Weekend Countdown

It occured to us this weekend that we have just two more open weekends, and then we will have company here for five of the next six! We find that immensely exciting, but it also reminded us our time is running out to finish up all the "little things" that weren't pressing until we had company. Now we need to get a move on it and get the apartment guest-ready!

We started this weekend, by trying to finish up the last bit of shopping we had left to do. We still needed a couple of small pieces of furniture, we needed some artwork for the main guest bedroom, and I wanted to add some more houseplants. A couple highlights to share:

The orchid I was incredibly excited to buy! (Now I have to find a planter for it though.) I have always wanted orchids, but the US highly climate controlled homes just aren't really ideal for orchid growing, as they need a temperature drop at night. Furthermore, they are much less expensive here, so I figured now's a great time to give it a shot!

A large painting for the main guest bedroom. (Which we still have to hang.)

Some smaller accent paintings for the main guest bedroom.

We sufficiently confused one salesman over the course of our weekend shopping. Despite how much we probably should be, we just can't quite make ourselves use Portuguese with one another yet. (It would be great practice, for me especially, but it just doesn't last for very long when we try it.) So we generally always use English when we're together and that included this weekend while shopping. I was looking at an item in a small store, and I took it to the sales desk to ask how much it was. I asked the guy behind the counter about the cost of said item, in Portuguese. He immediately reached for his calculator and started typing something in. Without saying a word, he turned it around to show it to Eric and I: "99.00". We continued looking around and Eric was looking at something else at one point when the guy came up with his calculator and punched something in and showed it to Eric, again without saying a word. A little bit later, we went to pay for our purchases. The guy still hadn't said a word, so we went ahead and said hello, told him we wanted to buy these items, and told him we would be using a Visa card but wanted to pay for it all outright, not in payments. All of this was said in Portuguese. The guy rang up our purchase, pointed at the price on the computer screen, and then asked another sales associate if she spoke English. Eric looked at the guy really funny and told him (in Portuguese) that we spoke Portuguese and that we could understand him if he wanted to talk. The guy looked shocked and said, "Eu não soube!" (Which means, "I didn't know!") Hmmm, well, um, alrighty then.