Rio de Jarf: April 2012

I haven't written anything in a couple of weeks, so you're getting a bumper Friday treat today to make up for it, you lucky sod you.

I put some pictures of the apartment up last week to give you an idea of the change the place has gone through since I arrived back in November. On my first night here we had to eat takeaway pizza on the floor of the living room without any cutlery and IT WASN'T EVEN SLICED. Since then we've kitted the place out pretty well, but it's still a work in progress. Yesterday I bought a whisk.

I'm getting slightly more confident with my Portuguese now as well. I was a bit lax on the studying for a few months but I've got back into it properly and it's definitely making a difference. It's still really bloody difficult to understand what people are banging on about unless they speak slowly and use fairly simple vocabulary, but I can manage to get around and do all of the day to day stuff without any problems. It's such a slow process though, and it'll be a looooong time before I'm able to understand and speak to the level I want to be at. Although judging from the poor use of English grammar in my last sentence, the bar is going to be set fairly low.

We've been on a bit of a health binge over the last couple of weeks. I'm determined to lose this fucking belly once and for all, although I do say that every couple of months and it never goes anywhere. We're swimming twice a week in the pool beside our apartment now, every Tuesday and Thursday. I can't believe I went for so long (about 15 years) without swimming. It's completely brilliant. It brings me back to when I was about 10 and I used to go to the swimming pool on Friday nights with Marius McCauley. We went on Fridays because there was never anyone else there, so we could dive all over the shop; general HORSEPLAY. I stopped going when I went to secondary school for some reason. I guess I discovered booze and girls. Or maybe just booze. Anyway, there's an instructor here who puts us through our paces which helps a lot, although I do always need to have her instructions translated. Not for long though, since my current language lesson is on BODY PARTS. Mmmmmmmmmm.....parts. The only problem with the swimming is that I have weird alien feet that don't bend properly which means it's more difficult to make the sexy dolphin moves. The exercises where I have to just use my legs always kill me to death.

Football every Wednesday is going well too. I'm getting used to the heat in the evenings and I'm able to run a lot more than I was when I started. I'm still known as Gringo to most of them, and it's good to practise speaking when we have the barbecues after the game every three or four weeks. As always, the booze loosens the tongue. I've noticed that Brasilians tend to argue a lot before, during, and after a match. It can be quite funny to watch at times. They are also ALL brilliant at keepy uppies, or whatever you call it. It's heartening to see old guys playing along too - there's one guy who plays with us and he must be in his mid-50s, and there's a few others in the same age bracket that play in the games before us. Obviously they're not able to run as much as the rest of us, but some of them are class, and you can tell that they were brilliant when they were younger. It's inspiring to know that it's possible to delay the ravaging of time's withered claw and not have to resort to crawling into the nearest cave to wait for death. Swee eee eet.

Oddly, considering there appears to be absolutely no reason for it, Rio has a Bank Holiday for St George's Day, so last Monday we went to Niteroi to check out the MAC (Museum of Contemporary Art). Niteroi is the city across the bay to the east of Rio. People often say that the only good thing about it is the view of Rio, which the locals don't take to kindly to hearing. Admittedly the view is pretty spectacular. The MAC itself was closed, but we weren't bothered because the exhibitions themselves are supposed to be pretty shitty. The building is fantastic though - it's supposedly designed to be a flower, emerging from the water, but it totally looks like a spaceship. It was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, who like designs loads of buildings and shit around here and stuff. It was pretty cloudy when we went, so we didn't get the full glory of the view, but it does provide an excuse to go back and check out the exhibition inside sometime.

And finally, this weekend shall be mostly spent watching films and eating soup, to be accompanied by the creeping sense of dread that surrounds the Manchester derby on Monday night (afternoon here).

Enjoy your weekends, people, and don't forget to take care of yourselves, aaaaaaaaaaaaand each other.

We both had a cold/flu/spinabifida this Easter weekend which gave us the perfect excuse to be lazy bastards and lay around the apartment watching tv, fillums and eating lots ( it wasn't chocojeebas eggariffic though, we were good boys). In fact we managed to watch the entire first season of Homeland over the weekend, which was quite an achievement. Now I'm walking around suspicious that everyone is a terrorist and has a bomb hidden all up in their pants. Although...maybe I'm the real terrorist? Maybe because I've said terrorist three times in this paragraph they'll be watching me even more carefully now? I've got to change up; dye my hair (ALL my hair), stop checking all of those niche websites, board up the windows and change my name to Jar...lar.

We had a swimming lesson last Tuesday; which made a big difference to just being allowed to do our own thing in the pool. We had to do all these exercises with the floaty woaties and by the end of it we were both pretty fucked. It was good, although I suspect the instructor might be a terrorist. I need to keep my eye on her.

Football was a lot of fun on Wednesday, although I ended up playing for two hours because the guys before us needed an extra player, so I was hardly able to walk the next day. The excessive meat and beer after the game helped ease the pain somewhat.

Anyway I shall go now and make coffee, since this is all pretty boring (or maybe that's what I want you think).

Lol soz x
:D