Brazil trip 2017

I write this from São Paulo.  I've only just realized how many days have passed since my last post.  I apologize for my slackness! ;D I settled into a routine of teaching English 4 mornings a weeks to very small children.  I had to steel myself each time for the intensity.  Preschool aged children, the youngest were three, are a difficult mob to control. You have to be well prepared!  And when you don't speak their language fluently it can be tricky pulling them into line!  But they were lovely children, very eager, with the normal restless energy.  I reached out to a couple of friends who have experience in teaching for ideas and scoured the internet.  I'm so glad I took my ukulele because the children loved  it.  Trying to get them to sing "head and shoulders, knees and toes" in English and not in Portuguese was a little challenging.  A few of them stubbornly persisted with "cabeça e ombres, joelhos e dedos", but by the 3rd week t...

  View from the top of the Rocinha favela.  Rocinha is the largest favela in Rio and there is a lot more you can't see in this picture.  The following picture is with Dylan, the volunteer coordinator, and Reuben, a graffiti artist who works in the favela a couple of days a week beautifying the poorest parts of the favela (where they can't afford paint or decorative items).  

It feels like I've finally figured out what I'm doing here in terms of volunteer work.  With trouble in a couple of the favelas, my coordinator has had to make changes a number of times but it seems we've settled on some English classes with preschool aged children in two different favelas (and possibly a third one).  These classes are short (and intense!) and I use my ukulele as well as some games - a favourite one of which is "Feed the monster".  I found this idea online (thank God for the internet!!!).      The picture on the left is my students 'feeding' their vocabulary words into my makeshift 'bin' monster.  Thankfully I did bring my sharpie with me and have found something akin to Officeworks near my hostel.   Because I'm only here for a few weeks and these preschools have no resources for the volunteers to teach English, I'm putting together a box of flash cards (hand made) and instructions for games and songs that other volunteers ...

I was not required in the favela today and it was a lovely day so I hiked up "Pedra da Bonita" (the beautiful rock?) which is in Parque da Tijuca, a national park in Rio.       I was accompanied by a friend from the hostel.  We went to Ipanema Beach afterwards.   In the hostel at the moment is a group of young men who make skateboarding films for brands.  They travel around the world skateboarding in all kinds of places.  Zeze (one of the camera-men) tells me that it can take up to two years to create 3 minutes of video!!!  They return to the hostel after a long day extremely tired, but they are very friendly and polite - not what you might expect from a bunch of skateboarders! Yesterday, I began the day in a different favela.  We were doing a bit of cleaning up in the common area of a community garden that has been set up by volunteers here.  It was so lovely to walk into the garden, enclosed by hibiscus and other pretty shrubs, leaving...

After teaching yesterday there was no more work for the day so I decided to go and check out the "Museu de Arte Moderna" (Museum of Modern Art).     However, there was a strike in Rio DJ yesterday and pretty much all the 'attractions' were closed so I wandered around town until I found the "Mercados do Centro" and did a little gift shopping.  Cidade do Centro is full of Portuguese Colonial style and wire spaghetti.     Feeling a little footsore I decided perhaps I'd had enough so I returned to the hostel knowing I had plans to go to a samba club later that night with a couple of the girls from the hostel.  However, due to the strike and general unrest, we were warned against going to the place we had planned and instead went to a live concert somewhere else.  I had no idea this was a hip hop artist famous with the teens and young adults.       My first real night club experience I have to say!  Crushed!  Although I was glad to ...

I've been into the favela, Rocinha (pronounced hoh-see-nya) twice now.  I'll be assisting primary school aged kids who need a bit of one on one with their English classes, to help them hopefully catch up.  In between classes I'll be doing a bit of work with the graffiti art team and perhaps helping out with the agriculture project in one of the other favelas.  One of the young men volunteering is from the first established sustainable almond farm in California and he and I got talking about permaculture (he'd never heard of it).  He's interested in adapting sustainability to small scale projects and I suggested permaculture would be something to look into.         It's difficult to describe the ramshackle nature of the constructions.  There have been collapses in the upper favela, after which the government drew a line (real or imaginary I'm not sure) and moved everyone above the line into some purpose built apartment blocks.  You cannot...