The Last Month With A Few Repeats

This month has been crazy. For a start there was Carnaval. Before Carnaval commenced my host mother, another Australian Exchangee (Mat Gabel - Coolum, QLD) and I went to the home town of my host mother. It was fantastic to have a break from the huge bustling metropolitan of Sao Paulo. Whilst my host mother dealt with business concerning the family’s farm, Mat and I spent a lot of time looking round the city and mucking around with my two host cousins, Maria (11) and Ana (5). We also visited the farm and saw both the coffee and rubber tree plantations. We also sampled some rather strange and often revolting Brazilian fruits. 

After this four day trip we returned to Sao Paulo for the start of Carnaval. Mat, my host sister (Ana Luisa) and I were lucky enough to be able to parade in the Sambadromo in Sao Paulo with the Unidos do Peruche which was the first Samba School in Brazil to parade!! Unfortunately our Peruche flunked and came last in the first division but it is still a memory I will never forget. They sheer volume of colour and noise was incredible, not only was there thousands of people parading  and playing in the bands but also hundreds of thousands of onlookers in the stands. Following this we crashed and awoke at midday just in time to depart on yet another voyage. We travelled to a small town called Caconde which is north of Sao Paulo city close to the boarder with Minas Gerais (other state to the north). In this town my host father’s brother has a farm which did belong to my host grandfather. We stayed here for the remainder of Carnaval. The small town of Caconde with only 45,000 residents holds huge Carnaval celebrations where we met many new people who were all very keen to speak to two Australians and Jessica, the name used by my host sister when she felt like pretending to be an Aussie. After this hectic few days I think I slept for a solid 24 hours. 

Returning to school after Carnaval was not so much fun though I quickly got back into it after the two week holiday. In the first week back at school I went with my family and Mat to the beach town Santos for a day. The highlight of the day was going for a swim. Something that neither of us had done for 2 months. We didn’t swim at a beach in Santos due to the terrible pollution instead we drove 20min to the beach area of Guaruja which is where Pele and Roberto Carlos have their beach houses. The surf was pumping and it was good to finally get into the water. 

On the weekend of  the 19^th of March I travelled to the famed Rio de Janeiro with my hockey team Casa de Macau to participate in the first round of the National Brazilian Hockey Championships for the 2011 season. Unfortunately my team drew the short straw and had to play the two hardest teams in the country. We lost both games 2-1 but they were close and  we were very unlucky to lose because we had the majority of possession. After the second game a TV reporter saw my Australian Flag headband and wanted to interview me for sporTV on the Globo Channel (national television). With my awful Portugues I still manage to understand his questions and reply half decently.

More recently I visited Santos again with two other exchange students living in Sao Paulo meeting up with another Australian while we were there. We just chilled on the beach all day which was another nice change of pace from the usually hectic lives of a Paulistano (Resident of Sao Paulo City).