Literary review that comes with reading material

The DHL guy knock on your door to deliver a gift from a dear friend - priceless.

I've been talking to Mauro (a dear, dear friend, who lives in Rio) about this book. I read some reviews and he read the book - I didn't because I haven't gone to Brazil in a while and I can't find it here. It was really sweet of him to go through the trouble of sending me this gift. It's a very interesting story and having reading material in portuguese makes me feel so at home. I can't put it down (you can see - by the crease on the spine - that I couldn't help reading some of it before taking this picture).

A friend in town

My friend Sabrina is spending the week here with us. She's actually the first one to visit, from Brazil, since I moved to the US and this is a big surprise. Out of the other nine in our ten girls group, she's the one with whom I'm less close - I would never guess she would be the first.

It's been a great week and I think we're finding out that the only reason why we were not so close was the lack of time spent together - we worked fin the same building for a really short time and I got to know her better as a friend of Flops and Gisele. I'm very happy to find in her a very good friend.

We've been around, sightseeing, talking and laughing a lot - we even spent a day and a night in Disney, having fun as if we were two little kids.

A brand new year

I'm still not very sure about what people do for New Year's eve in this area. It's such a big deal in Brazil and here people don't seem to mind it at all. We were planning a picnic on the beach (even though it's sort of chilly, we were ready to bundle up and go) but it started to rain and we are not thaaat brave. So we changed plans at the last minute, prepared some good food (these asparagus with prociutto and an artichoke risotto) and had a quiet, but great time at home.

I know I said it before, but I'm so looking forward to 2006!