Finally some RSS action

I've always failed at keeping journals. I get behind and then I get overwhelmed and instead of catching up, I just quit. I have like six empty books at home from when I thought it would be different.

BUT NO THAT'S NOT THE POINT. This is DIFFERENT. I live to give your Google Readers a new bold entry. I just got back home from a day at the beach and most of my friends here are still gone on a weekend trip to Ilha Grande and I'm listening to some old Lil' Wayne and I'm ready to BLOG. I'ma do blurbs though because too many details are hard to follow.

ON THE FAVELA: I finally got the balls to take a pic of the favela itself. Here's where the kids I teach live. I still haven't personally seen any drug deals.

ON THE KIDS: Our classes have gotten HUGE - the morning one is now about eight and the afternoon one is about sixteen ranging in age from 4 to 13. Needless to say the afternoon one is MUCH HARDER. Last week we did the alphabet, the body, and family. The kids really love to teach us Portuguese so we've started teaching them in English and then letting them tell us what the words are in Portuguese. It's really handy for me - I'm learning more from them than from my phrasebook. Friday we took both groups on a field trip to a park about 15 minutes away and just played for two hours. Brazilian kids have all these games that make no sense. Some of them on Friday tried to teach me a game that was throwing a ball around to others in the circle while saying a color and then without warning, everyone scatters and one person throws the ball at other people and then the throwing at others just continues. And their version of duck-duck-gray-duck has a ball and a song and an undetermined number many laps around the circle.

These are three girls from the morning class: Kassia, Jessika, and Tiffany. Tiffany asked me the other day what her name was in English and when I told her it was the exact same she got really disappointed. Apparently my name in Portuguese is "Mia." I don't understand how a different language constitutes a change in consonant but they've all started calling me Mia.

The older kids from the afternoon session at the park. Flora on the right has mad leg muscle.


Luara (not Laura) is maybe my favorite. She has this frizzy hair and is missing her four top front teeth and so really just looks like this crazy old woman. She's really, really smart, too.

ON THE HOUSE: Sometimes I like to pretend I'm on Big Brother. I'm living with 16 other volunteers (along with the two maids and a random French man and the house owner and her son, Timmy, who is 11 years old and bilingual and autistic and excellent at loud story-telling). We have two bathrooms we're allowed to use and two we're not but do anyway. The house is fairly large but the bedrooms are NOT and with the arrival of three new girls yesterday my room went from being full enough at five people to being crammed at eight. Among the 16 we have a diva who takes two hours in the bathroom both in the morning and before bed and we have a weird man who says creepy things and we have a few romances (and one potential secret romance between the diva and the French man) and we have some people with drinking problems. Anyway, the best part of living in a big house is the constant gossip (Anne you'd love it here). The sad part about having everybody gone for the weekend is the total boredom an almost-empty house brings.

This one night we made pizza and party punch! So cute! This is in the kitchen!

ON THE NIGHTLIFE: The timing of going out here is pushed back about four hours. We start drinking at like 11, get to a club/the street/whatever at 12:30 and get back to the house at like 6:30. Naps abound in Rio. They sell a drink in Lapa called hy-fy which is just like big cups of half vodka and half Fanta. CLASSY.

OTHER THINGS I DID THIS WEEK: got a R$6 pedicure (that's four bucks), lost my voice completely (which doesn't help when I have to speak Portuguese, these museum guides today looked at me with a combination of confusion and disquiet), got stuck on the Metro (an slow man exited in front of my friend Krista and me and we had to walk back from a stop farther at 11:30 last night), was told by the children that I looked vermelha (that's red; thanks kiddies), had like 8 churros, missed Pitchfork (the live feed won't work either), missed you too

This week's goal: shorter and more frequent posts! And jeez everyone comment more before I get insecure.