This week´s blog sees me writing from a different location. I would love to tell you that i am currently seated at a beach side bar, sipping a cold beer and watching a group of locals dancing samba while i muse over the last couple of weeks, but it would be a big old fib. No, as i sit here on monday morning my surroundings are slightly less picturesque. The university computer room was rightly designed for practicality rather than for architectural acclaim, but its fair to say it doesn´t inspire me with quite the same creativity as the view of the rolling hills and colourful houses from the balcony where i write at home. But given my academic surroundings, I shall take the opportunity to talk a little bit about my classes.
I am finding that my Brazilian history class is suprisingly enjoyable. I say suprisingly for two reasons, firstly because someone decided that the best time for it to take place was at 8.20 on a monday morning, and secondly because its in portuguese. However, there are several factors that make it a good class.
1. Quite a lot of cool stuff has happened in Brazil in the 500 years since it was discovered (apart from slavery...that wasn´t cool...bloody portuguese)
2. The lecturer knows what he is talking about, cracks jokes and does impressions of Iracema (a major female brazilian literary figure)
3. I understand whats going on even though its all in portuguese (polite applause)
4. Each week a group of four students gives a presentation.
Unlike England where 'presentation' means 'read out loud four pages from the book we all bought because it was on top of the reading list and had the word general in it', here in Brazil they are taken very seriously. If we take for example the last presentation I saw which was on slavery, the group spoke for 45 minutes with a fully illustrated powerpoint. In addition they made and handed out some kind of bean concoction that was typically eaten by slaves of the period. Not exactly what i fancied at that time of the morning, but i appreciated the mark earning gesture. The highlight however was still to come as the group finished the presentation with a short video interview with a woman descended from a slave. Whilst i may not agree with their method for getting this video, namely by stopping every black person they saw in the street and asking 'are you related to any slaves', the clip provided a valuable insight into the subject matter.
My portuguese for foreigners class on the other hand is unsurprisingly unenjoyable. The teacher is very nice, but as she explained on the first day, she doesn't know much about grammar....which i guess is fine..... if your not paying to learn grammar....which I am. In addition the people in our class are all at diffferent levels despite the level establishing exam we did on the first day. Im guessing that those in charge in the department, having already hit the caipirinhas, decided to facilitate their job by putting anyone who knew more than 3 words in portuguese, but weren't fluent, into my class. The only redeeming feature of the entire thing is the bizarre but irrelevant fact that 25% of the group are called Chris. (There is also a woman that looks like she might have been called chris before a rather painful and expensive operation, but this is mere speculation)
Speaking more generally, i have began to notice some differences between my classes here and my lectures back in Bristol;
1. The earliest class starts at 7.30 am and the last finishes at 10pm (enough to make anyone feel slightly suicidal)
2. Classes can be up to 4 hours in length (enough to make anyone feel very suicidal ... especially if like me they are the sort of guy who checks his watch from about 20 minutes in)
3. If the teacher doesn't fancy turning up he won't
4. People here have a different concept of what is meant by 'class time'.
It is fair to say students here take a more relaxed approach to their lectures, arriving in general about 10-20 minutes late. However it is not uncommon for people to wander in much later (the record i've seen is 1 hour and a half). Once inside the lecture room, brazilians feel no obligation to sit quietly and listen, on the contrary people chat, flirt, wander round the class, listen to ipod's, and leave and come back later without any explanation. However there have been two moments in class that in terms of hilarity and sheer audacity, outweigh all these others.
Firstly, about halfway through a lecture, a loud and embarrasing ringtone reverberated throughout the class. Instead of apologising and switching his phone to silent, the guy responsible answered and preceeded to have a conversation that went something like 'hi...yeah, just in class....not really....haha..yeah i know.....yeah...alright see you then...ciao' (aproximate translation). The lecturer couldn't have looked less bothered.
Secondly, in a cinema class which had started unusually promptly, a young man who had to be fair arrived on time, stood up and left the room after about 15 minutes, only to return 20 minutes later with a full continental breakfast of coffee, juice, croissant and fruit salad which he preceeded to lay out in front of him on the desk and slowly munch his way through. Again no reaction from the lecturer....I only wish i'd had my camera.
Leaving lessons behind (sadly without returning with breakfast), I finally went some way to acheiving my goal of being alternative by hitting a reggae festival at night on the north of the island. The journey alone merited the ticket price. Having asked some vaguely jamaican looking people if they knew the way to the gig, we ended up at the back of a bus where we struck up an immediate friendship with a group of thirty brazilian reggae enthusiasts, and joined them in drinking, singing and dancing.
When we got to the festival we were stopped and frisked by bouncers at the door, whom i guess were aiming to prevent anyone with drugs entering the festival. However searching people for drugs at a reggae festival is a bit like searching women for bizarrely tall hats at the doors of Royal Ascot, and judging by the potent smell of marajuana eminating from the venue, i'm guessing a degree of leniancy was adopted. The music was awesome with a group called 'Alpha Blondie' headlining, and dj's and other reggae groups playing well into the early hours. I was only slightly underprepared for the icy nightime winds as my portuguese had once again let me down. I had read the venue's online description as 'an inside arena that crates the illusion of being outside'. I subsequently discovered that it was an 'outside arena that creates the illusion of being inside.' Oh well. Overall though a great 'alternative' night was had by all. Perhaps i'll finally be accepted into the Dojo's wednesday crew in Bristol. Probably not though.
As for my new office, i am sad to report it has proved less than satisfactory. I have already been told off for talking too loudly, drinking and putting two chairs by one computer, an apparently heinous crime despite the fact that 80% of the chairs in here are currently vacant. Although i have managed to persuade the attendant not to call the federal police, i think I will be writing from home in the future.
Until then....
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
So these oysters are in fact completely raw?......good
Having spent the last 15 minutes deliberating over what to write in my first sentence, i'm a little dissapointed that this was the best I could come up with. Oh well, it can only get better.
With an entire month in Floripa under my belt, my portuguese is still iffy at best, but otherwise I feel I am having an enjoyable and productive time here. Given that my primary reason for being here is to improve my portuguese, you may disagree with me but my overriding emotion is one of happiness that I am settling into Brazilian life a bit more. Whilst there may still be an invisible sign saying 'gringo' above my head I have made several key steps forward.
1. I am now able to do the shopping in under 2 hours. (I am also a little more aware that being adventurous is not always a good plan if you plan on leaving the toilet the following day)
2. We have made friends with a taxi driver. Carlos Max is a bit of a hero, its just a shame he keeps trying to rip us off by turning off the meter. Carlos if your reading this, I want to let you know that its a very mean thing to do, and if you insist on behaving in this way we won't be giving you any more english lessons.
3. I have managed to locate two of the seven parcels my mum has sent me from the UK. Thanks mum, i'm eating the percy pigs as we speak.
4. We've got a local called CSC. And we're mates with the guys that work there. And they're Brazilian...cash back. The Centro Social de Cerveja is located a mere 3 minutes walk from my house and is nothing short of awesome. They have live music 5 nights a week, barbecued meats and fish served tapas-style, as well as copious amounts of beer and cocktails, all at suprisingly, bordering on alarmingly cheap prices. Definitely worth a visit if your not put off by the 15 hour plane journey.
On the subject of good bars, we spent the friday night at a mexican style joint with the obligatory sombreros, fajitas and festive music in the background. This was a personal favourite. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh9BbalDxRE. The highlight of the bar was without doubt the 'special shot' served by a lively mejicano who forced one of my unsuspecting mates to down a triple measure of tequila before grabbing his head and shaking it vigourously, leaving him dazed, confused and with an extra 17 reais on his bill. Magic.
Aside from visiting the aforementioned bars, the highlight of my second week of classes was missing some classes to go on a trip around the island with a big group of foreign students *note to self, if you want to get a good idea of the geography of the island choose a coach with seats less ideally suited for sleeping. We visited 4 beaches in total, including the beautiful but windy Praia Joaquina, where we sipped beer and ate a meal of freshly caught fish overlooking the sea. We also stopped off at 'Project Tamar', a turtle charity whose bizarre aim seemed to be to 'save' the turtles by 'rescuing' them from the sea and putting them in what can only be described as an oversized paddling pool. I was thinking of pointing out to one of the members of staff that the turtles might actually prefer the sea, given that it is, after all, their natural habitat. A mixture of hope that i had simply misunderstood the portuguese and fear that i would cause a fight, dissuaded me.
The trip was also a good chance to get to know some other people, and speak some broken portuguese/french/spanish/english. It was nice to meet some portuguese people in particular. I view speaking with them as a sort of Sainsbury's basics version of speaking with brazilians, its more or less the same but you know in your heart of hearts its not the real thing. There are about 80 portuguese at the university but they have a bit of a reputation amongst the brazilians for keeping themselves to themselves and not socialising with people from other countries. I found that this wasn't the case however, and in fact we were invited to have dinner and drinks with some of them later in the week. Admittedly when we went everyone else was portuguese but at least it was a step in the right direction.
A chance to speak our tesco's finest brazilian (if you will allow me to continue with the slightly bizarre supermarket metaphor) presented itself on sunday night when we invited my first brazilian friend Ronaldo and his girlfriend out for a drink as a sort of 'thanks for not kidnapping, drugging or selling us into the sex trade' gesture. As it happened, they suggested that we went to a little village near by called S.Antonio de Lisboa to sample some local delicacies. I was relaxing with some delicious crab and prawn stuffed bread washed down with cold beer, when a tray of oysters was brought out. Not wanting to offend our brazilian friends, who had after all taken us out for dinner, I tried one, realising only as it slid down my throat that it was completely raw. I confirmed my suspicion with Ronaldo, who chuckled and compared the texture to snot before tucking into another. I do not pretend to be a master chef but it seems to me a bit of cooking wouldn't do any harm.
That being said, it was still a fun night and very kind of them to take us, especially given that the length of our friendship was the 1hr 10 transfer to Floripa airport. They dropped us back home and we went pretty much straight to bed.
I love 8.20am mondays.
On another note
As you may have realised, I am still about two weeks behind in my blogging. I am trying to get up to date, but writing a weekly blog is almost as hard to keep up with as a cross between the roadrunner cartoon and Usain Bolt.
I'll leave you with that image...
With an entire month in Floripa under my belt, my portuguese is still iffy at best, but otherwise I feel I am having an enjoyable and productive time here. Given that my primary reason for being here is to improve my portuguese, you may disagree with me but my overriding emotion is one of happiness that I am settling into Brazilian life a bit more. Whilst there may still be an invisible sign saying 'gringo' above my head I have made several key steps forward.
1. I am now able to do the shopping in under 2 hours. (I am also a little more aware that being adventurous is not always a good plan if you plan on leaving the toilet the following day)
2. We have made friends with a taxi driver. Carlos Max is a bit of a hero, its just a shame he keeps trying to rip us off by turning off the meter. Carlos if your reading this, I want to let you know that its a very mean thing to do, and if you insist on behaving in this way we won't be giving you any more english lessons.
3. I have managed to locate two of the seven parcels my mum has sent me from the UK. Thanks mum, i'm eating the percy pigs as we speak.
4. We've got a local called CSC. And we're mates with the guys that work there. And they're Brazilian...cash back. The Centro Social de Cerveja is located a mere 3 minutes walk from my house and is nothing short of awesome. They have live music 5 nights a week, barbecued meats and fish served tapas-style, as well as copious amounts of beer and cocktails, all at suprisingly, bordering on alarmingly cheap prices. Definitely worth a visit if your not put off by the 15 hour plane journey.
On the subject of good bars, we spent the friday night at a mexican style joint with the obligatory sombreros, fajitas and festive music in the background. This was a personal favourite. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh9BbalDxRE. The highlight of the bar was without doubt the 'special shot' served by a lively mejicano who forced one of my unsuspecting mates to down a triple measure of tequila before grabbing his head and shaking it vigourously, leaving him dazed, confused and with an extra 17 reais on his bill. Magic.
Aside from visiting the aforementioned bars, the highlight of my second week of classes was missing some classes to go on a trip around the island with a big group of foreign students *note to self, if you want to get a good idea of the geography of the island choose a coach with seats less ideally suited for sleeping. We visited 4 beaches in total, including the beautiful but windy Praia Joaquina, where we sipped beer and ate a meal of freshly caught fish overlooking the sea. We also stopped off at 'Project Tamar', a turtle charity whose bizarre aim seemed to be to 'save' the turtles by 'rescuing' them from the sea and putting them in what can only be described as an oversized paddling pool. I was thinking of pointing out to one of the members of staff that the turtles might actually prefer the sea, given that it is, after all, their natural habitat. A mixture of hope that i had simply misunderstood the portuguese and fear that i would cause a fight, dissuaded me.
The trip was also a good chance to get to know some other people, and speak some broken portuguese/french/spanish/english. It was nice to meet some portuguese people in particular. I view speaking with them as a sort of Sainsbury's basics version of speaking with brazilians, its more or less the same but you know in your heart of hearts its not the real thing. There are about 80 portuguese at the university but they have a bit of a reputation amongst the brazilians for keeping themselves to themselves and not socialising with people from other countries. I found that this wasn't the case however, and in fact we were invited to have dinner and drinks with some of them later in the week. Admittedly when we went everyone else was portuguese but at least it was a step in the right direction.
A chance to speak our tesco's finest brazilian (if you will allow me to continue with the slightly bizarre supermarket metaphor) presented itself on sunday night when we invited my first brazilian friend Ronaldo and his girlfriend out for a drink as a sort of 'thanks for not kidnapping, drugging or selling us into the sex trade' gesture. As it happened, they suggested that we went to a little village near by called S.Antonio de Lisboa to sample some local delicacies. I was relaxing with some delicious crab and prawn stuffed bread washed down with cold beer, when a tray of oysters was brought out. Not wanting to offend our brazilian friends, who had after all taken us out for dinner, I tried one, realising only as it slid down my throat that it was completely raw. I confirmed my suspicion with Ronaldo, who chuckled and compared the texture to snot before tucking into another. I do not pretend to be a master chef but it seems to me a bit of cooking wouldn't do any harm.
That being said, it was still a fun night and very kind of them to take us, especially given that the length of our friendship was the 1hr 10 transfer to Floripa airport. They dropped us back home and we went pretty much straight to bed.
I love 8.20am mondays.
On another note
As you may have realised, I am still about two weeks behind in my blogging. I am trying to get up to date, but writing a weekly blog is almost as hard to keep up with as a cross between the roadrunner cartoon and Usain Bolt.
I'll leave you with that image...
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Barbecues, beer, football and robbery at gun point....just another average week in Brazil
On saturday 14th of august i awoke in a cold sweat with a very uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Lying in my bed, I began to run through the possible reasons in my head as to why i was feeling so dodgy; was it just a hangover from the disgusting but very cheap cachaca 51? Was it something dodgy that i ate? (i had long suspected that the university's worryingly cheap chicken pasties had less chicken and more pigeon inside). Was it some Tropical disease i had managed to pick up from one of the friendly mosquitos who seem to treat my arms as an open buffet? Had i reached the stage of mental cultural isolation that the Bristol international office's graph of homesickness had warned me about?
Upon logging onto my computer however, i found that there was an entirely different reason behind my predicament. The Premier League season 2010/2011 was about to get underway and i had completely forgotten. I quickly got dressed and having met up with some mates from the Uni we began a search for somewhere to watch chelsea in the day's late kick off (about midday our time). At best I was expecting to find some bar claiming to have something to do with Ireland down a side alley, showing the game on a tiny black and white telly with commentary in some indistinguishable eastern european language, and with a fat brazilian man swearing and hitting the aerial every 5 minutes to stop the picture going fuzzy. Instead we found the 'Black Swan', an english pub in the middle of Lagoa serving european larger and traditional pub fair, with firm favourites such as ye olde club sandwich in plentiful supply. We were also able to watch the game, albeit on a confusingly large number of different screens, giving the less than pleasant impression of being in a room with 20 Didier Drogbas. Needless to say i'm still having nightmares.
Whilst our morning was about as traditionally brazilian as a bottle of HP sauce, the afternoon was a different story. We had been invited to a house party in the near by area, and the lure of our first 'churrasco' made it all the more exciting. Brazil is famous for these churrascos, a type of barbecue built into a wall with long metal skewers balancing meat and fish (and vegetables if my friend Beth has anything to do with it) above hot coals. We were greeted at the door by some deceptively brazilian looking guys (I found out subsequently that they were spanish, but they still fitted into the category of 'not english') and paid our £6 contribution towards food and drink. We spent the next 10 hours speaking portuguese with a variety of brazilian and international students, eating the entire cast of Dr Doolittle (thankfully minus eddie murphy), drinking caipirinhas, beer, sangria and some anonymous orange cocktail they pulled out when they thought no one was looking and generally loving being in Brazil (at least until the sun went down and it got stupidly cold).
I woke up the following day feeling as happy and relaxed as I had since arriving here. We had arranged the previous night to go to a friend's house for lunch and so I set off around midday in blazing sunshine with two of my housemates Sophie and Nuno. We had been waiting about 20 mins at our nearest bus stop (i'll save my rant about the wonderfully impractical Floripa bus system for another time) when a slightly dirty and dishevelled man came and stood next to us.
We had been warned about the ways to avoid potential muggers; not flashing phones or cameras around, not talking in english and generally trying to pass ourselves off as Brazilian. However at midday on a sunday I will admit our guard was down. Between Sophie's bright blonde hair, my arsenal shirt and Nuno's 'metrosexual' scarf, i think its fair to say that we did not blend into our surroundings as succesfully as we might have. It also didn't help that our bus stop was opposite a renowned Favela and crack-den. (we were only told this subsequently and it certainly wasn't mentioned on our map of the local area)
However we were still unaware of any danger as the man began to talk with Nuno in a low voice, a conversation me and Sophie assumed was friendly banter. A few alarm bells started going off when Nuno handed over his mobile phone and some cash to the man, but a small part of me hoped he was some kind of travelling mobile repair man. The man then turned his attention to me and Sophie asking for our phones and threatening to shoot us if we didn't comply. I did what any self-respecting englishman would do when threatend by some foreign lout...i shrugged my shoulders and pretended i couldn't understand what he was saying. Unfortunately for Sophie her bright pink blackberry was resting in her lap. The guy saw it, and clearly unfazed by the prospect of being called a girl by his fellow favella dwellers, he demanded it, again threatening to shoot her. So she handed it over. Probably sensible.
As he was leaving he said, 'i'm sorry, this isn't the sort of thing i do normally'. Whilst i am a firm believer in the phrase 'don't judge a book by its cover,' in this case his general appearance and manner suggested that this was exactly the sort of thing he did normally. Prick.
We spent the rest of the day in a case of mild shock. We went to our friends for lunch as brazilian police don't work on a sunday, but with classes beginning in earnest the following day (at 8.20 in the morning i might add) we got an early night.
Compared to the chaos of signing up for classes, attending the first week of lectures was fairly straightforward. Having said that we still managed to get lost on the first day in typical exchange student style. We arrived at what we thought was our brazilian history class in good time and sat fairly near the front ready to be keen and enthusiastic. It was only after about half an hour that my view of the class changed from 'an unusual but interesting approach to studying brazilian history' to 'this has nothing whatsoever to do with brazilian history'. I poked the friendly brazilian guy next to me and he confirmed that we were actually in property law. Given the combined embarassment of making this mistake and then having to leave the class by squeezing between desks knocking books off tables as we went, we will not be making this mistake again in a hurry.
There was another surprise of a totally different nature in my football class. The session was not in a classroom studying muscle groups as I had feared, but instead a 6 aside tournament in the uni gymnasium. In the sort of cultural exchange that only happens on the football pitch, the brazilians taught me a variety of portuguese swearwords, and in return I taught them some of the unbeleivable tekkers I have picked up over the years. Apparently slide tackles aren't alowed.......woops.
We spent our nights during the week attending more on campus 'festas,' and frequenting a bar named 'Pida' which made up for its strange location in the middle of a children's playround by offering very cheap drinks and a good atmosphere. (it helped that half the university also went there before the 'festas' got going). However, at this stage I am slightly worried about the ramifications for my teeth of drinking large amounts of caipirinhas, as the local recipe seems to be something like;
ingredients;
1 packet of sugar (preferrably large)
1 lime
1/2 a bottle of vodka/cachaca
2 cubes of ice
Preparation;
Pour the packet of sugar into the glass
Cut the lime in to quarters and place decoratively in the glass
Add 2 ice cubes but no more or people might actually enjoy the drink
Fill up with vodka or cachaca.
Stir well although there is no possible way to dissolve all that sugar
Come to think of it i might brush them now....
Upon logging onto my computer however, i found that there was an entirely different reason behind my predicament. The Premier League season 2010/2011 was about to get underway and i had completely forgotten. I quickly got dressed and having met up with some mates from the Uni we began a search for somewhere to watch chelsea in the day's late kick off (about midday our time). At best I was expecting to find some bar claiming to have something to do with Ireland down a side alley, showing the game on a tiny black and white telly with commentary in some indistinguishable eastern european language, and with a fat brazilian man swearing and hitting the aerial every 5 minutes to stop the picture going fuzzy. Instead we found the 'Black Swan', an english pub in the middle of Lagoa serving european larger and traditional pub fair, with firm favourites such as ye olde club sandwich in plentiful supply. We were also able to watch the game, albeit on a confusingly large number of different screens, giving the less than pleasant impression of being in a room with 20 Didier Drogbas. Needless to say i'm still having nightmares.
Whilst our morning was about as traditionally brazilian as a bottle of HP sauce, the afternoon was a different story. We had been invited to a house party in the near by area, and the lure of our first 'churrasco' made it all the more exciting. Brazil is famous for these churrascos, a type of barbecue built into a wall with long metal skewers balancing meat and fish (and vegetables if my friend Beth has anything to do with it) above hot coals. We were greeted at the door by some deceptively brazilian looking guys (I found out subsequently that they were spanish, but they still fitted into the category of 'not english') and paid our £6 contribution towards food and drink. We spent the next 10 hours speaking portuguese with a variety of brazilian and international students, eating the entire cast of Dr Doolittle (thankfully minus eddie murphy), drinking caipirinhas, beer, sangria and some anonymous orange cocktail they pulled out when they thought no one was looking and generally loving being in Brazil (at least until the sun went down and it got stupidly cold).
I woke up the following day feeling as happy and relaxed as I had since arriving here. We had arranged the previous night to go to a friend's house for lunch and so I set off around midday in blazing sunshine with two of my housemates Sophie and Nuno. We had been waiting about 20 mins at our nearest bus stop (i'll save my rant about the wonderfully impractical Floripa bus system for another time) when a slightly dirty and dishevelled man came and stood next to us.
We had been warned about the ways to avoid potential muggers; not flashing phones or cameras around, not talking in english and generally trying to pass ourselves off as Brazilian. However at midday on a sunday I will admit our guard was down. Between Sophie's bright blonde hair, my arsenal shirt and Nuno's 'metrosexual' scarf, i think its fair to say that we did not blend into our surroundings as succesfully as we might have. It also didn't help that our bus stop was opposite a renowned Favela and crack-den. (we were only told this subsequently and it certainly wasn't mentioned on our map of the local area)
However we were still unaware of any danger as the man began to talk with Nuno in a low voice, a conversation me and Sophie assumed was friendly banter. A few alarm bells started going off when Nuno handed over his mobile phone and some cash to the man, but a small part of me hoped he was some kind of travelling mobile repair man. The man then turned his attention to me and Sophie asking for our phones and threatening to shoot us if we didn't comply. I did what any self-respecting englishman would do when threatend by some foreign lout...i shrugged my shoulders and pretended i couldn't understand what he was saying. Unfortunately for Sophie her bright pink blackberry was resting in her lap. The guy saw it, and clearly unfazed by the prospect of being called a girl by his fellow favella dwellers, he demanded it, again threatening to shoot her. So she handed it over. Probably sensible.
As he was leaving he said, 'i'm sorry, this isn't the sort of thing i do normally'. Whilst i am a firm believer in the phrase 'don't judge a book by its cover,' in this case his general appearance and manner suggested that this was exactly the sort of thing he did normally. Prick.
We spent the rest of the day in a case of mild shock. We went to our friends for lunch as brazilian police don't work on a sunday, but with classes beginning in earnest the following day (at 8.20 in the morning i might add) we got an early night.
Compared to the chaos of signing up for classes, attending the first week of lectures was fairly straightforward. Having said that we still managed to get lost on the first day in typical exchange student style. We arrived at what we thought was our brazilian history class in good time and sat fairly near the front ready to be keen and enthusiastic. It was only after about half an hour that my view of the class changed from 'an unusual but interesting approach to studying brazilian history' to 'this has nothing whatsoever to do with brazilian history'. I poked the friendly brazilian guy next to me and he confirmed that we were actually in property law. Given the combined embarassment of making this mistake and then having to leave the class by squeezing between desks knocking books off tables as we went, we will not be making this mistake again in a hurry.
There was another surprise of a totally different nature in my football class. The session was not in a classroom studying muscle groups as I had feared, but instead a 6 aside tournament in the uni gymnasium. In the sort of cultural exchange that only happens on the football pitch, the brazilians taught me a variety of portuguese swearwords, and in return I taught them some of the unbeleivable tekkers I have picked up over the years. Apparently slide tackles aren't alowed.......woops.
We spent our nights during the week attending more on campus 'festas,' and frequenting a bar named 'Pida' which made up for its strange location in the middle of a children's playround by offering very cheap drinks and a good atmosphere. (it helped that half the university also went there before the 'festas' got going). However, at this stage I am slightly worried about the ramifications for my teeth of drinking large amounts of caipirinhas, as the local recipe seems to be something like;
ingredients;
1 packet of sugar (preferrably large)
1 lime
1/2 a bottle of vodka/cachaca
2 cubes of ice
Preparation;
Pour the packet of sugar into the glass
Cut the lime in to quarters and place decoratively in the glass
Add 2 ice cubes but no more or people might actually enjoy the drink
Fill up with vodka or cachaca.
Stir well although there is no possible way to dissolve all that sugar
Come to think of it i might brush them now....
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