So my only student has cancelled the damn classes after just one, because apparently it wasn't "dynamic" enough. I knew I should have turned up in my batcape with a tambourine.
Oh well - I had been warned beforehand that this one was particularly picky and that they had been through a number of teachers already, so I'm not overly concerned about things just yet. Hopefully I can find some more closer to this neighbourhood, so I don't have two bus journeys to make.
Speaking of buses, it's recently dawned on me that people on buses here just aren't anywhere near as annoying as people back home. I'm specifically talking about mobile telephone call machines - I've rarely noticed anyone screaming their conversations all up in my earholes here. Hmmmm.....I don't know, in fact maybe they are and I'm just not as irritated because I'm trying to pick up the words here and there. It does seem that everyone is very well behaved. Although it could just be that they are in silent prayer in anticipation of the inevitably impending crash, which would be entirely understandable in this Scaletrix city.
I'm glad everyone's enjoying the heatwave back home, even though it is easy for me to scoff at your paltry 21 degrees. Mwah ha ha, etc. It's totally, like, 32 degrees here. The weather seems to have regained the pattern it took when I first arrived here - hot and sunny EVERY DAY during the day, and then a mad thunderstorm will appear from the arse of nowhere, and it'll rain all night long. I think I can live with that.
In other news, this week I shall be mostly going to celebrate the birthday of Deep Purple's lawyer, and on Sunday shall be going to the theatre to see a performance of modern dance, where I hope the bellyfire on display inspires me to follow in their footsteps and finally bridge that gap between the tired, rusty old world of classical dance and the explosive freeform expressionism of Streetdance 3D.
{Sigh} One can dream.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Speedos
In a bit to get fit and healthy, we've joined the swimming pool a few doors down from us. We'll go every Monday evening. Tis pretty cool; an outdoor pool on the first floor of a big sports complex. It's surrounded by huge apartment blocks so squillions of people can watch as we grace the water like elegant swans. And I'll play football this week as well, even though I'm still slightly concerned that my right foot will fall off.
So aside from the latest attempted exercise binge, there's nothing much happening round these parts. I'm eating a lot of pineapples, which is.....nice.
I'm still waiting on more potential students to surface with the language school, and I expect they'll materialise soon enough.
Sent from my iPad2
So aside from the latest attempted exercise binge, there's nothing much happening round these parts. I'm eating a lot of pineapples, which is.....nice.
I'm still waiting on more potential students to surface with the language school, and I expect they'll materialise soon enough.
Sent from my iPad2
Friday, March 16, 2012
That's not how you hold the pen......here, let me show you....
And lo, I'm now officially a teacher.
The first class was reasonably ok - no one cried too much, no one threw the table over and stormed off in disgust, and no one exploded. That seems like a good enough result to me. It'll be a lot easier when I get the teaching books and stuff in the post; hopefully they'll arrive before the next class. The journey to their office is pretty long though, so I hope I get some more students a bit closer to home, but I'm not being too picky just yet.
Anyway, more importantly I have xrays of my mouth! They're cool, although it probably would have been cheaper just to use the photobooth option on the ipad and taken them myself. Soon I'll give them to Steve Martin in that film and he can work his magic.
In a bid to become a stronger independent WOOOOOman I've started scouring last fm for cool peeps with good tastes in musics and trying to befriend them. It's going pretty well so far - one guy who seems to run a couple of music websites has sent me one of his mixtapes with brasilian stuff on it - sounds decent enough from what I've heard so far, and another girl has invited me to an indie club in Lapa tonight which is apparently where the kool kids hang out and make party.
Tomorrow night there's a St Patricks Day themed bear party in the city centre too, which sounds....intriguing. Although, in what's increasingly sounding like an early Almodovar plot, I don't think we can go there because it's run by a group of violent transvestite gangsters.Hmm.
So, this weekend is mostly a toss up between going out to clubs and taking it easy and watching fillums. At the minute the fillums option is winning, because I'm a lazy bastard.
That is all.
The first class was reasonably ok - no one cried too much, no one threw the table over and stormed off in disgust, and no one exploded. That seems like a good enough result to me. It'll be a lot easier when I get the teaching books and stuff in the post; hopefully they'll arrive before the next class. The journey to their office is pretty long though, so I hope I get some more students a bit closer to home, but I'm not being too picky just yet.
Anyway, more importantly I have xrays of my mouth! They're cool, although it probably would have been cheaper just to use the photobooth option on the ipad and taken them myself. Soon I'll give them to Steve Martin in that film and he can work his magic.
In a bid to become a stronger independent WOOOOOman I've started scouring last fm for cool peeps with good tastes in musics and trying to befriend them. It's going pretty well so far - one guy who seems to run a couple of music websites has sent me one of his mixtapes with brasilian stuff on it - sounds decent enough from what I've heard so far, and another girl has invited me to an indie club in Lapa tonight which is apparently where the kool kids hang out and make party.
Tomorrow night there's a St Patricks Day themed bear party in the city centre too, which sounds....intriguing. Although, in what's increasingly sounding like an early Almodovar plot, I don't think we can go there because it's run by a group of violent transvestite gangsters.Hmm.
So, this weekend is mostly a toss up between going out to clubs and taking it easy and watching fillums. At the minute the fillums option is winning, because I'm a lazy bastard.
That is all.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog, straight into a wall. The fox died.
I have a job! Woohoo!
I met with a language school yesterday afternoon and they've set me up with a student this week, starting on Thursday. Classes will be every Tuesday and Thursday evenings, for an hour.
So it's definitely squeaky bum time now. The school will give me materials to use, and they'll include me on their mailing list which will have further students on it, so I can pick which ones are suitable when they come up. The times and places will always vary, but I knew that from the start anyway.
And so it begins. Hopefully it'll go smoothly on Thursday and I won't make her cry or anything, and she won't write horrible things about my face on the feedback form.
Expect further updates on Friday, most likely about my sudden new career change selling authentic Irish mangoes on Ipanema beach.
In other news, I went to the doctor today. Thankfully Hugo came along as interpreter, so I wouldn't make any hilarious faux pas and agree to have my balls amputated or anything. There's nothing wrong with me (that I know of), so I was just going for a check up and will get some tests done to see if I have any cool diseases or need my balls amputated. And I finally got the note to say that I can use swimming pools without everyone having to worry that they'll catch spina bifida off me.
This Thursday I'll go and get XrayZ of my sweet mouth for the dentist too. That'll be fun. I haven't been examined in years and I'm slightly worried they're going to have to amputate.
Sh iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii t
I met with a language school yesterday afternoon and they've set me up with a student this week, starting on Thursday. Classes will be every Tuesday and Thursday evenings, for an hour.
So it's definitely squeaky bum time now. The school will give me materials to use, and they'll include me on their mailing list which will have further students on it, so I can pick which ones are suitable when they come up. The times and places will always vary, but I knew that from the start anyway.
And so it begins. Hopefully it'll go smoothly on Thursday and I won't make her cry or anything, and she won't write horrible things about my face on the feedback form.
Expect further updates on Friday, most likely about my sudden new career change selling authentic Irish mangoes on Ipanema beach.
In other news, I went to the doctor today. Thankfully Hugo came along as interpreter, so I wouldn't make any hilarious faux pas and agree to have my balls amputated or anything. There's nothing wrong with me (that I know of), so I was just going for a check up and will get some tests done to see if I have any cool diseases or need my balls amputated. And I finally got the note to say that I can use swimming pools without everyone having to worry that they'll catch spina bifida off me.
This Thursday I'll go and get XrayZ of my sweet mouth for the dentist too. That'll be fun. I haven't been examined in years and I'm slightly worried they're going to have to amputate.
Sh iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii t
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Post Carnaval Normality
Well, we survived the Carnaval.
Twas a crazy couple of weeks, but an awful lot of fun. The whole city is just one massive street party for an entire week. And everybody is wearing fancy dress, which I wasn't expecting. EVERYBODY. We were all distinctly underdressed for the whole party. At least I know for any future Carnavals that I need to drag up and strut/wobble my beautiful European body around the shop. If only I still had my Tootsie outfit. Sigh.
The apartment coped with the five guests as well, which was a relief. Our place is perfect for the two of us - there's plenty of room for us to dance, write poetry and read magazines, but for seven people? I'm just glad no one fell out of the windows, or that the new fans didn't fall down and decapitate everyone. They all seemed to have a good time though, and I liked showing off my new city. It really is a fantastic place. Sometimes the scenery can be a little overwhelming at times though - particularly on the day that we went on a road trip through Tijuca forest. Seven hours of consistently amazing panoramic city vistas can be draining on the senses.
Even though Louise, Claire and David were only here for a week, we still managed to squeeze in most of the touristy bits for everyone, including a few I hadn't been to before (Tijuca forest, and Pão de açucar).
So anyway, I won't go into any details about Carnaval itself because of the rule: What goes on in Carnaval stays in Carnaval, but I would definitely recommend anyone to make the trip over for it. We could probably hold the same amount of people in the apartment again, but I don't think any more could comfortably fit, so get your bed requests in early.
So after all the hullaballoo of the biggest party on earth this side of my underpants, things have quietened down back to normal. I'm starting to make some inroads with the teaching. I've been going to observe Hugo's friend as she teaches a few classes in the city centre, and she's been really helpful with advice, contacts and recommendations for materials and things like that. I'm making contact with a few companies and will hopefully set up some meetings in the next week or two to see about taking on some students. I've ordered some coursebooks and have been scouring the internet for resources too and there seems to be a lot out there. I'm obviously shitting myself as I haven't done any actual teaching yet, but I guess that's natural for the beginning. I'm sure it'll all click into place eventually. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see what happens. What's the worse that could happen? Apart from the fan falling down and decapitating everyone, of course.
MATCH REPORT
Ok, I know you've all been waiting on this week's match report, especially since it's been a few weeks since I've played. Last week I sacked off at the last minute due to...well, mainly laziness, so this week I was particularly concerned that I would die of a heart attack after about five minutes of running around.
Apparently we might have some trouble with numbers from now on, since schools and colleges are back, so last night we had exactly 12 players. Hopefully it doesn't start dwindling to the extent it's 4 a side or anything, although I expect they won't let that happen. It's Brasil for fox sake. There's always people on standby to play football.
Anyways, having bought a practice ball to use downstairs to try and improve my shooting which has completely gone to cock recently (even more so that usual), last night I managed to miss about 5 decent chances to score, and then afterwards was incredibly unlucky with about 5 chances, hitting the bar a couple of times, decent saves, etc. I did twat my right foot at the beginning of the game though and it's still really sore, so I'm using that as an excuse. Hopefully I haven't done any damage by playing on THROUGH THE PAIN. I still didn't go back into nets though. I'd carry on playing outfield with no legs rather than go into goal. Man I hate going in goal.
BUS REPORT
Anyway I wasn't too bothered about not playing that well, since I was mainly delighted to have made it to the pitch in one piece after yet another ridiculously scary bus journey. These are seriously getting on my tits now - I honestly fear for my life getting on some of these buses. The one yesterday not only took the biscuit, but ate the biscuit in front of me, and then twatted the biscuit tin off my face as it laughed and walked away, all crumbly. It was one of the small mini buses, and I was squeezed into a gap at the front. There were about 10 children standing beside the driver, blocking the front mirror and the rear view mirror, and the door was open because people were hanging from it and there was no room to close it. So with approximately 400% more people on the bus than there should have been, it speeds off on our twisty mountain pass. Every corner I thought it was going to tip over, to the extent that I was seriously hoping it would tip on a right turn so I could land on a pile of soft bodies, rather than having it go on a left bend and have 30 people land on me and squeeze me into juice. I know I'm probably being over-stressed about this, but it's going to take a while to get used to.
And on that note (B-flat minor), I bid you farewell for now. I've got to go and donate some money to Joseph Kony so he can help raise awareness of International Women's Day or something like that.
Twas a crazy couple of weeks, but an awful lot of fun. The whole city is just one massive street party for an entire week. And everybody is wearing fancy dress, which I wasn't expecting. EVERYBODY. We were all distinctly underdressed for the whole party. At least I know for any future Carnavals that I need to drag up and strut/wobble my beautiful European body around the shop. If only I still had my Tootsie outfit. Sigh.
The apartment coped with the five guests as well, which was a relief. Our place is perfect for the two of us - there's plenty of room for us to dance, write poetry and read magazines, but for seven people? I'm just glad no one fell out of the windows, or that the new fans didn't fall down and decapitate everyone. They all seemed to have a good time though, and I liked showing off my new city. It really is a fantastic place. Sometimes the scenery can be a little overwhelming at times though - particularly on the day that we went on a road trip through Tijuca forest. Seven hours of consistently amazing panoramic city vistas can be draining on the senses.
Even though Louise, Claire and David were only here for a week, we still managed to squeeze in most of the touristy bits for everyone, including a few I hadn't been to before (Tijuca forest, and Pão de açucar).
So anyway, I won't go into any details about Carnaval itself because of the rule: What goes on in Carnaval stays in Carnaval, but I would definitely recommend anyone to make the trip over for it. We could probably hold the same amount of people in the apartment again, but I don't think any more could comfortably fit, so get your bed requests in early.
So after all the hullaballoo of the biggest party on earth this side of my underpants, things have quietened down back to normal. I'm starting to make some inroads with the teaching. I've been going to observe Hugo's friend as she teaches a few classes in the city centre, and she's been really helpful with advice, contacts and recommendations for materials and things like that. I'm making contact with a few companies and will hopefully set up some meetings in the next week or two to see about taking on some students. I've ordered some coursebooks and have been scouring the internet for resources too and there seems to be a lot out there. I'm obviously shitting myself as I haven't done any actual teaching yet, but I guess that's natural for the beginning. I'm sure it'll all click into place eventually. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see what happens. What's the worse that could happen? Apart from the fan falling down and decapitating everyone, of course.
MATCH REPORT
Ok, I know you've all been waiting on this week's match report, especially since it's been a few weeks since I've played. Last week I sacked off at the last minute due to...well, mainly laziness, so this week I was particularly concerned that I would die of a heart attack after about five minutes of running around.
Apparently we might have some trouble with numbers from now on, since schools and colleges are back, so last night we had exactly 12 players. Hopefully it doesn't start dwindling to the extent it's 4 a side or anything, although I expect they won't let that happen. It's Brasil for fox sake. There's always people on standby to play football.
Anyways, having bought a practice ball to use downstairs to try and improve my shooting which has completely gone to cock recently (even more so that usual), last night I managed to miss about 5 decent chances to score, and then afterwards was incredibly unlucky with about 5 chances, hitting the bar a couple of times, decent saves, etc. I did twat my right foot at the beginning of the game though and it's still really sore, so I'm using that as an excuse. Hopefully I haven't done any damage by playing on THROUGH THE PAIN. I still didn't go back into nets though. I'd carry on playing outfield with no legs rather than go into goal. Man I hate going in goal.
BUS REPORT
Anyway I wasn't too bothered about not playing that well, since I was mainly delighted to have made it to the pitch in one piece after yet another ridiculously scary bus journey. These are seriously getting on my tits now - I honestly fear for my life getting on some of these buses. The one yesterday not only took the biscuit, but ate the biscuit in front of me, and then twatted the biscuit tin off my face as it laughed and walked away, all crumbly. It was one of the small mini buses, and I was squeezed into a gap at the front. There were about 10 children standing beside the driver, blocking the front mirror and the rear view mirror, and the door was open because people were hanging from it and there was no room to close it. So with approximately 400% more people on the bus than there should have been, it speeds off on our twisty mountain pass. Every corner I thought it was going to tip over, to the extent that I was seriously hoping it would tip on a right turn so I could land on a pile of soft bodies, rather than having it go on a left bend and have 30 people land on me and squeeze me into juice. I know I'm probably being over-stressed about this, but it's going to take a while to get used to.
And on that note (B-flat minor), I bid you farewell for now. I've got to go and donate some money to Joseph Kony so he can help raise awareness of International Women's Day or something like that.
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