This is the rainy season in Goiania and today we got quite a bit. We were going to pick up the car after some repair and as we were talking to the people at Renault, the rain started. HEAVY! The road outside was turned into a river in 10 minutes, lightening flashed and thunder roamed.

When we got home, I managed to take these pictures, but then it had already calmed down a bit, and after another hour the river was gone from the road outside our house. It would be interesting to know exactly how much rain is coming down when it rains like this. If I can find a weatherstation that is not too expensive, I will put one up here and connect it to the internet so you can all see.

Tomorrow we will go to Caldas Novas. This is a place a couple of hours drive south of Goiania and that was the reason why we went to Renault to check the car. I did not expect that they would find as much as they did, but I am now sure we will not have any kind of car trouble.

I will bring my laptop, but I am not sure I will be able to connect there. Anyway - I am back in Goiania on Sunday. 

In the building we live, there are 10 apartments. The day-to-day running of the building is a task that is done by one selected representative among the owners. The picture shown is not of our building but ours is similar to the apartment house with the red center that you see here.

This year they "pushed" Eni into this role. So she is now the "sindica" of the building. Eni told them from the first moment that she did not want this role now because she do not have any experience as sindica and she is a little too stressed right now. But after several meetings they managed to push her into it.

There is a small compensation for this, not nearly enough for the work that has to be done, but the positive thing is that we can now get things done in this building that has been long overdue. I think some of the people here will see changes they did not think of when they chose Eni. When she does something like this, she insist on doing it well.

The first thing that will happen is that all the people that work in this building will be fired and the security, cleaning and maintenance will be outsourced to a company that spesialize in this kind of work. We are lucky to have some friends that have a company like this and we got a good price from them. All apartments share the pay for cleaning, security and maintenance and this bill will be something like 20% lower next month. A nice start!

There are a couple of big rooms downstairs at the end of the entrance hall with a kitchen. This is meant for parties etc. and can be used by everyone in the building. But so far I have not seen one single party there, and when we asked to have our wedding party there, they said no! So we will now make a calendar for the use of this area and encourage people to use it. We all pay for it, so why not use it?

I am looking forward to see how things develop through the year!

So 2007 finally came to us, although 3 hours later than in Norway. One hour before midnight I talked to my brother Frode. Me still in 2006 and he in 2007. And Reidulf Botn, a colleague, called on Skype to tell me that 2007 was nothing special compared to 2006 yet. So we had not missed anything 

We started the evening with some typical Brazilian fingerfood. It is called salgadinhos - small bitesized things like small pies, that you serve warm. So we sit around and talk and eat. Later we had cake - both for me and Tete’s boyfriend. We share December 31st as birthday!

At midnight we went to the square in the middle of the city, only a few blocks away from here. We had been listening to the concert there for some hours. Goiania had put up a free concert and I guess there were appr. 15.000 people there close to midnight. At the top of the hour, the fireworks started and continued for 25 minutes while we hugged all our friends there. As I write this, the concert has still not finished and my watch shows that we are more than 3 hours into the new year. So no sleep yet…

We want to wish everyone a really happy new year. May it be the best year in your life so far - both professional  and personal.