Decembre

Monday Toni had a client in Barra de Tijuca. I had never been so I went with him. Barra has a great beach but I get bored in the beach alone. Since Barra has one of the biggest malls in South America I went there. It was a huge two floor mall. I felt like I was in North America. I had lunch at McDonald's ( I have not had fast food in two months!) I found a great store for Cd's, movies and video games. I spent over five hours there so I now know the mall quite well. When Toni got off work he came and met me. We had three beers and then had dinner at an Italian restaurant. They have a great modern cinema with 18 screens. We saw a Trilha ( which means the past, but i think the movie is called the getaway in English. ) The movie was just OK but it is nice to have a date night. After works we took a taxi back which cost around 4o reais.

Tuesday me and Toni went to Copacabana. Toni did not have to work. Since I finally had a cpf number he wanted to go to the bank to arrange our joint account. He wanted to just add me to his account. They had told us that with a cpf and a passport it would not be a problem. When we got there we found out that I could only be added if I was a citizen. It makes perfect sense that to be a citizen they want me to live here for a year and have a joint account with Toni, but then non of the banks will give me an account. We went to HSBC which is where I have an account. Since my account is in the US if does not help me open an account in Brasil. They said to contact my branch in New York and have them contact Brasil. This sounds like a huge run around to me. Toni was a little depressed after that. We though it would be simple but like everything else it is not. Toni talked on the phone at the beach and I went into the water. Today the water was dirty. Not only was there some trash but the water was green with kelp. We also drank some beers. Down the cityscape by Ipanema I noticed black billowing smoke. The man that sold us beers said that there are a lot of banditos ( thieves )in copacabana today and that we should be careful. We went home. We cleaned the house a little and drank Whiskey and red bull. Amy Whinehouse came over for a little bit.

The next day Toni had to work early in Ipanema. I went online, walked the dogs and cleaned the house. When Toni came home for lunch he told me that yesterday the smoke was from a bus burning. The drug lords in the two favelas in Copacabana were angry about the police presence in their neighborhood so they had some kid run on an empty bus and leave a bomb. Now there are police all over Copacabana. Me and Toni went to the pool for about an hour. It was a little obnoxious because there was like nine kids from the neighborhood splashing and screaming. Afterwords we went upstairs and I helped Toni study. He has an English test on Friday.