One week to go!

And so the Special Guests for Carnaval have now officially been announced...the Thompson Twins! Hooray!

It's all very exciting, especially because of the dramatic last minute booking, and the fact that the other guys will already be here too. It's certainly a brilliant way to spend my first Carnaval here.

We're going to go and check out a couple of the blocos (street parties) this weekend to get a taster of what's to come. There's about 450 of them over the course of the festival, so I don't think we'll be too stuck for any street party action. Crazy nights and laaaaaaaazy days to come.

We're taking a trip to Buzios with the guys a couple of days before the festival too. I'm looking forward to it muchly. It's a fancy island resort with stacks of beaches, nice restaurants and bars. Obviously there's not enough of those here in Rio. I mean, Ipanema and Copacabana are like so last week. Hugo's friend is letting us stay at her apartment, and the place is only about 2 and a half hours away on the bus, so no scary flying metal tubes of death are necessary.

We'll come back on the Thursday, in time to welcome the Belfast Broads, and then it's play time. I think I'll need my festival hat brought over from Manchester, otherwise there's no real point to any of this.

So, this week's been typically excellent; I've been using the bike system a lot since signing up for it. I'd forgotten how much I really loved cycling until we hired some in Amsterdam a couple of years ago. I hadn't been on one in well over 10 years, and I was concerned that my cycling proficiency certificate from 1991 had expired. Seems I still have the same wobbling problem that cost me marks back then, so I need to learn how to straighten up. I think I'm a confidence cyclist. When I was a kid I had a purple bike with discs covering both sets of spokes. It was cool as fuck, if a little dangerous on particularly windy days. Cycling nowadays bring back memories of that old purple bike, and this makes me happy.

We've been sorting out more documents and stuff this week too, to extend my visa and to let me work. It's a slow process, but we knew there would be beaucracy abound before I got here, so it's not overly surprising nor troublesome so far.

And finally, it wouldn't be a comprehensive blog post without a football match report now, would it?

Well, I wasn't as terrible as I was last week, although I believe it would have been impossible to surpass that performance. It was much better this time and I played reasonably well, without doing anything spectacular. I still can't get over how fecking hot it is though. Even some of the others were complaining about the heat, and that makes me feel a little better. A few more months should bring about a big difference I think, especially in terms of stamina, and with the cycling too hopefully I can get pretty fit soon and grow up to be big and strong.

Boa tarde.
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