14 degrees Celsius = 57.2 degrees Fahrenheit

This is how cold it is right now. During the day it was 18 degrees C (65F) and I was freezing at school. Everyone was. Kids are wearing mittens and snow boots, which is pretty hilarious since nowhere in Brazil does it snow, especially in cities. I came home from work and put on jeans, a sweater, a scarf, and a winter hat, and sneakers, and nearly balked when Dennis put flip-flops on to walk to his tutoring session. It will be nice sleeping weather tonight but I’m not sure I have enough warm clothes to last into the winter here, or at least for the next six weeks until I go back up North for summer. Another good thing about the cold is that the bugs are gone, at least the summer ones that fly around my lightbulbs. I may have to bring my plants in tonight to spare them from a frost.
Dennis, meanwhile, is now determined to grow an avocado plant on my dining room table. He has three weeks left here and I guarantee I will kill it when he leaves. Not because I want to but because, as I’ve already proven, I can’t grow anything. I planted little flower seeds he brought me back from Hawaii almost two months ago and just last week, he noticed they were starting to grow. I placed them in the sun because, well, plants need sun, and came back and the little sprouts were burnt to a crisp, their little tips dark brown and dry. I mean well, truly I do. I just don’t have a green thumb the way Dennis does, who has managed to nurse back to life dead pieces of grass and grow fields of lavender in them. Not true, but you see what I’m up against here with this future avocado plant. It’s screwed.