Argh, didn't write on here yesterday and now I feel like there's so much that's happened and I don't want to forget anything. So prepare for waffle!!
Yesterday was our first day going to our project. We had to meet Felipe and his partner Kris (female) at 9 oçlock which felt horrible, but was nothing compared to what's to come!! We had to walk allllll the way down the hill then to the Metro stop. Then it was 8 stops on the metro, then change to a different line and go allllllll the way to the final stop. It's called Pavuna (if anyone's interested..?!). From there we have to get a bus (absolutely ridiculously rickety thing, I think Felipe said that the driver said the bus we were on was on its last day, hah!). The whole journey takes about an hour and a half which means that we have to get up at 6.30am every morning from now on :O definitely going to take some adjusting to!
We got off the bus, and began to walk up the hill into the favella. To begin with, the road was tarmaced and there were little shops selling water and snacks and stuff, and I was thinking that this really wasn't too bad. Then the tarmac stopped. The road is just hideous. It's literally just rubble and clay and its completely covered in shreds of plastic bags and bottles and bits of metal (thank goodness for that tetanus jab!!) and just general crap (don't think it's literally crap, fingers crossed!). It's not far up that road until you get to our project house. It's a lovely little area, despite the surrounding crap. And I say lovely, but by Western standards it certianly isn't... anyway, it's good enough!!
The lady who runs the project is called Olivia and she is absolutely fantastic. She was a volunteer with i-to-i who worked on the same project 2 years ago. Then, it was being run by an absolute arsehole who ended up getting fired because he was using all the money for himself, and kept selling off bits of their land and the fridge and freezer and stuff. Bad times. So Olivia and her friend went home and sold everything they owned and did loads of fundraising so that they could buy the house back and re-start everything. It's only Olivia who's there at the moment, but they really have done a fantastic job! Since she bought it, she's managed to build another big hall our of back which even has a stage so that the kids can perform their circus and dance acts (which they absolutely love! They showed us lots of it today!). Olivia also raised money to have a bit of the road outside the project concreted. Unfortunately because of all the rain recently (there has been a LOT of rain, we got flooded today :O flipping tropical storm!) it has started to collapse already. Would be great to be able to help out and raise some more money to do it properly and do more of it.....hmmm!
The kids there are absolutely fantastic. We were all really shy yesterday and didn't feel like we got very far with them. We are only with them for 3 hours every morning because its the school holidays so (for some reason) they all go home in the afternoon. After the shyness of yesterday, today was brrrrrrilllllliant! We got there and the kids were just starting to arrive. I began by joining in with the boys playing football. Which was tragic I may add. It is totally true what they say about Brazilians and football, and with my mediocre skills it was pretty embarassing. They seemed to appreciate the effort though.
After that, we played a few name games to try to get to grips with all the kids names. So far I've got about 6, the rest are 'hey, you'. Suits me! They were really inquisitive and asked us all loads of questions. They were all really surprised at how we weren't married and didn't have any kids yet, yikes!! Danni and I also played piggy in the middle with a few of them, and attempted a teensy bit of English teaching. Then they showed us lots of their circus skills. They're all like little monkeys! They've got so much energy and are all really cheerful (apart from one boy called Alison (?!) who keeps crying, and the others tease him - they were kicking footballs at him while he was lying on the floor sobbing, so I told them off, yeaaaaah! - but aparently he's just attention seeking... we'll have to suss that one out!)
The afternoon was compleeeetely different to the morning. We went with Olivia back to her apartment (she lives with her boyfriend - possibly soon to be ex-boyfriend! - and his mum and brother in a little suburb surrounded by more favelas). She took us to a place for lunch where there is a massive buffet and you just load up your plate with whatever and then it gets weighed and you pay by weight. It was yummy, but I couldn't help but take a little bit of everything which I didn't recognise - didn't get anything I didn't like so big *thumbs up* for that one!
From there we caught the metro to Urugaina where there are loads of art and craft shops where we bought some paper and paints to start making a Carnival Mural with the kiddiwinks tomorrow. It's amazing how cheap everything is there, definitely going to stock up on certain stuff!!
However, it was absolutely peeing it down all afternoon - a proper tropical storm. So, Olivia took us to her favourite place in Rio: an absolutely gorgeous Art Nouveau cafe. The whole place is covered in gigantic mirrors and fancy lights and stained glass - fabulous! It sells hundreds of different cakes (want to try every sort again, but definitely shouldn't if I want to fit into my carnival costume!) and we had proper tea (very impressive!) and even shared a bottle of wine (woops, sorry mum!!). It was absolutely lush and we are definitely going back there for Danni's birthday in April.
We've just trecked back up to the house, up the hill which is gradually turning into a total waterfall. Aparently if it rains too much we can't get out because it floods at the bottom and the water's too dirty that it's unsafe to get through. I really hope it doesn't because I'm really looking forward to going in and starting to paint tomorrow!
And that's 'HOW'for NOW
Lots of love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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