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Ok, so seeing as I'm now celebrating 6 months of gap year travelling (and looking forward to the 3 more to come whilst ignoring my bank balance) I thought now would be a good time to update on the happenings in the last month!
Getting back to Fortaleza was a bit tough after such an amazing Easter holiday although strangely returning back to Carlita Pamplona (our ghetto) was a bit like coming home and everyone was excited to see us again. However, Gemma had caught some fever whilst away in Cumbuccu and it didn't take long for her to realise that it was something a little more serious than the common cold! Before long she was plugged into a drip at some fancy private hospital whilst her mother cancelled her flight home to look after her. Whilst this was a shame, it was actually a really good thing for me and my portugese because at the same time my English speaking Brazilian cousin, Thiago, grew homesick and went back to Bahia where his family is from. This meant that I was essentially stranded in the middle of the Fortalezan ghetto with nothing but my dodgy portugese to get me by!� For the first time I actually started talking to my Brazilian mum, Edileussa, who was more than happy to chat about the daily diet of rice and beans and also started chatting with Paixinha who runs the course but�only speaks portugese!�My credit with the church was also restored as I started teaching all Gemma's classes so that her students wouldnt be left behind and could actually have basic conversations with the pastors about the differences between protestants in Brazil and in England (a conversation they never tire of, they�cant believe the Church of England has been reduced to a tearoom for the more�talkative members�it's aging population). The result was that I was suddenly having alot less free time but also really enjoying myself and, by the time she�finally came back to work,�I really didnt want to give up all my classes! �
�The first weekend back from Pipa, Laura, Matt and Liam three of my gapper friends who work there, flew to Fortaleza to check out the city! It was an amazing weekend and despite a busy schedule of lessons I was able to get plenty of motortaxis (motorbike taxis, usually driven by drunken lunatics with a penchant for racing each other, these are great not only for providing cheap transport but also an adreniline rush greater than that of a bungee especially in rush hour!) down to visit them in Dragao de Mar! On the first day headed to Beach Park Fortaleza, a huge colourful mass of slides, fountains, wave machines and all generally the type of things which tend to revert fully grown adults back into 9-year olds! Despite an abundance of fat, skimp-wearing 50-year olds (Brazilian men seem to have an aversion boxers) it was an amazing day out! We started on Sarcofacus, a 32m high slide which was pretty much verticle in pitch darkness with one terrifying moment when your completly in mid-air! We then worked our way round all the rides in the entire park which was quite a feat seeing as its the largest in South America and one of the biggest in the world! Our favorite rides were: the half-pipe - pretty much self-explanitory but they send you down in dingies with one other person -�very scary if your the one going backwards (which was usually me seeing as Liam always made sure to sit in the front!), a ride with matts where you twist and turn and go over bumps before being hurtled into a large pool and finally, INSANO - utterly terrifying, we actually had to sit and have a beer before even contemplating this feat - at 43m it's the worlds tallest waterslide and is designed so that you hardly touch the slide during your 150km/hr freefall/slide! All four of us did this and Liam and I loved it so much we did it thrice! After a truely amazing day we chilled out by floating on dingies on an artificial river-swimming pool which runs round the park and tried to push Laura into the water - which failed as she then got out the pool in a huff and tried to exact her revenge upon us!�We were so exhausted in the taxi home that I could hardly contemplate teaching let alone chatting to the overtalkative taxi driver in portugese, luckily he liked me so much that after dropping the other gappers off at their hotel he gave me a free ride home!
�Only 4 students turned up to that nights lesson so I couldn't really try and make any progress in the book for fear of then having to catch the other beginners up to the same standard later (always happens with beginners, they come to lessons when they like so there are huge knowledge gaps!)! Instead we just chatted in portu-english and I taught them the days of the weeks and simple english which they then proceeded to forget the moment they left the classroom! I didn't mind too much and prompty jumped on another motortax back to Drago-de-Mar for a friday night out much to the bemusement of my Brazilian mum who only gets told of my plans at the last minute ('Eu vou para Recife onje noitche!' Her 'Serio? Mas Recife e mais longe' Me ' Sim, eu vou' Her ' Voc� doido'!) ! That night we only had a few beers at a nearby bar because we were all absolutely exhausted from a whole day at the beach park and, much to my annoyance, I found myself sitting next to a depressed middle-aged American whose only topic of conversation was about his construction company 'back home in the states'. For some reason all the other gappers found him utterly fascinating whilst I struggled to fight off an overwhealming sense of tierdness as he broke into yet�another rant about the American property market. Whilst sitting there, dying of boredom, my phone rang and a chirpy foreign voice on the other end reminded me of a commitment to teach 40 students from the University of Cear�t 9am the next day! I was immediately stricken with panic, especially because�the woman�had said 'I hope you've prepared and interesting lesson with lots of fun games to play and things from england to show the classs' it was 3.30am and I wasn't going home that night, I had nothing from England in my bag except a passport and a few coins, and no fun games sprung to mind! I excused myself and headed to bed at the hotel where I frantically tried to think of things to do the next day!
I got up early the next day and asked the hungover forms of Laura, Matt and Liam if they would possibly be interested in giving a presentation to some students from the University of Ceara on life in England? Seeing as they were already giving a perfect demonstration of the day in the life of an English student (ie hungover) I thought they would be perfect for the job, however the protesting moans indicated that they were in no state to represent their country and would probably be better off with a bit of sleep and possibly an aspirin (or two)! I actually walked straight past the students at first but soon found them and was personally introduced to all of them by their flamboyant teacher who quickly declared that I was now her English son in Brazil. We went to an auditoriam area and it was explained to me that I was to answer the students questions. I was a little taken aback as lots of the students kept taking photos of my every movement and were so much more eager to learn than those I teach in Carlita Pamplona. The questions were pretty intense and not what I had expected such as 'What's England's biggest prejudice' and 'Do laws work in England' (they were suprised to learn that they did!) the biggest surprise was that the police in England dont carry guns because our criminals generally cant get hold of them! Asides from these, most of the questions revolved around the reoccuring 'what do you think of brazilian girls' and 'do you have a girlfriend'�a question which�I must of answered�at least 3 times. After this we went down to the pier and looked at the Fortalezan beachfront and then had a fantastic Brazilian meal at a little restaurant with 6-8 of the students who had held back to ask more questions. As soon as this was finished they walked me to the taxi-que so I could get back in time for my 3 hour lesson at the church on a Saturday afternoon. On the way there we happened to meet the still hung-over Liam, Laura and Matt who had managed to rouse themselves to meet with Cat and wait at a bus-stop to go and visit Gemma in Cumbucco! In a comical moment the teacher and students seized the chance to chat with more ingles and immediately started ordering us to have conversations in English with one another! A bemused Matt was forced to have a conversation with me on the weather and Cat and Laura discussed their trip to Cumbucco while the on watching students furiously scribbled down notes. Finally, Liam, who was staring at the pavement�with a look�of intense alcohol-induced misery,�was singled out as not having said anything and was made to say a few words in English - his monologue was a jumble of mumbled words with a sprinkling of self-pitying comments vaguely rememenescent of a Hamlet Soliloquey! It was a great lesson though and I really enjoyed teaching the students who I will hopefully meet for another lesson again! The rest of that weekend followed the same party going routine so there's no point recounting that again, the other Gappers flew off on the Sunday morning leaving me to continue teaching alone!
�The week went well and all my students were progressing well. The exception being my beginners where we have problems with half the class being under 15 and just wanting to play games and the rest being over 30 and wanting to learn serious English, the result is a divide as I switch between the two satisfying neither party. Hopefully, the church will come to an arrangement to split the class so that the kids can do fun things as they hate following the book which is pretty much our Bible and syllabus out here! Gemma moved back to Carlita Pamplona later in the week and stayed at the English Pastor Marks house for a few days until she was a bit better when she moved back to her Brazilian host family. That weekend we went back to Cumbucco and stayed in the hotel which gave us a special deal! Cat and Tom joined us so, whilst Gemma recovered in the hotel room, we went swimming in the pool and the sea, lounged on the beach and ate one of the best pizzas of my life! Tom and I continued our long-running joke that Fortalezan men only like three things in life 'Forro, Mulheres e Armas' (Forro, Women and Guns) the perfect Fortalezan is obviously all three combined but this has only been achieved by the annoying radio presenters who are always booming out on Brazilian radios played on every street corner. I am, however, strangely addicted to Forro (It's like Reggae on speed with a bit of Samba and useless shouting thrown in for good measure!)!
�The next week was all waiting! I was flying to Recife on Saturday night to visit my friend, Juliana, and I couldn't wait to go! Finally, after going to the our churchs 45th birthday aniversery and scoffing lots of cake, it was time to go and Arlisson and Arlif provided me with protection as I walked with all my things to the motortax que. On the way I had a somewhat amusing conversation with Arlif who, obviously being from Carlito, had never flown and was warning me how dangerous it was! To add to the comedy, he was saying this whilst I hopped on the back of a motorbike taxi, at night-time whilst it was just about to rain - I could have not been in a more dangerous situation! The Mototaxi took half an hour to get to the airport and I have seriously never been so scared in my life - I literally clung to the bike and nearly had a heart attack when the driver answered his cell phone whilst driving the bike, at night in the rain! It took at least three hours for the adreneline to subside whilst waiting for my�flight at the airport! Eventually, my flight was called and I managed to�grab a seat near the front of the plane. Recife, is nearly 1000km from Fortaleza yet is our nearest big city (I dont count Natal) by bus it takes 12 hours but by plane it takes just under an hour. The sun was rising as the plane landed in Recife and as I met Juliana and Daniella (her sister) at the airport it was almost daylight! We were all tierd so, whilst listening to some funky latin samba, we sped across the city to her families apartment set in the�more nicer parts of the city.�Juliana's house is a stark contrast to where I've been living for the last 2 and a half months: my house, with it's leaky roof, friendly mice and multitude of mosquitos was replaced with airconditioned rooms, private bathrooms and best of all food which isn't those damn rice and beans which is all i eat everyday, everyweek! Juliana was determined that I learn as much about Brazilian food as possible so on the first day we went with her younger sister, Luiza, to a plush as-much-as-you-can-eat restaurant where the waiters kept continually serving us the most amazing meats I have ever tasted! We gorged ourselfs on Brazil's superior culinery delights for at least two hours before finally rolling out of the restaurant and into the car - I was ready for a sleep but with only limited time in Recife we picked up her friend, Bruna, who took us on quick tour of Olinda which is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in Brazil (it's name in portugese means beautiful supposedly when the portugese sailors first saw its location and yelled 'Ohh Linda' - Juliana, is my walking Brazilian encyclopedia!)! We were supposed to be meeting with Conor and Fiona, the two gappers in Olinda but, whether by ineptitude or Brazil's faulty mobile phone network, we failed to find him (partly due to him telling us to meet him at the Bradesco bank in Olinda - every bloody bank in Brazil is Bradesco - its like saying lets meet at the London Tesco Metro!)! However, we did manage to have a great couple of beers from a fantastic vantage point Bruna knew over old Olinda with Recife's skyscrapers and lights in the distance - it was beautiful but we were all tierd so we jumped back in the car and sped back to Recife!
The next day we got up early as were determined to get out and see as much as Recife as possible! We headed over to old Recife, the only part of the city which isn't covered in skyscrapers, where young, crazy, party-going Recife-dwellers spend their carnival. The area was filled with beautiful colonial style buildings similiar to those we'd seen the night before in Olinda with cobbled streets. However, one can only take so much of history - especially when it began to rain (rain seems to be a constant feature of Recife in winter) so we headed to the cinema where we watched 300 - a film containing the characteristics of gladiator/Sin City but at the end of the day was just one big gory battle - I liked it although Juliana had somewhat mixed reviews. It was by this point 4pm about time for my Brazilian cultural experience to begin again so we immediately started sampling yet more culinery delights at a nearby restaurant - my favourite being the petit gateau combined with ice-cream which proved again that Brazil is the land of fusion in every sense (more so than north america): culturally, ethnically, musically and culinerily. It seems that everything out here is a mix of the best of the different cultures that helped formed it: portugese, indio, spanish, german etc. After, yet again gorging ourselves and accidently bumping into Juliana's Grandmother (who was lovely), we headed home and got ready for our night out! By this point, Daniela, Juliana's sister who is slightly nocturnal emerged, much to my amazement, after just waking up at 4-5pm - which proves that if certain people in my life (you know who you are!) didn't always wake me up on time I could possibly qualify as a Brazilian!
At this point, the multitude of messages from Conor on my facebook confirmed that he was able to come out partying with me and my brasilera amigas so Juliana, Daniela and I jumped in the car and sped on over to Olinda to pick him up! However, typical Conor had left somewhat vague directions and we soon found ourselves driving through a ghetto at night in the rain making us feel somewhat vunerable! Eventually we found his house but no one seemed to be home. After ten minutes of tooting the horn, screaming like idiots and generally waking everyone within a mile up we decided that Conor must of done the unthinkable in Brazil and gone to bed before midnight (its seriously quite a taboo in these parts!)!!! The lack of another gringo didn't cause too many problems however and it wasn't long before we were standing in the pouring rain with a bunch of Juliana's brasilera amigas who were desperately trying to stop their hair getting wet (to no avail despite our best attempts to use me as a walking umbrella!)! We went to a club called Downtown, a British indie club adowned with more possibly Union Jacks than one could probably find in London itself (Recife strangely seems to love British clubs) with a live indie band with haircuts closely imitating those of Englands young trendy rockers. They were actually suprising good musicians despite singing in a foreign language (this usually causes a magnitute of funny mishaps in Fortaleza - especially when 'Hotel California is being played)! The night was amazing despite us, at one point, having to try and hide Daniella from a strange Brazilian man (we have yet to learn his name) who seemed to be stalking her at one point! Eventually we went to bed at 6am feeling absolutely exhausted but having had an amazing day and night out!
The fact that by the time we had all woken up the next day it was 3pm somewhat hampered out origional plans of getting out round the city, however it was raining so none of us really felt like doing much so we just lazed around home all day eating and generally being just Brazilian (I felt I could qualify as an honory Brazilian having slept in so long that day)! The next day, I really didn't want to go back to Fortaleza, Recife was such an amazing city with so many more things to do than Fortaleza but my teaching duties combind with the fact that a head honcho from the Gap offices in England was expecting to see me that evening meant that I had to somewhat reluctantly had to step on the plane back to Fortaleza with definite plans to return to Recife soon!
On getting back to Fortaleza, I really wasn't given time to acclimbitise back to the reality of being back in the ghetto. I was shoved straight into a taxi and whizzed over to Praia Futuro where we met Cat and Tom who were in the company of a rather large woman called Teresa. Teresa was supposedly meant to be our mentor, guide and general mother in case anything happened to us whilst on placement. However, the fact that we were meeting her with only 5 weeks of placement to go confirmed that she was quite possibly the worst of mothers and, unless she had telepathic powers, not much of a mentor! She was with a peruvian women who was from the Gap offices in England and seemed to be pretty together judging from the way she told us her plans for the Gap volunteers in Brazil. She agreed with us on the whole partying dispute we had had with the church and told us how she wants the teaching to get more organised and how she will have a word with the church because when Pastor Daniel worked there volunteers would be personally introduced to everyone community reducing muggings and violence and providing protection. Gemma and I didn't really have any criticisms of our placment though, despite its faults we love it and feel we are making real progress with people who really need our help - especially at Sao Pivete where the kids have nothing (we bought them pencils, pens and paints the other day for drawing and there was a riot, they loved it so much that kids tried to steal paper and pencils so they could continue drawing at home - it was quite shocking as we sometimes forget the backgrounds of some of the people we work with)! After a 3 hour meeting Pastor Daniel, who had made an appearance to talk about some favela work he was doing, drove us home and proved that he was far from the ordinary Brazilian pastor judging from the loud hardcore rock he boomed out of his battered Worldvision Gilopi's stereo system and the fact that he was more interested in throwing me a beach birthday party (filled with Forro and Cerveja (beer)) than discussing my spiritual salvation! I am actually hoping to get back down to Pipa for my birthday (if the church allows me) but if not, I shall almost certainly take up on this crazy debauched pastors invitation!
That's pretty much everything that happened last month, except that on wednesday we took three of the Sao Pivete kids to see Spiderman 3 at the cinema. The film wasn't amazing (Spiderman becomes an emo, dyes his hair black and generally prances around on bar-room tables until eventually a large sandman comes along and knocks some sense into him so that finally he wakes up and saves the day) but the kids loved it and we payed for all the tickets and food to make it a treat for them! It was a shame we couldn't get more kids to come but they couldn't afford it and didn't realise we didn't mind paying. We particularly wanted one kid, Natan, to come but he's only 5 so would have needed his mum there and I think she was a little too proud to accept our money. Anyways, we're planning to take about 6 Sao Pivetes to the beach soon on another big day out, it's nice to spend our last few weeks helping out those who need it most. In other news, I'm finally really getting on well with my family due to my increase in portugese. The downside is that they can understand me, but I cant understand them because they speak such a thick cearese accent and always use slang when talking and dont understand the word 'devagar' (slow)! I cant help but think that the portugese I'm learning out here must be similiar to a foreigner living in East-London and then walking round speaking in Cockney-rhyming slang! I just hope the Brazilians I meet whilst travelling dont simply dismiss me as just another particularly perculiar gringo!
The brothers are hilarious though, particularly Arlisson who is always making jokes (at my expense) around the house! My Brazilian mum, Edileussa (I can never spell her name!) is also lovely although for some strange reason she seems to adore Pitico the household dog more than anything else in the entire world. On my first day she even introduced me to Pitico before her own sons! The fact that every dog on every street corner round here has similiar characteristics to this idolised mutt which bears witness to his more extra-curricular activities besides being generally worshiped by all that enter my household! Anderson has set up his own graphic design business from home and has apparantly attracted plenty of clients already, especially one who seemingly brings a different jeep to the house everyday and seems to have an almost unhealthy obsession with Gemma who naiivly accepted his 'invitation' to take her to the beach in one of his personalised beach-jeeps! Four times a week I'm taking lessons from Yana, one of the girls who is like our second-boss but has become more of our friend, in portugese which is helping my speaking and understanding but I think I'm getting too lazy and need to try and actually make an effort to understand what people are saying around me rather than just labelling it as garble. Juliana gave me a fantastic little grammer book when I was in Recife which has pretty much become my bible in therms of pointing me in the right direction for speaking and writing portugese correctly. This has actually come essential as, despite my terrible portugese, all the little kids have added me on msn chat so that whenever i log onto the internet i'm attacked with a barrage of 'Tudo Bem?' type messages quizzing me on the games we'll be playing at our next Sao Pivete session and filling me in on all kinds of trivia which is quite nice in an annoying sort of way!
Anyways, thats all from Fortaleza. If you've managed to read it all down to here: Well Done your one of the few! Hope you enjoyed and I'll be writing another one before I leave my placement in 4 weeks to go travelling the coast of Brazil and hopefully get to Bolivia! Tchao meu amigos! Paulo
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