Goodbye to Palmas, on to Floripa, and the World Cup

Farewell dinner with friends I've made in Palmas


This may not look that speical - but its the very centre of Brazil.


Well I spent four and a half weeks in Palmas - two more than I initially planned.

As I write, I'm at Palmas airport about to travel to Florianópolis (Floripa). I'm flying via, Brasilia, then Sao Paulo so its going to take 7 or 8 hours. Floripa is an island (connected by a bridge to the mainland) to the south of Brazil. It's meant to be really good for surfing and similar water sports that I could have done in Sydney but never did. However, as I understand it the weather is also somewhat similar to that of Sydney - meaning its pretty cold right now...

A few things I've been told about the south of Brazil:

- There's a lot of people of Europeans decent - Portugual, Italy, German (apparently a few post WW2 nazis made there way these parts too)
- People look a lot fairer (blond hair, blue eyes)
- The women are particularly beautiful
- The people aren't as open and friendly as in the north of Brazil
- The people are richer
- Its mean to be a great spot visit

Anyway, I'll try and put aside all these preconceptions (good and bad) and make the most of my time.

I've enrolled in another portuguese school for three hours each morning for four weeks. I'm also hoping to do some volunteer work while in Floripa. This is something I'm hoping my Portuguese is now good enough for me to be able to add some value with. We will see.

I'm now going to go back a few days and talk about Brazil's match of the World Cup. It was on a Tuesday commencing at about 3:30. I was invited to a house where a barbecue was taking place to watch the game. Most of the people there had jobs, but everyone had left work early for the game. It seems like the whole country stopped for it. The fans were pretty intense!

It was Brazil against North Korea and I somehow managed to wear red. I thought I better take my shirt off for most of the game, which was just as well as everyone was covered in shaving cream on the two occasions that Brazil scored. After the game not everyone seemed to be happy with the 2-1 victory. If only Australia's soccer team had such disappointing victories…




As I was wearing red they decided I was on N. Korea's side. I believe the Spanish basketball team got in trouble for this sort of pic a couple of years back



After the Brazil N. Korea game