safe, been about a week since my last entry and quite a lot of interesting stuff has happened. Went to the beach via the Gamboa favela and basically had chats with sum 8 yr old kids who were smoking crack, pretty sad story.

found a rugby team so thats all jokes and I've started to surf 2 mornings a week, done the first week and already catching waves and standing up etc... very jokes. Rugby was hilarious and I think theyve invited me to play for Bahia and Sao Paolo and Rio... hmmm. Could be jokes. Got work pretty much sorted and did my first paid translation form portuguese into english. It was for the bahian government and was quite hard but the content was ridiculous. it was about 'ethnic tourism' - basically getting people to pay to come and look at black people, i quote '67 miles away from Salvador lies the city of Cachoeira with the highest number of black people in any city outside of Africa......' Not quite sure what to make of bahias blatant exploitation of the descendants of freed slaves...seems nothing has changed. Going paintballing tomorrow. got home today and was unlocking the front door ad these two brazilian yats started stroking me and telling me they wanted to learn english...ha