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Showing posts from June, 2007

A roll of carpet in the road.

I just had to jot down this random experience before it disappered into wherever forgotten thing disappear to. As I was driving home this afternoon I decided to try out the alternative entry point to my road (the road is going to get dug up and things put in the ground...don't ask me for details, coz I'll have to make them up). As I slowly drove down the gravel (note: temporary road), I spotted a long roll of black carpet rolled up. I wondered why it was there at the bottom of the gravel, but assumed that if it was left there, it should be possible to quite easily drive over it. I was wrong. What happened was that I managed to drive over it with the front wheels of the car, but then the back wheels kind of got stuck on it, and instead of gently driving over the carpet, they dragged it along, and unrolled part of it. This continued until one side of it got stuck at the side of the road. This was all downhill. I tried to reverse, and had a few looks to find creative ways of solv

Reflections on whether I'll ever completely leave Brazil.

The sky is grey, and even if it is possible to sit outside and have a cup of tea (I just had a cup of tea outside), I wouldn’t claim that we have tropical heat (not today anyway). Time passes, slowly and quickly, and I kind of feel like I’m just going with the flow really. Life goes up and down. I miss Fortaleza, and get very excited when I receive email updates from those I left behind. Sometimes I get a bit muddled up because the whole thing of me coming home just doesn’t seem to make sense. I think of Maria who is one of the street girls, now street woman, that I worked with for so long. If someone had time to just totally invest in her life and really show her Jesus, she might get out of the deep, deep, rut she’s in…and Rachel, oh Rachel, who’s had so many ups and downs. She was down last time I saw her, just before leaving. One of my friends in Fortaleza wrote to me last week with good news saying that she’s going with another project to Rio de Janeiro to represent those who live

Eating mango in the sunshine.

Yes, you can get a hold of mangos in Norway too, although they cannot be compared to the freshly picked, sweet mangos of Fortaleza. Still, being able to sit out on the veranda in the blazing sunshine eating a mango is a bit of a novelty! The gorgeous weather we’ve been blessed with this week has made me remember Fortaleza many times. I was definitely created for warmer climates. Yesterday we spent the day at our cottage on the beach (yes, it’s not by the beach, but on the beach. Built on rock though, as we all know what happens to a house built on sand when the storms come.) It was great to just relax in the sunshine, work on my tan, and read a book (I read ”The Mermaid Chair” by Sue Monk Kid). Even with the 25-26 degrees (it must have been that or more!!), I didn’t venture into the sea; 16 degrees Celsius is still cold, no matter how hard you try to convince me of how refreshing it is! There was also a kite-festival on the beach. Not kite-surfing (although I spotted one of those the o