Volunteer in Brazil: The Blog

We decided to take advantage of the cloudy weather by doing the walking tour of Centro. We caught the metro to the station and followed the map in our guidebooks, along the busy streets of Centro. The place had a nice busy feel to it and we felt as if we’d finally found the city centre to
Rio, which can feel pretty spread out most of the time. We meandered through markets and spent some time looking at the CD´s being sold in an open air music market. We went to Igreja Sao Fransico da Penitencia, dating back to 1726, which was stunning. As a service was taking place in the more modern church we couldn’t look round there but the old Church itself was incredible, every inch of the walls and ceiling was dripping with gold and beautifully painted biblical scenes and countless statues. It was well worth the visit and also boasted great views of Largo de Carioca and the hustle-bustle of the market place below. Unfortunately theArt Gallery was closed and Columbo Cafe was a little out of our price range (although we did have a look inside and it looked incredible, not exactly the greasy spoons that we’re used to, not a fry-up in sight!). Next we trundled down the narrow streets, window shopping all the way, until we arrived at the Real Gabinete Portugues de Leitura, the historic reading rooms. The building alone was awe inspiring but, needless to say, it boasted an incredible collection of ancient books, dating back hundreds of years. we then carried on through the Saara, a busy area of narrow streets full of Bizarres selling allsorts of things and stopped for  a meal at one of the Lebanese restaurants, the food was fantastic, we called it a day after that and went home exhausted and stuffed! We also went up to see Christo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) this week. First we drove up to the to Corcovando, the mountain that lies within the Parque nacional da Tijuca and walked around the protected rainforest right in the middle of this huge city, then we went up to the statue itself. The views from the top were breathtaking and for the first time since we’d arrived me managed to get a sense of the layout of the city, with a bird’s eye view it all seems to make sense. Despite the big crowds we managed to get the standard arms spread wide tourist photo. It was well worth the visit and an absolute must for anyone coming to
Rio. This week in class we covered directions with the two older classes and managed to have a bit of fun by taking the class outside and splitting the class in pairs so that they could direct each other around the chalk outline of a block of streets using the directions that we’d taught them. It also brought our attention to the fact that we need to spend some time practicing pronunciation as everyone was struggling with “take the third right”, so I think we’ll practice the TH sound soon.  As the weekend dawned me and Polly on the spur of the moment decided to visit Ilha Grande for the weekend, so jumped on a bus for the ferry port and managed to catch the last boat. We were so glad we did because the next three days were incredible. Ilha Grande is a paradise island a few hours from the city, it has no roads or cars (except a few emergency vehicles) and is host to some of the best beaches around. Lopez Mendes is among these and is consistently voted in the top ten beaches in the world in poles. The island is covered in rainforest and mountains and only has a population of 4,000. We met some amazing people, saw some great scenery and both completely fell in love with the place. We slept in a rooftop room where the bed took up the floor and there was no front wall so we awoke to the sun rising over the sea and mountains…..like I said…paradise.

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