Meu Portugues e muito mal, mais mesmo assim, eu gosto de falar.

Well well I am 17 days away from moving to Natal. You can call it a little under three weeks or a little over two, but either way I got my tickets in the mail today and it's officially official. No changing my mind now, (not that I was planning on it!) and no "Hmm...maybe I should have gone to grad school" to be thought.

You will notice a new addition to "Living and loving in Natal, Brazil" over there to the right >> where you can see for yourself that it is, in fact, 17 days away. (Or 16..or 15...depending on when you read this.) I know the yellow is a bit hard to see, but I needed the countdown to be that color in order to stick with the Brazilian-colors-theme we have going on here. (In case you hadn't noticed, my blog has a Brazilian colors theme. I will post a picture of the Brazilian flag at the end in case you don't know what I'm talking about. The lengths to which I am willing to go for you, dear readers...)

I got to spend a lovely few days in Arkansas with my mom's side of the family last weekend. It was a great last visit, filled with plenty of games and plenty of Strawberry Pretzel Jell-o Salad (a favorite among the Buchanan granddaughters.) They even gave me a very sweet and thoughtful send-off with a sweet and thoughtful send-off gift (iTunes gift cards!!!) which I managed to lose the very next day. We're hoping (and maybe even praying, a little) that they grew feet and walked into some drawer and will be discovered soon. Or maybe they were stolen. Either way, it was an incredibly generous and thoughtful gift for which I am so thankful. I have been blessed with a wonderful family and am thankful for all the times I get to be reminded of it.

If you've been watching the news this summer, you've seen all the reports on what an absolute nightmare air travel has been. If you're like me, each time one of those reports came on you've thought "Oh man...I'm so glad I'm not trying to go anywhere!" Well, the unfortunate thing is that in just 17 days I will be trying to go somewhere, and I have 4.5 flights to take in order to arrive at my final destination. That's 4 airplanes and 3 layovers to have potential problems with, and so I would really appreciate your prayers around the 3rd and 4th of September. (Just think...when you're at home, enjoying your Labor Day holiday, that's when you can pray for me. Thanks.) My nerves will already be experiencing levels of anxiety they've probably never felt before, so it would be nice to avoid a heap of travel problems on top of everything else.

My "things to do before I leave" list is getting shorter by the day, and with each item crossed off my mom says "Wow...so it's really happening, isn't it."

Yep. It's really happening. It's really happening!