The first day in Rio was quite daunting because we hadn't met our country co-ordinator Felipe yet and hadn't been told what we were meant to do for the day. We went exploring and grocery shopping which was intimidating because of the stares but also highly amusing as absolutely none of us can speak any of the portugese language and have to get by either with broken spanish (which is completely ineffective) or pointing and grunting.

Went for a walk on flamengo beach but weather wasn't particularly great, was only like 28, and a bit cloudy, and had amazing fresh coconut milk by the beach. We met Felipe, our in-country co-ordinator and he decided to have our orientation meeting over some cold beers in the local bar at the bottom of the hill. It was nice and chilled and informal, we learnt loads about Felipe himself who is such a cool crazy guy, and about our individual projects, and tried some brazilian beer and their national spirit, cachaca.

Back in the house we got chatting to one of the volunteers whos been here 4 weeks, Clare, and learnt learnt from her that previous volunteers have been held up at knife point and at gun point and mugged for their posessions... eek! and another volunteer, Rosie, learnt from Clare that her project was in the most dangerous favela in all of south america - it is run by drug lords and people walk around with machine guns, although it will be safe for her to work in as there are only two reasons why people like us would be in that favela: 1) to volunteer in which case they would not shoot someone there to help the community 2) to buy drugs in which case they would not shoot a customer...

We went out for dinner in this incredible restaurant which was a buffet with absolutely amazing meat choices and then you weigh your plate and pay by how much it weighs. We went back to our local bar to try some real brazilian caipirinhas, sat on the street amidst the very artsy local crowd, chatted for ages then took a cab to Lapa which is the centre of Rio samba scene: there were literally thousands of people having a street party in the square with dance clubs all around