Rio´s rains don´t dampen my spirits

Rio has a reputation as being the city that celebrates the most holidays in the world, I believe this to be the case because Cariocas hate to work and love to party. There´s a saying that the Paulistas (inhabitants of São Paulo) love to use to mock the Cariocas; they say that Cariocas will work when Jesus, who stands arms spread watching over Rio de Janeiro, places his hands together. This past month the city has particularly lived up to its reputation. This is the first week that I have actually had to work a full 5 days for lack of holidays celebrating saints, heros, workers...any excuse for a holiday. If a holiday falls on a Thursday a carioca is most likely to take the Friday off work too, if it falls on a Tuesday they take off Monday. Just recently there were 2 holidays in one week, one on a Tuesday, the other on a Thursday, so of course all universities closed for the whole week and my colleagues, most of whom are students as well as interns, were understandably irritated that the company didn´t operate the same policy as their universities.

The day of Saint George is not only celebrated by Catholics in Brazil but also by followers of the afro-brazilian religion Candomblé. The worship of Orixás, or gods, by African slaves shipped to Brazil was prohibited by the Catholic church and criminalized by the Brazilian government forcing Candomblé practitioners to seek methods to conceal their religion. Various Catholic saints that resembled similar qualities to Candomblé gods were worshiped in an attempt to keep traditions alive whilst fooling the authorities. Saint George replaced the Orixá ´Ogum´ because of his similar warrior characteristics.
I celebrated the day of Saint George by climbing the Sugar Loaf with two experienced climber friends. The majority of the ascent took place along steep trails amidst overgrown vegetation and across bare slanting rock, occasionally leading to large boulders from which we took in breath taking views of the Atlantic Ocean and Niterói, the city across the bay from Rio. A short part of the ascent involved myself being harnessed and roped to a sheer rock face and told to trust my legs and the shoes I´d been lent as I attempted to scale the 10 vertical metres of rock. Apart from a short episode of trembling thighs and a string of expletives I didn´t do a bad job. As I rested watching the vultures circling the mountain above me, boats entering and exiting the port and fishermen casting off from the rock, I couldn´t help but think how lucky I am to be living in this marvellous city.
We reached the top just in time to watch the sun set and see the first fireworks exploding across the city in celebration of Saint George. As it darkened in the distance flashes of lightning lit up the sky behind Corcovado and large black clouds descended on the city with promises of rain. We took the cable car down to the smaller of the two mountains then descended via another much easier trail, this time in the dark. Just as we rounded the corner of the road our car was parked on the rains arrived and began to pummel us til we were sopping within a few seconds. The drive home was terrifying but exhilirating as we couldn´t see out of the windows for the torrential downpour and had to navigate rivers instead of roads. The following morning brought bright sunshine and noone arriving in Rio that day would have guessed that the previous evening the streets had been flooded.

Brazilian Hell

I´ve been complaining recently that all I´ve been doing at work is reading, reading, reading, then today my ´supervisor´, lets call her that for argument´s sake, informed me she will be taking ONE MONTH´S leave as of the first of May. This means I will be in charge of anything and everything environment related, how on earth am I not going to screw this up? At least it will be a welcome respite from the endless reading. I just hope that the knowledge I´ve been cramming my mind with over the past two weeks has actually been absorbed.

My boss told me a story this morning about ´The Brazilian Hell´, in which a man chooses to live in Brazilian hell instead of, for example, American or Swiss hell, because in Brazil the generators don´t work to heat hell and the man who usually turns the spit on which we are eternally roasted is having a day off. I have lately been suffering in this Brazilian hell. On Sunday we were supposed to have rugby training in the evening, however only 2 of us showed up - me and another English girl. An hour and a half later a third girl turned up, an hour and a half! Needless to say we didn´t have training. Yesterday I didn´t come to work so that I could begin the application process to get my CPF (social security number required to do practically anything). I took a long metro and bus journey plus a half hour walk to the office where I have to apply for my título de eleitor (electoral registration), necessary to apply for a CPF. On arrival at the office I discovered that there had been a powercut and all work for the day had been halted. My afternoon today will be taken up by that same journey...this time in torrential rain. Once I get my título de eleitor I can apply for the CPF, that process takes up to 2 weeks, once I get my CPF I can apply for my Carteira de Trabalho (work permit), another 2 week process, as well as open a bank account. After all that I can finally get paid. Ok, so it´s not exactly hell but it´s mighty frustrating.

Rugby, Running and Rabbits

There have been some fantastic developments since I last wrote. I went with my Dad on Wednesday evening to play touch rugby on the beach, but after watching the guys play for a bit I chickened out for the second week in a row, fortunately however, in the distance I spotted a group of 4 girls and a dude doing some passing practice. Turned out to be the Women's Rio Rugby team having their weekly training session. I joined in the training and even when the heavens opened and drenched us all to the bone I stuck with it and trained on. It was brilliant, I really enjoyed myself and was warmly welcomed by all. The team is quite small and there is very little funding and as you can imagine there aren't a huge number of other teams to compete against, so getting experience from playing games is difficult. I'm not going to say the girls are the best players in the world but they have the determination and hopefully over the coming months there will be much improvement.

After training I discovered, by eavesdropping on a conversation between the coach and one of the girls, that they are part of a team training for a half-marathon in June. I couldn't believe my luck! To cut a long story short I will become the fourth member of their running team, anyone who knows me well will understand how psyched I am about this. They reacted really positively when I suggested that we get sponsorship for the marathon and give the money to charity, so another bonus to the story!

I'm off to the beach now for the first time since I arrived.

I hope everyone has a fantastic Easter weekend and gets lots of chocolate from the Easter bunny.

Welcome to my blog

I, who know barely anything about computers, have decided to embark on a technological adventure and create my own blog to keep my nearest and dearest informed about the goings-on in my new Brazilian life.

Things have got off to a fantastic start. I have spent the majority of the last week meeting up with old friends, eating so much delicous food and working in the office. I can still hardly believe that I am really here but because everything has been moving so fast I haven´t really had time to stop and contemplate.

I was thrown into work on my second day in Rio and because I don´t know a huge amount about the subject matter I´m dealing with I have spent most of my time in the office reading environmental reports and trying to get up to speed. I am gradually getting to know my colleagues, all of whom are in their mid twenties and most are interning here whilst studying at university. At first it was difficult to speak with them becasue my Portuguese was a bit rusty but it´s getting much easier as my confidence in the language is growing every day. Today we all went out to have an absolutely delicious steak lunch, which cost me roughly 6 quid!! I´m acually still in the office now and technically skiving in order to write this so should probably get back to work.

Will write more updates soon.
Much love to all.