Paraty

Last weekend we went to Paraty for a wee birthday treat. Twas most excellent.

It's a small colonial town about 4 hours away by coach. The journey there from Rio is pretty sweet - the bus goes along the costa verde (green coast) and there's lots of little seaside towns and villages (and..ahem...a huge nuclear power plant) dotted along the route.

The town itself looks like any other seaside town, until you get into the town centre. There you have cobbled streets and the 18th c. colonial architecture which is like kinda cool.  We wandered around loads of little shops and galleries and studios, full of the bohemian types who've moved here to be all artistic and shit. Check out the pictures and stuff to see for yourself. It has a recent reputation as a bit of a party town and the caiprinhas are great, but it was relatively sleepy when we were there. Think I'm too old for all that clubbing malarky anyways.

There's loads of hidden tropical beaches and hikes and trails, and we spent two days milling around and generally being lazy and hot and eating ice cream and reading and eating more ice cream. Pretty much a perfect weekend, really.....

Oh, and most importantly, "Paraty was also the set for Isle Esme (the place of Edward and Bella's honeymoon) in the movie The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn".

So it must be nice then.

Big green button

        Yesterday was election day, with everyone voting for the mayoral and city council candidates across the country. The streets have been full of electioneering for the last few weeks, with dozens of billboards of smiling corrupters on every street corner, and people constantly trying to thrust flyers at you. They all have this weird technique of flicking their wrist, as if about to throw a frisbee at you, then flicking it again to proffer the flyer. The streets were completely lined with discarded paper yesterday.

         A couple of interesting things: firstly it’s mandatory to vote here. If you don’t, there’s a negligible fine of about a pound, but in principle I guess it’s a good idea. Plus you need to be able to show that you’ve voted if you want to do certain things such as apply for a job, make a terrible similie involving a kettle, apply for university courses, etc.

All the voting is done electronically, so there’s no faffing about with paper votes and taking 2 days to get the results. You just go to your voting place, show your ID, and then go to a private voting booth with a big 80s style computer to tap in your candidate number and push the big green button. You get a receipt, and that’s it. Seemed like a pretty good system to me.

And finally this, which is COMPLETELY MENTAL: voters can’t be arrested for 5 days before, or 2 days after, the election. Apart from some exceptions, such as being caught red-handed! What the fuck? So if you’re planning that jewel heist then I suppose the next round of elections in October would be the best time for it. 

In other news, I’ve got a few more classes with the new school, so my timetable’s filling up rather nicely, like a kettle.  

Winter of content

Ok, so it's been months since I've written anything, and I've intermittently splashed a few photos here and there to make it look like I'm not neglecting the blog, but some of you have seen through that LIKE THE OBSERVANT BASTARDS that you are.

So, what to tell?

Well, I've been rather busy, that's what. I've started teaching new students this week, for a new company, and for a better rate than my last school, so I'm pretty pleased about that. The classes are becoming much easier as well, in that I'm not as nervous about things, and the students all seem to like me because I'm sexy and delicious and exotic and knowledgable. If the school give me another few classes then I'll end up earning a decent enough salary to get by. It's certainly taking a while, but I'm slowly getting there. I have a little office in the apartment now too, so it's pleasant to sit and plan classes and use lots of stationery and drink coffee and eat pistachios and look out the window to see why ALL THE CARS ARE BEEPING ALL THE TIME. 

So it's looking up on the work front. 

The apartment is looking great now too. We got a decent sofa freshly upholstered and some cool comfy purple chairs, so it's much more comfortable than it was, and it's great to lounge about and read Fifty Shades of Grey in a nightgown there. I think we'll be getting a tv and cable soon too, so I'll be able to put my feet up and catch the smorgasbord of screaming Latin American women in the evening soap operas. Que legal! 

I think I've pretty much adapted to the lifestyle here. I shudder to think of what I was like 3 years ago; a chain smoking, borderline alcoholic, unfit, unhealthy tramp of a man. Thankfully I've sorted most of that out now, thanks to, well, maturity I guess?          Fart lol  Well, maturity and Hugo's influence. 

So I'm still playing football once a week ( now with new boys on the pitch downstairs ), swimming thrice a week with Hugo, and skipping once or twice a week too. If I keep it up I think I'll be in pretty good shape in a few months. Still can't shift the belly though. It's bloody hard, but I have gone down a waist size, which is good. I remember lending sexy chris a pair of shorts 6 months ago and him having to wear a belt with them, whereas they'd fitted me fine. Embarrassed, I resolved to sort it the fluck out.

Although not as embarrassing as not understanding the concept of a white wash in the washing machine, eh Squeek? 

"Here, wash this please."

"It's blue, it goes in the other wash."

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does, white clothes go in the white wash."

"Whatever. Here, put this in then."

"That's grey.

"For fucks sake"

Anyway, I must go. There's a swimming pool downstairs that needs me.  :D

Dia de Arte

Praia Domingo

This 'n' that

Things and Stuff

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.