May Day round up. We're enjoying another national holiday - I think its the third in recent weeks. We had our new friends Sam and John over with their three boys. Nelson was so excited he was QUITE LITERALLY bouncing off the walls. He (Nelson) also found a stash of new undies that his granny had bought him. He changed in and out of various pairs 5 times before 10am.

Blog round up. This is the 300th published post on this blog. While the Rockleys were here we passed the 5,000 hits mark as well ( = just under 17 hits per post). Thanks to everyone who reads!

Footy round up. I wrote an article over here about Ronaldo - not Cristiano, THE Ronaldo who has scored more goals in World Cups than anyone else. He is starting to cause a stir back in Brazil as he's now playing for Corinthians.

Guest photoblogger: Nathan Rockley. Another installement from Nathan, two pictures from their trip to Fortaleza: it's the Rockleys with Priya's Compassion sponsored child - Gabriel!

The internet wasn't working here recently which is why we got behind on his series - sorry Nathan! Also, another question - this time one that Nathan asked me. The thing is, Natal hosts the biggest cashew tree in the world. It's something the local tourist board are very keen on and they've done quite a good job even since we've been here of putting in walkways, drumming up interest and creating nice publicity. Having lived here for 2 and a half years, I feel the cashew tree is something of an amusing joke. I mean, it's just a tree. It's also very wide, not very tall. It just looks like an overgrown hedge. It's the sort of thing guests are keen to see (yippee!! The world's largest cashew tree!!!) then after 3 minutes they sort of look slightly bemused (oh, right... ok, then... well, let's go to the beach). So, with this in mind, I tend to downplay the cashew tree when visitors are here. But, on our last day, I took the Rockleys to experience the wonders of the tree for themselves. A couple of hours later, having had time to ponder the merits of the foliage, Nathan had this to ask me while we were in the car:

Q: Dave, why do you say the cashew tree isn't very good? It's amazing!