Palmas

My friend Angela (another Braziiian friend I met in Sydney) lives in Palmas - about a one hour flight from Brasilia. She invited me here, so I've been here for a couple of weeks. He brother Fred owns a language school with his wife Patricia so I've been getting Portuguese lessons at a good rate.

I'm staying with friends of there's. A young married couple my age (yes Ricky that does count as young here) Daniel and Aline. Daniel is a blackbelt in judo and Aline is a judge, so I figure I had better not get up to any mischief here! I wondered if it was unusual for a judge to be so young, but apparently not in this area. Palmas is only 21 years old as such there don't seem to be many old people here.

The people I'm with (Daniel and Aline as well as Fred, his wife Patricia and Angela) speak more English than most people I've been with in Brazil and seem to be quite well off. I think the two go hand in hand to some extent as the people I'm with are business owners and/or professionals.

Again everyone here has been very hospitable. My daily routine has been to get picked up for school in the morning, have class for about two hours. The methodology is somewhat different to when I was in Maceio. There's more translation then I'd like, but its all about talking not analyzing the language as much as in Maceio, so thats been good for me. Also, I'm the only Portuguese student here - the school has about 400 students but most of them are Brazilians studying English - as such I get lots of practise. I go to lunch with Angela to Fred and Patricia's place, then after lunch I get picked up by one of the guys who works here and ride on the back of his motorbike back to school where I hang around for a couple of hours. People here seem to like talking to me which is fun and I get to use the Internet to catch up on stuff. I then have another Portuguese class at 5pm for about an hour.

I've now been in Brazil for ten weeks - the longest I've ever been away from Australia. After eight weeks here, I've found I can have basic conversations with people - if they're patient with me. But listening in on someone else's conversation still seems way beyond me. I made a friend who's into basketball like me. He said he like's Dwayne Wade but thinks he's a bit of a hog. He thinks Lebron is good but "armarelo" (yellow), which I take it to mean he thinks he's scared to take the big shots. So I was glad I was able to have this conversation in Portuguese. I got to play basketball for the first time since leaving Australia too which was good fun!

Anyway, its been a while since I posted a blog and I thought I should let my worldwide followers know what I've been up to :) I should be going camping tomorrow with some friends which sounds like fun. Hopefully I can stand the heat - its about as hot as Maceio, although at least its not as humid so I don't sweat so much.