What I do each day in Rio De Janeiro...

Week in summary..

On Tuesday of this week I finished my volunteering at the creche, and then on Wednesday night we had the christmas party at the creche! It was so cute, there were parents and siblings of the kids from my creche there and the food was amazing!

On Wednesday during the day I felt a bit lost because I didn’t really know what to do with myself while everyone else was at project and I was at the house by myself! It was nice to have a relaxing day though! Thursday, Friday and today(Saturday, CHristmas Eve) are sooo hot. Almost unbearable at times, we really just sit and sweat! The minute you get out of the shower you start sweating again, and although I don’t know the exact temperature, it passed 40 degrees at some point during the day and we have really high humidity levels too.

In Brazil, they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, so tonight our volunteer ‘family’ will be eating a buffet dinner together which our house manager, Marie, is preparing for all of us! We are doing a secret santa gift trade, and eating all together. There are about 30 of us in total!

Tomorrow on Christmas Day, we are going to a Mass service at the big cathedral in Centro. It is a huge pyramid shaped cathedral, and although the service will be entirely in Portuguese so we wont understand, it’s another side of the culture that we are welcome to see so we thought we might as well go!

It will be strange not to spend Christmas with my family, although Regan and Emily(Australian friends) feel the same way as me, so we are definately not letting Christmas just go by! I only have 10 days left until I leave for New Zealand, and all going well I will actually return on the 5th of January.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Have a fabulous day and a happy new year :) xxx

Christ the Redeemer! :)

On Saturday the weather was good when we woke up so we figured we would make the most of it and go to visit the Christ statue.

We caught a cab to the main carpark, where we waited in line for our tickets. After getting our tickets we got a van ride up the mountain, with awesome views over Rio. When you get to the top carpark, you get out of the van and there is a little cafe and some toilets then you walk up lots of steps past a few tourist shops (very expensive!) and another cafe before arriving at the top!

It felt like we had been forever waiting to get up there, waiting for the weather to be clear enough to appreciate the view. I don’t think you can ever grasp the concept of how big the statue is until you stand at its feet. It stands at 40m high, and has the nail marks on the hands and a little heart on its chest.

The only problem is the platform isn’t very big, and being one of the first clear sunny days in a while, it was PACKED. A bit harder to get good pictures, but we managed a few! After looking around and taking tonnes of pictures, we walked back to the cafe and had lunch before catching the van back to the bottom carpark. From there we walked back down to the road which took about 45 minutes but it was really nice because its through the national park so all shady and green!

After that we caught the bus that stops right outside our house, on the bus some young kids were dancing for us, and they wanted money but you have to say no, no matter how cute the kids are!

We were pretty tired from being outside in the sun for a long time so we just chilled out and had pizza for dinner before having an early night!

Week Four in summary..

Tuesday through Thursday this week was spent at project, it was not very good weather but I love going to the creche! On Wednesday morning Lilia and I took seven of her children to visit a very wealthy American School that borders on Rocinha. It costs the American families $R 5000 a month to send their children there, and the school helps the creche by giving them milk on a monthly basis.

We went and had morning tea and played with the young kids at the school, and at the end they gave gifts for christmas for each kid at the creche. Although it was obviously incredibly generous for them to give all the gifts, I got a feeling the kids weren’t very educated about the other side of the fence. To go into the school, I had to go through one security gate, sign my name and signature on a form in Portuguese and get a visitors pass before I was allowed in through the second gate into the school. To say the school was high security is an understatement.

The kids asked me where I got “my Rocinha kids” from, they seem to think everyone in the favela lives on the streets, and compared to the places the american kids live it’s obviously not as good, but the children at our creche are brought up with manners and are taught right and wrong. Lilia loves them as though they were her own, and she treats them that way too.

Within the favela there is still a gap between those with money and those without. Remember, the leader of the main drug ring was making $R 12 Million a month, about nine million New Zealand dollars.

Jardim Botanico (Botanic Gardens)

Such a beautiful day today, clear blue skies and about 28 degrees. Had the day off project today so I decided to go by myself to the Botanic Gardens!

It was huge! There are different sections of the garden for different countries and a little lake and a couple of places to eat and buy things! It was nice to be in the shade on such a hot day too! There were alot of kids, some american and they were all wearing colour coordinated tops to stay in groups, it was really cute.

On the way home I finally posted some postcards, but since I don´t speak portuguese, I´m pretty sure they aren´t express so qwill proabbly get there sometime in March.. haha oh well its the thought that counts! :)

Hopefully going up Sugarloaf tonight to watch the Sunset, then flying down to Iguaçu for a turnaroud trip to see the falls - ione of the seven natural wonders of the World!

Ruins Park in Santa Teresa

Today brought a welcome break from the cloudy weather, and a trip to Ruins Park.

Ruins Park is the ruins of an old mansion only ten minutes walk from my house in Santa Teresa. It used to be famous for the incredible cultural parties thrown by the woman who owned it, but all that remains is the external walls.

They have built in staircases so you can get to the top, which provides incredible views over the majority of Rio De Janeiro, andit was gerat to have blue skies! Hopefully will put some pictures on Facebook soon! :)

If the weather stays clear tomorrow, we will head to Sugarloaf Mountain for the evening to watch the sunset! Everyone knows I love a good sunset! :D

Hoping to head down to Iguaçu Falls this weekend, it will be expensive, but its one of the 7 naturals wonders of the world, and apparently worth every cent! I´ll let you know! Hope everything is going well for the end of the year at home! xxx

Bad Weather :(

The weather has been pretty bad for two out of the three weeks I have been here. Not really pouring, though there has been two thunderstorms! It’s more the cloud, it means you can’t do many of the touristy things that have incredible views because you can’t see anything!

The humidity can be crazy here although I expected that more than the grey weather all day. It can be frustrating staying in a plae where practically everything we want to do is weather dependent!

Hoping the weather is better this week so I can tick a few things off my to do list!

Hope it is sunny for you at home :) xxx

Creche Party!

Every Friday the kids at the creche have a party in celebration of life and be thankful for everything they have! This week I didn’t go to project on Monday because I was going Friday to the party. They have pizza lollies and fizzy drink, then they dance and watch movies or play outside with the hose if it’s sunny. it was rainy, but another one of the volunteers left me with some instruments to take to the creche, and they we recieved VERY well by the kids! They went crazy, probably because of all the sugar too! haha

Hopefully I will go this week and it will be sunny although the weather has been everything but great lately..

The kindness of a semi-stranger..

I bought a small gift (can´t say what or it will ruin someones surprise haha) from a local artist on my second day here in Santa Teresa. Each day when I walked past his studio I would wave and occasionally stop and talk to him for a while!

One day i decided to stop and ask if I could take a picture of him to show to everyone when I came home, he was excited and then wanted me to be in the picture with him! So friendly!

Then today, I went back to buy another small gift, and he went away and came back with a painting and said “this one is just for you”. Worried I was confused by the language barrier, I asked his english speaking friend, and lo and behold he was gifting me a paiting that your average person would purchase for quite alot! So nice, and he wouldn´t take any money, he just said “show it to your friends!”. I will try and put a picture on Facebook later today! :) hope everyone is having a great day too xxx