Volunteer in Brazil: The Blog

I have just had a read of my post from last week, together with all your comments for which I am very thankful, and it seems as though in my penultimate paragraph I´d predicted the children at the project having a bad day and my having to put into practice what I had said about showing understanding and compassion during such times. I was disappointed that I didn´t find it as easy to do as I had hoped but it was a huge learning curve for me, particularly in not taking unruly behaviour personally.  I am sure for all those professional teachers out there this is something that you learn early on. 

As I have already mentioned things around the convent have been less than peaceful as of late and, of course, all of this unrest has its affect on the children, how could it not, and I experienced the difficulty of trying to teach children who have arguably become accustomed to living in war-like conditions, it was not easy for them or for me.   

When something is troubling the children you can tell immediately, there is a palpable sense of nervousness than hangs in the air as soon as you descend the stairs from the convent to where the project is situated.  The children are charged with a kind of nervous energy that has them on edge for the entire day, you see it not only when you are trying to teach them but also in the way in which they play balls games during their break and their general interaction with each other.  It is not a case that they become naughty as such, it is difficult to describe, I would say that they disconnect and that their minds are elsewhere.  During my classes with the two younger groups, P Group and M Group, on this particular day (last Tuesday) I had lost all control, they were unenthusiastic about participating in the work I had set, they were bickering amongst themselves and I felt ignored and pretty much discarded.  This was quite an alien experience for me insofar as my work background has always been within the very formal and, dare it be said, stuffy setting of solicitors´ offices in London, although this is not to say that I´ve not come across countless difficult and irrational lawyers in my time who unlike the children here have no reasonable excuse to áct out´ but that is another story! 

I think that day really demonstrated, at least to me, that children really are products of their environment, particularly as their behaviour on this one day stood in stark contrast to their previous behaviour both in classes with me prior to and since this time.  They really are good kids with good, kind hearts and what seems to be an almost unbreakable spirit and I really admire that – I think I will learn a lot from working together with them.  I think this experience was more a lesson for me in how to teach and also as an opportunity to develop better coping strategies.  I feel confident that should such a day occur again in the future I am now better equipped both practically and emotionally in how to best manage the situation. 

The weather here in Rio has been very mixed, it often feels like they can have all four seasons in one week.  When it rains in Rio it really does rain, none of this drizzle malarkey that Englanders are accustomed to.  Oh no, everything is on a much larger/dramatic scale here … from hills to weather!  Luckily on the weekend we were blessed with a couple of really beautiful days of sunshine and for the very first time since arriving here I was fortunate enough to get to experience one of the things that Rio is most famous for …. its beaches!  On Saturday evening we went to Copacabana which I really enjoyed, it is a great area with a lot of nightlife and oodles of people jogging, jogging with their children, jogging with their dogs … I have never seen so many joggers!  However given how delicious Brazilian food and the copious amounts of sugar that many people add to their beverages (including fruit juices!) I guess you have to balance things out some how! 

On Sunday morning Beth took both myself and Rosie to Ipanema beach.  It was a beautiful day and a beautiful beach.  Like Beth said, the beaches in Rio are at least one place where everyone is the same, there is no barrier as to class, colour or creed, everyone is there enjoying the beach together, rich and poor alike.  For lunch we went to a style of eatery which seems to be quite popular here in Rio, and I can see why, it is where you pay for your food by weight – I´ve not come across such a place before either in the UK or on my travels overseas.  The food is set out in a buffet style and they have every kind of food you could imagine, from sushi to that good old Brazilian staple of rice and beans!  Once you make your selection you take your plate to be weighed by the staff and they give you a kind of charge card which you pay off at the end of your meal.  I thought it was pretty cool and I hope to make a return trip in the future. 

As I have been here for almost four weeks now I am starting to settle into my own new routines.  Each morning, weather permitting, I take a walk through the local neighbourhood and see everyone going about their daily business, maids, gardeners and other domestic help busily getting underway with their morning´s chores, mechanics and engineers who, at least look from the amount of oil and grease on their overalls, have been hard at work for some time already and also there is the quintessential professional setting off for his/her day at the office somewhere in the centre of the city.  I really enjoy this time of day and observing every day Cariocan life. 

This is all for this week´s post, my apologies that it is a bit late but I have been having computer problems! 

Until next week! 

Love, 

Anne.x

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 02:27 am and is filed under Uncategorised. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.