At Home With Friends

Technically, as I mentioned last year, we have no home here in the traditional sense of the word because I have, again technically, no family, at least, not of the 'blood' kind.  My stepcousins, though, at least some of them, have become family in my heart.

This is the wife of my cousin B.  She is like a big sister to me, and that is what I call her as well:  "Até M".  ('Até' has 2 syllables, btw.)  Much like some young people would call an older woman 'Auntie' even though she's not really an aunt.  Anyway, B and Até M's eldest daughter is my favourite goddaughter C.  She's getting married at the end of August to long-time boyfriend N, who is half-Japanese, and their little boy K is 8 and growing up too quickly for us to catch up with.  B and Até M have two younger daughters, both names starting with K.  The youngest of these (in total) 3 daughters is doing a Bachelor of Science in Finance and looks like she's going out into the wide, wide world of international business.  She's a full-time scholar and is so good her tuition has been free these past 3 years and her internship bosses don't want to lose her.

The cake you see here is one of our favourites -- Sans Rival ('without rival') and is, to put it simply, half butter, half thin flaky crust and nuts.  I took two servings and didn't think a third was a good idea.

More than half the gifts we brought with us (the gifts constituted one-third of our total luggage) was given away today, so now we are grossly underweighted (is that the right word?) luggage-wise.  Does this mean shopping space?