Cariocas

• It is so weird to be in a country where everyone is so beautiful - all the brazilians look like hard bronzed mahogany planks. Their skin is -intensely- brown, their bodies are fit and toned and hairless, even the old people, so as superficial as it may sounds to have 'getting a tan' as no. 1 priority, it feels necessary for us right now as our paleness makes us stick out as 'gringos' (white people) massively!
• They are obsessed with themselves and their bodies - every beach and park will have a little outdoor gym type place with weights and traning things so the men (of literally all ages) with their oiled bodies can go and work out where the whole world can see them
• I assumed when I got here that more people would speak english but it seems that no one here does, although any attempt at the language is always greeted with smiles (not mocking!) and help if needed
• I also assumed that it would be more dangerous than it is which is why my photos are severely lacking in number because I havent taken valuables out - but, contrary to expectations, people dont't actually walk around with machine guns and randomly crash their cars and mopeds into you..
• Personal space is non-existent
• You will never get served first over a native - your food will arrive last even if you ordered it before everyone else in the restaurant
• Efficiency is non-existent

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

I am shit at this updating blog business but have the whole day free to occupy the glaring blank space that has pervaded my site.

So the flight was pretty fun, was pretty raucous because we were near this massive group of Asian guys who drank fuckloads throughout the entire flight. Me and Lizzie ended up standing right in the middle of them for 45 minutes at checkout with them drunkenly talking about us -about how posh we were, how they wanted to marry us, how our hair was nice although you need to watch out for girls with alice bands etc etc...

The House

is on top of the biggest steepest hill ever which we have to walk up every single day. We live in a really sick artsy bohemiany neighborhood though where the houses and buildings look colonial and old-world european. There are no tourists where we live, its a very local area with only cariocas (people from rio) so we stick out like a sore thumb whenever we go out and get lots of stares. But its good because already we're experiencing a side of Rio that that tourists don't get.

When we got to the house from the ariport, we were greeted by the lovely Lina who owns it and by sounds of a massive party - loud samba music, laughing, screaming - and were told that her 21 yr old son (PHWOAR) was shooting for his film project so the next 2 nights would be very loud. We later learnt that the film was about a group of people taking LSD and the end scene would consist of a massive orgy.

We were also greeted by this very old Alaskan dog which I actually touched and then later found out it has fleas. It is aaawwwful, I hate it. It smells of dog and I hate dog. Yuk.