Finally Back

So I finally made it back to Brazil after another 60 day stint in the US and the never ending saga of visa and working in a foreign country continues. I was trying to get caught up on my friends blog because she is much better about updating her blog than I am mine, and she said it best that she hasn't updated her's in so long because things just get into your routine of life and as things happen they don't seem at the time to be 'blog worthy.' I thought that was pretty good so I decided to steal it.....thanks Aimee.

The time back at home was good, but also tough since I was living in a friends condo and had a 2x2 area for my clothes (boxers, socks, etc) and really missed the fact that I couldn't be organized, but also very thankful that I had a place to stay and a job where bosses are understanding given the length of time that I was in the US.

Of course while I was there my not being able to sit still tendencies kicked in and I did a lot of traveling while I was at home. I went to visit my grandparents in Atlanta, and spent a lot of time with them, napping while watching football with my Grandpa, eating chick-fil-a (of course!!!!), and we actually did a cousins night out which was a lot of fun. The 7 am (6 am Chicago time) flight from ATL to ORD was awful, but it was still a great weekend and very lucky to have miles and points from living in a hotel for a year.

I of course had to get my 2011 Vegas trip as well, and I went out to Vegas alone for about 12 hours to have drinks, gamble, and get my fix in. The bonus was that I won $1000 and it paid for my flight, hotel (which I pricelined the day of for $60) Imperial Palace, and taxi fare to/from the airport. I even took the taxi driver to breakfast and the cool thing was he insisted on ordering off the $1 menu, hey even better.

Christmas was awesome and I got a ton of good pictures of the kids, and being JRs first Christmas he was all stoked (like he'll remember) about opening gifts and all the loot he got. Bonus for him and Madeline that they have two single uncles that like to spoil. I of course did a lot of shopping for them and they both got tons of clothes, Madeline got way too much baby gap stuff but she just loves the jeans from there ;)

After Christmas I spent most of the week out with the family, hanging out with the kids, playing, babysitting, and hanging out with friends. I went to NOLA for New Years with some friends from work and my buddy Ed that lives down in Red Stick. We did the whole Bourbon street thing and we had an absolute blast there, ate TONS of seafood, oysters, and we even hit one of the places on Diners, Drive Ins, & Dives from the food network that Dad and I saw while watching TV one night.

All in all the trip home was great. Got to see a lot of family and friends, and we also had a great time at finally a guys weekend. Well the first two nights were guys weekend nights, the third weekend was guys, dogs, a couple girls, and toddler. It was an interesting but still a fun night.

Life here has pretty much resumed to normal. I've manged to lose about half of the weight I gained when I was in the US eating and drinking during the Holiday's, finally back in the gym (which I was without when I was home), and back into the swing of things (literally) on the golf course. I've been able to play and practice the past 3 weeks that I've been here and the weather has been amazing (80s and sunny) every time we've played. I decided after trying out for another tackle football team that I am not going to play tackle this year. When I was practicing with the team all I could think was dreading the 2 hour drive back home, and also about playing golf the next day. I am going to continue playing flag football this year, but just couldn't commit on tackle. On the drive home it just reassured me that I was making the right decision and not to take more of a pounding on my body and lose time at home with my friends and gives me more time to focus on other things. I really want to get back into going to church, and now that my portuguese has improved vastly from when I arrived, I am going to check out some Presbyterian churches in the area and see if there are any that I like.

I still don't have any cable or WiFi in my apartment so that is really starting to get old. I am about 1 week away from signing up two different companies (one for cable and one for WiFi) so that I can have some resemblance of connectivity to the outside world, and with not having anything during the upcoming Carnival will be very tough since I am going to stick around Campinas this year and play a LOT of golf during my days off. Without connectivity I've had more time to study and I finally passed my CIA exam before Thanksgiving and I am currently working on my CFE certification as well. My boss was just down in Brazil last week and he talked to me about APICS certifications and I think I may look at that which means I need to buckle down again and get my other certification done because APICS is 5 months (one weekend a month) and then studying and exams in between for all 5 parts.

This past weekend we had our annual Abacaxi Bowl (Pineapple bowl) and the Cougars took home the hardware again this year for a 3 peat!!!! It was a long but awesome day capped off by eating a whole cow at a local restaurant (not literally but we ate a ton!), and couple of beers with some friends. Yesterday we had the first annual Super Bowl scramble and my team came in 3rd at -3 under par, but -6 was the winning score. Again, another awesome day with great weather, great friends, and an awesome BBQ in the afternoon. Since I had 2 5:30 am wake-up calls I was not able to watch the Super Bowl last night, but from everything that I read, I didn't miss too much and heard the commercials weren't too great either.

That's all I've got time for today but once I get back to the internet world it will be easier to update on a more consistent basis.