Day 15 - Monlavade

Boa tarde amigos, tudo bem?

Stop 4, and we´re back on track with friendly hosts in a very welcoming city. I´ve not got much time at this internet cafe from the dawn of time (no photos here), so I´ll be brief.

As well as the usual activities here (meeting the mayor, visiting schools, a church, a massive steel mill), we saw a little bit of the real problems facing Brasil at the moment:

- visit to homes for recovering drug addicts - heartwarming, strong courageous people. Good guitarist there too. They follow a 3-pronged tradition: religion, discipline and work, and stay on a 9-month recovery programme, voluntarily.

- visit to home for the poor and infirm - really sad... these are the locals who have no-one else to look after them, and no money to live. Mostly they were very old, but there was a 10-year old severely diabled girl there who had been abandoned, and has nowhere else to go.

I´m not sure what yet, but I will be doing something to help when I get home, even if it just means sending out jiffy bags with small gifts, copied CDs, pens and pencils, whatever. Honestly, giving someone one of our rotary badges is a big thing for these people.

I´m also going to see if there´s anything I can do to get some computers out to some of the schools. Whenever I get my camera out, kids are always really interested and inquisitive to try, to play, to use.

Tomorrow we´re visiting Ouro Preto, an apparently beautiful ex colonial town 100km away from here, and then going on to see our new adopted team, Atletico Gallo, playing in Belo Horizante. Sunday - onto Stop 5, Ipatinga.

brasil day 12

boa tarde!

The town we're in at the moment, Itabira, is industrial, very hilly, fairly pretty, but a bit of a crap experience all told. The rotarians are neither terribly friendly, organised, communicative or hospitable - i've been palmed off into a v. scummy student house with no english speakers. As a consequence, I've been speaking pidgeon portuguese of the shoddiest kind.

There is nowhere to change money! Apparently the man in the town's biggest bank asked "what do WE need dollars for?"

Nice.

We've done some good things nonetheless: a mountain hike, a disabled school and a massive iron ore mine - monster trucks ! Tomorrow we're meeting the mayor, and if I understand correctly, a place where they harvest human milk. Next day we're moving on.

Fact: in brazil, all clocks in public places are broken.

Brasil photos!

I've managed to get some photos up. Due to technical reasons I'm afraid the photos take a fair old while to download, so please be patient. There are 4 pages so far, which you'll find:

Page 1 - here
Page 2 - here
Page 3 - here
Page 4 - here

Bloody apple mac

Totally broken. Because of a known hardware issue. They'll fix it for free, but at the moment, it is just a heavy bit of useless plastic I'm carrying around Brasil!

Ironically, Apple emailed me to tell me that the new ibook range is now out, which look very tasty indeed. Rach will never let me buy one.

Day 8

Not a massive amount of interest to bore you with. On Wednesday we left Sete Lagaos (sad to go) and after a 10-hour coach journey on crap roads (not all tarmac, loads of slow lorries) we arrived at Uberlande, a ´small´city with a population of 800,000. It´s not on many maps and is in no guide books, so it feels like a real forgotten outpost. This is where the Rotary district conference is being held.

We´re all in a hotel, which is nice after being hosted as we have a little more time to ourselves. Had my laptop been working I´d have been enjoying the broadband pipe into the room, as it is, I´m having to use the hotel´s office computer for this.

We´ve not seen a great deal here - the best thing was a music school, with 2000 part time students. No money, few resources, but loads of enthusiasm and talent on show. No french horns strangely.

Duty-wise, Stef and I were kidnapped by Alfredo on the first night, so we missed the opening ceremony - thank god - 3.5 hours of processions, speeches, zzzzzzzzz. We presented yesterday in front of 100 or so people, and for some reason the slide of cats Jimmy and Maggie got spontaneous applause.

Last night we saw a really funny covers band, who played some Brazilian music (including that of a good band - Skank), and some English songs, the lyrics of which they clearly couldn´t understand.

Today: museums, afternoon off (at a sports centre), then the ´Governer´s Ball´, which starts at 11. Not quite sure when Brazilians sleep.

It´s official - we´re moving to Edinburgh!

Rachel´s 2 day interview excursion north of the border paid off, and she has been offered a job!

It was for the company she most wanted to work for, a firm which specialises in conservation. She starts on Monday 24th May, and so we´re going to move up the day before.

Marvellous!

You know you´re somewhere strange when....

...amongst formaldehyde animals in a school lab you come across a human embryo. 6 months old. Fully formed. OH. MY. SWEET. LORD.

alfredo

The most interesting person we've met so far is a man called alfredo. He took stef and I for lunchtime beer and cheeze on the second day, and we've seen a lot of him since.

Alfredo facts:
- He has the most amazing house, which looks like a museum... Antique artifacts of every type all over.
- He lives with his sister and her daughter. "all the disadvantages of being married, with none of the advantages!"
- He collects music, and has over 6000 records and 3000 cds. High fidelity-style index system.
- He is a communist, who was involved in the revolution in the 60s.
- He hates America, and frequently writes articles to this effect .
- He had to leave Sunday's barbeque after a man with whom he had a feud over a woman arrived.

suffice to say, he's not typical of the people we've met otherwise!

technology

The apple has more or less packed in, so I'm giving this a go using PDA, T610 mobile, bluetooth, and local web access provided by net2roam.

typing on this thing is slow, so don't expect any tolstoy-esqe entries any more!

Brasil!

Greetings one and all from Sete Lagaos, Brazil!

It´s the second day here, and our feet have barely touched the ground. We arrived at Belo Horisante airport yesterday morning, via Manchester, Heathrow and Sao Paulo. There was a welcome committee of various rotarians and all of our hosts, and after a few photos, we got in various cars for the trip to our first port of call, Sete Lagaos. It´s a beautiful city, named after its seven lakes. Everywhere is green with trees of all sorts lining the streets.

I am staying with Goncalo, who is el presidente of the local Rotary club. He is a very nice man who thankfully spent a few years in America, so his English is pretty good. Better than my lousy Portuguese anyway. He lives in an amazing house, built himself - on 3 split levels, swimming pool, and broadband internet!! Civilisation! I´m having a slight problem though, as the screen on the apple mac spluttered yesterday and has since stopped working. GRRR!!

Anyway. We were told before we left that we would be kept busy... and this was no lie. We have done so much and met so many people in the last 2 days that I feel like I´ve been been here for ages. So far:

Yesterday - lunch at a sort of pick and mix restaurant where you weigh your plate to see how much you pay. Food excellent - meat, beans, pinepple juice and my first taste of a wonderful alcaholic drink called caipininha, which brought tears to my eyes. At this point, totally and utterly exhausted. Back home, feeling a little homesick and emotional. Sleep and the three ´shs´, felt human and much happier.

Then we went off to a local TV studio, where team leader Melany was interviewed about the exchange. Very exciting. To be broadcast on Monday. While we were there it pissed down with rain, there was a rainbow. Still tired. Goncalo then took me for a few beers in a pub along with some fried root vegetable. Goncalo is an environmental scientist, and we had a very interesting chat about the world and how Brazilians view it. Home, emailed Rach, then out for dinner. Brill. More weigh your own food, and a band playing traditional country music. Everyone dances - absolutely everyone, and it´s not your english handbag thing, it´s full on hip thrusting samba stuff. We had a bit of a go with varying degrees of success. More Caiperinha, and I got a little drunk by accident.

I´m being summonned for dinner now, so I´ll do today quickly. Caves (massive), black beer in a deli, visited a house like a museum, went for a barbeque with football (knakked my knee), sauna, stopped off for some more live music, and at 6pm had a little sleep.

Ever wonder what kind of facial hair you have?

Beards and moustaches categorised here.

(rach's hair is long enough to make comedy beards now)

Digital camera purchasing

William saw my photos and has immediately bought the same camera as me and Chris from 7 day shop. Nearly £100 cheaper than mine was, grrrrrrrr.

Home

Crap flight back. Our bags were slightly overweight, and the man made us unpack and jettison the excess in front of the whole queue, which was highly humiliating, and sad as we had to give away lots of our nice books and chutneys. We then had an argument with a nasty dutch man who was hogging seats, and then the brand new entertainment system packed in so we couldn't watch movies or play games. grrr!

After a stop off in guildford, we're happy to be home in Scunny. Straight back into action - Rotary presentation last night, a run through (in English) of what we're going to do when we're out there (in Portuguese).

We're off to Sheffield today to sort out house and a few bits and pieces and have a pint with the lads, then we're off to Ireland for the weekend to see William's new factory and sink a few guinnesses. Then it's back to prepare for Rach's sister's wedding, lots of Portuguese lessons, more presentations, and kicking off the job searching process. fun!

Photos!

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

Just so you know, most of the photos put up so far have been links from other sites. All the ones you see here are ours.