the country for 3 months on a Tourist visa. I can go to the airport and request 3 more months but that is still only half a year. The lawyer said a good option would be a student visa. Normally that is done from a foreigners country so I might have to go back to New York to do it. I was of course concerned about the time this would take and the money. Toni doesn't seem to upset about it. He is pretty positive everything will work out.

We went shopping afterwords in a huge market downtown. It is crazy and there are small booths and shops everywhere. We got a lot of things for the kitchen and bathroom. We did splurge and got two more games for the Playstation 3. Unfortunately we paid two much but games here are hard to find. Brazil has there own video games units that I thing would be very bad compared to our. At home we cleaned the whole house. Scrubbing all the floors. Toni hooked up the hose for the washing machine so we were finally able to do a load of wash. We also drank beer while we were cleaning which made everything a little less painful.

In the evening we went and had dinner with Helena and her friends. It was at a sushi restaurant on the lake. We drank lots of wine. There was a musician who sat at our table and played the guitar and sang for us. Helena held my hand and sang too me. It was pretty late by the time we got home and we were both pretty tipsy.

Saturday Toni was hungover. Punto Frio called and they brought up our table. It all came in boxes to be assembled so Toni spent and hour on the phone trying to arrange someone to come assemble it. We still have the other things to be assembled too. I find it pretty humorous that you buy something and have to wait a few weeks to have it put together. Later the front door man called and said that we had a box. It was one of the three I sent. It had gotten knocked around and a few things were broken. Everything else I unpacked. Toni heated up our lunch which was a stewed fish he made the night before. You serve it over rice. Today we have to go to Copacabana because Toni has English school. I will probably go along and get some exercise. I am not sure what we are doing tonight but tomorrow we will spend a day at the beach.