three unimportant pieces of information

1. Tonight Mike needed a ziplock bag for something and we were all out. The only one I could find had a tooth in it (Tooth Fairy must have accidentally dropped it or something) but I just washed the bag out and handed it to Mike. He looked at me like I was crazy as I insisted he use it. I tried to explain to him that ziplock bags are like fine china down here. You treat them with respect and you definitely don't throw them AWAY!
   
2. Jackson corrected my portuguese grammar the other day. Apparently I have been saying "muito" when I should actually be using "mais" and looking pretty silly. He not only instructed me on how I was using it improperly but he explained why I was wrong. I graciously allowed him to correct me and now I'm speaking muito melhor.
3. Michael took our belts to the sapateiro (shoe maker) in our neighborhood to have extra holes cut into them today. We've both lost several inches in our waists since we arrived in Brazil and our pants were not staying up even with our belts. It only cost 50 centavos per hole so we were very proud of our thriftiness. Mike and Alberto talked for several hours and became very good friends over this simple process and now Mike can say he is friends with the butcher, the baker, and the "shoe" maker.