Party fever strikes again

Party, party, party... Thats all I think we have done on every evening, but it´s okay cause were taking it easy and relaxing. We have now seen many of the most famous places of Rio de Janeiro, like Cristo Redentor, AKA. Christ the redeemer, we have been in copacabana, lapa, ipanema Etc. We have had so much fun here that its not real ! Although I think it is Petra who has had the most fun because she has once more united with here friend that she has not seen in three years. We have been living at her, Isadoras, place where she lives with three other persons and now with us too :). We have been going out every evening so far to see some samba dance or some sights or just simply going out to a bar.

Yesterday we were out in Lapa where we went to watch the people dancing the Forroh! It was fun, we talked with a lot of new people, and propably the jewl of that evening was when I beatboxed with a random guy who rapped to my beat. Hahaha, it was hillarious! I don´t know, maby its because I have been lucky or that I have hangd out with the right people, but I have never been afraid of beeing mugged or anything like that. But that does not mean that I will let my guard down in the future eighter. It is obviously easier to move around in the city and on the streats when you have someone that lives here as your guide, it is allso great chance to practice my portuguese. 

The beaches have been amazing and the water allso. We were swiming and taking sun today in Ipanema and Copacabana. We have allso been a bit shopping here and trying out the restuarants, and oh boy do I like the food or what. 

The places we have been have usually been "pay per kilo" type of places, and the name says it all. You pay by the kilo. It´s really cheap and good food (100g/2-3R$, aprox. 1 or 2 euros per 100g)  and the same goes for the dessert, pay per kilo :) yummy! 

Oh and when I now got started on the food; the coffey is allso really delicious and strong, but they like to add mutch sugar or artificial sweetener to it and they allways stand in awe when this weird person replies to them that he does not need no sugar or sweetener to his coffee. 

Yup, tomorrow we will leave at about 20.00 for Natal, so untill then. 

Moving on

A Favela in São paulo

So now that Pontão is behind we have made our way to São Paulo; There we stayed for four days (3 days there and on the last we left). São Paulo is a very big and beautifull city, with its large population and huge buildings. I had one of the best days of my life on the first day there. When we arrived we were met by Adriana   (the dotter of our contact person in Brasil), she showed us to our room where we could put our stuff and then I took a shower. Now to the better part. We went to a store and bought a couple of beers and went back to the house to drink. We played drinking games with Adriana and here friends. After "a couple" beers we went to a party. It was an party that was held at an univeristy, at their campus. And man was it fun, drunken people having fun. Dancing, smoking, the whole nine yards. I mean,  I have been in some good partys but this takes the   crown. I was amazed how much I talked and talked with them; me who knows so little portuguese. They understood everything what I said and I likewise. It was GREAT! They allso spoke good english there because, well... university people, enough said. I met som fun people who shared my intrests so it was really easy to relate and to just talk. Later we came "home" with a taxi that our friends had called for us. It was only 10 reais for the fare, cheap. The next morning we woke up somwhere aroud ten and went to eat breakfeast at a bakery near by where we had visited the last day. We didn´t do much that day becase we couldn´t call anyone and nobody was at home but us. What we did was, we went to a grocery store and bought some ingredients and made food and after that we went to stroll around and bought a preepaid chip for the mobile but it didn´t work. Typical. This is how we spent our second day.
The tird one was way better. Petra woke me early in the morning because she heard a noise coming from outside. It was a maid who came to clean the house. So I returned back to the room and continued my sleap while Petra went on to take a shower and make breakfeast. I slept only for one more hour and came to the kitchen just in time for the breakfeast. We asked here if she could call Adriana and ask here when Guilermo (a person who Pertti, our contactperson, knew) would come to meet us. Guilermo was going to show us around São Paulo and later he would take us to a party. We were really looking forward to this.
He came at 12 o´clock and for our surprise he was about our age, wery young. He had borrowed Perttis car and took us to see the Mercado and some cathedrals (huge btw.) and then to the monument of independency). Everything was so amazing and allso the houses and neighbourhoods we passed were so different from what I was used to. Similar to Bosnia and Herzegovina but not the same thing.
We ate at a mexican restuarant, I had a cesadilla. I really liked the time we spent on the town and driving.
So we returned to our house and we both took a shower after whitch we went to meet a friend of Guilermos before we were to go and party. Well here comes the funny part, we went to a gay district. And man oh man were there a lot of them :), don´t get me wrong I have nothing against them. And I can honestly say that I had a lot of fun there. We drank and talked and had a good time. Then we went to a club afterwards where we party´d like there was no tomorrow.
We returned late at night and had only a little of sleap when we had to wake up so that we could meet Pertti who had now come to Brasil from Finland. He lives in both places and it was at his house where we stayed.

Airport of Rio 

We made breakfeast for all of us. It was pancake time people! we had bought the ingredients the previous day! After breakfeast and a long discussion we had to go and pack our baggs for we were to leave after 4 hours. We left after lunch and it felt so sad because I wanted to stay a bit more there. So then we left for the airport from where we took our flight to Rio de Janeiro where we are at the moment.

To be continued.

Still a few days to go

Time shure runs by here in Pontão, I mean we´ve been here for 12 and it will be 5 days till we depart for São Paulo. We both wish that we could stay here in Pontão for a bit longer because the people are really, really nice here. It´s really hard to tell anything new and intresting because the days are similar, at morning breakfeast then cleaning and then classes. Between the classes and lunch we have a little snack (usualy at 10 a.m. ). After lunch their classes continue after cleaning. Usualy at 3 o´clock they have practical work in the fields and farm. Then after supper it´s free time.

One thing that I realy don´t like are the flys we have here. They keep driving me nuts when they are in hords and come and sit on my hand, nose, near my ear... EVERYWHERE!! And the come back even if I try my best to keep them away. 

Yesterday we started to make a presentation of Finland for the students and teachers, whitch we will hold on the last night of our stay here in Instituto Educar. So far we have done half of the presentation whitch contains small titbits of finnish history and present day. Allso we will write about our school and let them try some Salmiakki and last but not least we tought that we´d teach them "the Jenkka". 

We have learend some fun games and other such things from them but allso teached them some cardgames and such, a few have even asked us to teach them a bit of finnish. 

Today was another rainy day, so naturally I didn´t have no motivation at all to do anything, but I forced myself.

We watched a movie instead of having P.E. today because it was really pouring down. It was ok for me because as I allready mentioned, I had no energy and motivation. 

I wonder what tomorrow will bring... 

To be continued... : ) 

The days keep passing by

Ah, yet another couple of days have passed in all their delightfullness. We have gotten pretty accustomed to the life and daily activities of the school, like for example picking fruits and milking cows etc. It really is a wonderfull experience to live and work here like the others. We have a lot of sparetime allso because we don't have to attend the classes all the time (or not at all if we don't want to). But we prefere to wake up at 6.30 for brakefeast, cleaning and mystica afterwards, this has become an ''unspoken rule'' to us.
We have had only one minor accident here and it happened 09.04.2012.
We were working at the orchard at the moment when the tractor passed us by with a grasclipper atatched to it. Well it just so happened that the tractor drove over a bee nest and you propably guess the rest. There were bees everywhere and we had to run further away. Petra got stung three times and was a bit uppset because she detests bees. The others got stung a couple of time and the driver ten, yes TEN times. I on the other hand didn't get stung not once. I guess I had luck eventhoug it was prety near that I got stung.
I walked Petra back to school because she was still uppset. She was fine and since she had no allergies she didn't need no doctor. She had allso some antihistamine with here just in case of any allergic reaction, and we adviced here to take one, just in case. Well the rest of that day went by calmly we didn't have more work to do so we just took it easy.

Our stuff

Yesterday (10.04.2012) we FINALY got our stuff that wasn't delivered when we arived to the airport on 02.04.2012. You can imagine our faces when Salete (the principal) came and told us that our stuff had arived when we were having a snack at the cafeteria. We litterarely jumped up and ran to the entrance and accepted our luggage with great joy. We imediately went to pack up our bags and change to some other clothes. I had personally had only two shirts that I had to wash allmost every day. I allso had to borow from Cleverson some clothes and stuff.
The same day when it was time for some good old manual labor, in other words we went to the farm.
We got to see the slaughtering of two piggs and it wasn't so bad but the worst part was when they burnt off the hair of the pigg. The smell of burnt hair is just something that I despise above all. When this was done I went with my group to the fields to build electric fences for the animals. After that we went to the orchards to pick some figgs, they were ripe and looked perfect. They used them to make some jam for breakefeast. That activity concluded the days work, and me and my group returned to the school.
The evenings usually pass with cardgames and other things.
We have started to get so used to the people here that we allready now feel a bit sad that we have to leave in aprox. 8 days.

To be continued...

We are doing great

The days have passed great hear in Instituto educar. We have gotten to know the students better and I have noticed personally that I understand a bit more portuguese now than when I arived. We have had it preytty chill during the last couple of days, but one thing that bothers me and Petra, is the fact that our baggage still has not arived and we have had to buy some clothes and allso borrow. The same goes for toothpaste and such neceseties. I swear, I don´t know how much more I can stand this waiting, but thats about the only negative thing I have in my mind.

We have had fun, very much so thanks to our wonderful friends here in Brasil. Yesterday (*07.04.2012) we made some typicall finish food for them, we made meatballs and mashed potatos  for aprox. 28 persons. It was my first experience to cook in such quantities but as luck had it they turned out great. Petra and Cleverson helped me in the kitchen. It took some time but it was well worth the effort cause it tasted great, and they even helped themselves for a second serving. Later on we went to a lockal bar and had "a couple" drinks. We had fun! The next day (today) we had an easter lunch consisting of roasted meat. It was fun to find out that they had a huge fireplace in the loby. The taste was great eventhough there was many fatty parts that were hard to chew.
We had it with, surprice surprice, rice. I will try to add pictures soon as possible.



To be continued...

visiting farms

Early in the morning

I woke up to the knock on the door, signaling that it was time to wake up and come to breakfeast. We left at the same time with Petra to the cafeteria. We had coffee and bread again. Afterwards we quickly cleaned the floors, tables and cups and left to our rooms to get what we needed. The buss was allread waiting outside when I came outside to see what was happening next.
It was allso a pretty modern buss with plenty of room and soft seats.

We went inside and sat down, it was very early so we slept a bit in the buss since it was to be a long trip to the first farm (* it took 4 hour with one stop).

The scenery was breath takingly beutifull. I opened the window beside my seat and stuck my head out to take a deep breath, the air was a bit frisky but fresh. We drank much tea during the tripp and I got a real bad need for a toilet thanks to the tea, luckily the pitsop was not far away. 

The first farm was very big one, with many animals and many acers of land. It was a farm that allso had conections to MST. 

The owner greated us all warmly welcomed to their farm and gave us a tour of the premices.

"Our" teacher held a couple of lessons outside during the passes between the tour. 

 

It was really hot outside during the whole day, so every shadowy spot was quickly filled when we stopped for a while to hear something about some plants or trees they had at the farm. 

We came across some anoying small cactus plants whitch had theese small leaves that grabbed and stuck to your clothes and were hard to get of. Everybody were picking these small leaves of after the tour. 

Orange tree

We ate some barbaqued chicken that were prepared on swords made for barbaqueing. They had allso made lemonade form the limes at the farm, it was really delicious and reminded me of the days when I was little and used to make it at home as well. 

On our way back to Instituto Educar

Since we had allready seen everything there we thanked the owner and left for the next farm that was a hour away fom the first. 

This farm was much smaller but it was still a big one, they had allso conections to MST at that farm.

The same repeated at the second farm as that on the first. We had a walk through the premices and had some lessons outside but then after that we had only a little snack before we thanked the owner and left. 

We arived at the school very late and ate imediately when we arrived back (* again beans, rice, meat, sallad.  etc. But no worries they are allways prepared differently and are allways delicious). 

We chated with Cleverson a bit before we went to our rooms. 

This was what hapend that day. 

To be continued... 

" The School starts!"

We woke up 6.30 the next morning for breakfeast and "mystica", a kind of morning asembely. I was still a bit exhausted after traveling but not much, so I was glad to notice the dispenser with coffee in the cafeteria where we ate.
For you who don´t know much about the school, let me enlighten you. It is a boarding school of sorts where the students are divided in to two primary groups. While the first group stays at school and studies the second group is out of school practising in real job enviroments. They switch places every second month, so the first group lives in the school and studies for 2 months and then they switch places with the second group that is doing "real work" outside the school.
The school has an emphasis on agriculture and has its own fields, orchards, farmhouses and animals etc.
All the food comes from their own farm, so I have been eating more or less 100% eco food. So no added colors and none of those other stuffs that microwave meals have in them.

A part of the mystica

So back to my morning. They had milk for the coffee that they had collected themselves from their cows and we had bread that they had baked themselves in the morning. The taste was good and eventhough the school is not very modern it makes it up with it´s unique athmosphere and it´s personality. It´s an old brick building with two floors and a basement. The dormitories were situated in the second floor, but our rooms were in the first floor.
After we had eaten our bread and drank our coffee me and Petra helped with the cleaning. I cleaned the floor and I´m not quite shure what Petra had for a task but anyway. The cleaning went quick because we were many.
After the cleaning was over we went with them to the mystica, whitch was held in  their class, and presented ourselves to them. It was very dificult to find the right words, but they understood. They had a picture show and sang a song infront of an flag (not the brasilian one), then they told a story and afterwards chanted something togheter. The meaning of the mystica is basicaly to uplift the spirit of the class and give them positive things to think about.
To me, as an outsider, it seemed very intrigueing and mystical, pardon the pun. Afterwards started the classes, they haeld some presentations that they had had as homework. If I understood it correctly they had to present how they would plan an acher themselves, what would they plant there and so on.
Me and Petra didn´t understand so much, but we made great efforts to do so.
I felt a bit sleepy after the class so it was a godsend that we had a pause after a couple of hours where we got a small snack to eat. The snack was made of some kind of rootfruit and red wine and shugar, kind of like a fruit soup of sorts. I didn´t like it so much because of the distinct taste of red wine. We sat with two young groupleaders and tried to converse with them. I felt kind of glad that there was one person in the school who could spanish so that we had a language that we could lean on if we didn´t remember some words in portuguese. His name is Cleverson.

I went after the snack outside and down to the cellar to wash my clothes since I didn´t have much clothes now that my baggage had not arrived yet.

There was no washingmashine so ofcourse I had to wash with my hands and a brush. I had no problems with it, contrarely I loved it! Cleverson showed me just in case how it should be done but I allready knew. He was impressed taht I knew the correct way to wash. After I had washed my clothes and hung them to dry I went with Petra to talk with the principal. She showed and explaned us the school system and told about their involvement with MST (they fight for the rights of people who have now land or home, check out their site by googleing the term MST). It was very inresting and I understood the most of what she said but it was mostly because I understood the context. I offerd her some finnish chocolates as a small token of apriciation, the other real presents are still in our baggages, which are god knows where at the moment.
afterwards we went with them to their barn where they had piggs and I helped Cleverson and the others to clean their stalls. The smell was what I expected and rememberd from other visits to a farm, horrid. The cleaning took a while and then we had to feed them allso. After all this we were finnished and we went and ate. We had rice, beans, meat and sallad. This seemed to be a pretty typicall meal since all theese ingredients could be found at the farm. After the food we cleaned again and then it was free time. We hanged out with the other students as they played soccer.

Soccer

When we went to sleap I was allready very sleapy and the next day we were suposed to go on a trip with the school to two other farms.
That night I had allso no problems to sleap.

To be continued...

The adventure continues

It had been two days since we left Finland, and we were currently living the third day and we still were not there. We were in the buss in the middle of Brazil making our painstaking way towards Instituto Educar.
The bus was neat and clean and very modern, total opposite of everything we had imagined. The seats were nice and comfty and it had aircondisioning. The view was nice and as I dosed of a couple of times I had forgotten where we were. The scenery reminded me a bit of the finnish countryside with it´s many fields and farms. But ofcourse it was not, soon I realized that the treas were not the same, the vegetation were compleatly different and even the clouds on the sky were not as the ones that I rememberd from Finland.
It was warm and sunny outside, aprox. 30 degrees Celsius. We passed many little villages and finaly arived at the end station in Passo Fundo at around 3 o´clock. We were greated by Andersson, a jolly "Brasileiro" in his twenties or thirties. We went to the airport of Passo Fundo in expection to find our baggage delivered there, as promised. But no, they had not arrived, instead they had been sent to Amsterdam !!! WHAT!?? Could somebody tell me what buisness the had sending them there? Well we called the service and they told us that they will sen our baggage to our school and we left. We ate on our way at a pit-stop near the airport. It was a meal concisting of rice, beef and beans. Oh and sallad ofcourse, can´t live without that stuff.

Instituto Educar

We ate with good apetite and then left for Instituto Educar. We talked a bit with Andersson with the little portugese that we knew and were able to have some plesant conversation during the drive. At the school we were greated by the very motherlike Salete Campitgotto, she is one of the most nicest and warm hearted people I ever knew. She greated us with a bearhug and words of welcome. We were imediately shown to our quartes so that we could relax and put down the litle amount of stuff that we had. Elena went of to atend her own duties as the principal of the school and we were left in our rooms to relax. Petra came to my room to chat so that we wouldn´t have to be bored since it would be a while before the classes ended.

Night sky 

We got a tour of the school from Andersson and ate together with everybody. It was getting late so we went back to our cuarters to sleap. It was a small room with much personality. I didn´t have to try to get some sleep as it came as quick as I had laid down and closed my eyes.


To be continued ...

The adventure beagins here!

Helsinki-Vaantaa 

The trip started like any other trip, at the airport of Helsinki-Vantaa. The air was a bit chilly when I left in the morning to my school to meet my friend before I left. We went out to eat at a chinese restuarant and after that we said our goodbyes. It didn´t feel realistic at the moment that I would make this trip, after all we had been planing this trip with Petra and our school for a very long time. Now when the moment had arrived when I was to take my last glance at Finland before I left, it didn´t feel real.

As I calmly walked towards Petras house from the scool, I took my time looking around at the snow that had allready started to melt, spring was making its passage. The gentle breeze that was blowing felt cold and good against my cheaks. I arrived at Petras house three hours before we were to leave for the airport. 

We made shure that we both had everything we needed for the last time before we left, we both were stressing a bit. As we finaly were finished with the last check we headed to the car. It didn´t take long to arrive to the airport of Helsinki-Vantaa, there we said our goodbyes to Petras mom and sister who had given us the lift. 

At the airport we had two friends who had came to say their goodbyes as well. They left after queing with us at the check-in and luggage dropp. Now we made our way to the inner part of the airport. We bought some snacks for the flight and off we went, towards Madrid where we were to make our transit to another plane. 

 Here is where the adventure started. In the airplane we noticed that in the flight ticket it said that our next flight would leave the next day at 07.15 when it should have departed at 00.05 on the same day! The person at the flight desk had forgotten to tell us that the fligt was delayed 7 hours. We were furious and I felt how the anger swelled inside of me. We could not do anything else than wait for more information when we arived in Madrid. It was a weird feeling of both eagor and disapointment. I tried my best to sleap or take a nap during the 4 hours we felw but it was useless, I just couldn force myself to sleap. 4 hours and two flight meals later we arrived at the airport in Madrid. It was an amazing building and had many terminalls and modern structures. I had fogotten my worries in an instant. 

Free hotel

We went to the information point to ask what had happened and they told that there was a delay in the flight and that the flight company would compensate it with a free night at a hotel in Madrid. The stay included: lunch and breakfeast. we had to wait a long time for the hotell buss and when it finaly came, we didn´t all fit in so we waited 10 minutes for the next one. The air outside was fresh and relaxing, just like I remembered it form the last time I had been in Spain with my spanish class from school. The next buss couldn´t take us eighter so we waited one more time for the next one and then we were finaly on our way to the hotel. 

You would propably think that we had allready given up all of our energy and become bitter but we lived only on sheere willpower. We were both ignorant in thinking that this was the worst of it, unknowing of what laid ahead. 

Free food & Wine 

At the hotel we had to wait further 20 minutes before we could get our rooms and go eat. We went to our hotel room and took a shower before going to sleep. We didn´t have much time to sleep because we had to make shure that we made it in time to the next airport buss. I slept like a log untill we had to wake upp. As the alarm rang from my mobile I imediatly sprung up from the bead to put on my clothes. Petra had allso woken up. 

We didn´t have time for breakfeast so we both hurried to take our stuff and go downstairs to the reception to give back our room keys. We were now loaded with new energy for our next flight. We were in luck, we made it to the first buss that left for the airport. At the airport we met our next obsticle the flight had been delayed utterly by one hour. Well we didn´t care at that point so much because we had allready been delayed 7 hour and for that reason missed our next flight in Brasil ,destined to fly at 13.40. to Passo fundo from São Paluo. We had breakfeast at the airport. I had a couple of coffeys to kickstart my motor. The soothing aroma of a dark roast coffey gently caressed my tastebuds. Afterwards we had a long 10-11 hours flight ahead of us. I could guess from experience that  I would not get any sleep during the flight. 

Outside of GIG airport 

Hotel in Porto Alegre

And I didn´t. Instead I got myself to take a nap but you could barely say that I was sleaping, rather in a transe.The time passed with meals and with conversations and games with petra. My ass was hurting like hell! Well ready for our next shock we tought we would take our stuff and go to the Service desk of Avianca and try to get new flight tickets to Passo Fundo. This is the funny part. Our baggage had not arrived! We later got the message that they were sent to Amsterdam for god knows what reason. We took it prety well considering the sircumbstansess. We had luck with us that the contact person who we had in Finland had allready sent her daughter who lived in São Paulo to meet us at the airport. She was going to help us to get new tickets. Well easier said than done. Eventhough she could speak fluent portugugese, they had issues at the servicepoint. They could not fix us new tickets to Passo Fundo for free and if we were to pay we had to take the next flight that went the next day. Well we were starting to fear the worst when the sales person told  us, that as she knew it wasn´t our fault we missed the flight she could only give us a free flight to Porto Alegre. We took it since we had had it as an possibility from the start. From there we were to take a buss to Passo Fundo and from there we would be picked up by someone from the school (INSTITUTO EDUCAR). Well we flew for an hour and a half and arrived at 23.30 in Porto Alegre and decided we would  check in a hotel. This was our first time that we tried our portugese for real. We got a room and went straigth to sleap. The next morning we woke up well rested and refreshed. I took a shower, it felt really refreshing.

Open road

We went downstairs to eat breakfeast and were dumbfounded by the diversity of fruits and breads and everything that laid infront of us to pick from. I tried to taste everything, but as it was impossible I  quit after my third plate. We checked out and asked the receptionist if he knew what bus we should take to Passo Fundo and he responded kindly in great detail. We were suposed to take the buss from Rodavaria Centrall but we could buy the ticket from the airport, and so we did. We took a taxi to the buss terminall and   after that we were of on our next long trip. You can propably imagine the mental exhausion that I and Petra experienced. First the flight, then the bagage, then the other flight and so on. Well at least we made slowly our way towards Pontão and Instituto Educar.