What a weekend, we went to this 'ídyllic' beach town, as it is labelled in the Lonely Planet, called Tamarandare. It was pretty nice and idyllic by Brazilian standards but not necessarily by mine. It is becoming clear that Brazilian towns are very third world in many ways, undeveloped more than deprived, I think the north-east is also the poorest area so maybe we are seeing it most.
We went on a speedboat up the river/estuary that leads to the beach which is quite a few miles long, white sand and coconut palms all the way along. The river was dirty and the coconuts a little monotonous but it was pretty, I was feeling a little ill as well so maybe I wasn't completely enthusiastic but I just thought it was ok.
The students' house where we stayed was amazing it was basically a mansion and our host had invited about 15 people around for the weekend, laid on lavish meals, and we swam in his pool with a built-in bar. The first night was really nice and one of the guys played the guitar and the others sang Brazilian songs but for the rest of the time they used this bloody Karaoke machine literally every hour we were there which was bloody awful.

TEACHING BEGIN
Now I'm back at work first lessons yesterday went pretty well. The first group was teens (12-14) pre-intermediate and it was quite hard to get anything out of them. After that 15-16 intermediates all girls who were really lively and keen to talk which was cool and finally 'FLU' - fluency class - that was a bit of a mixture but were also enthusiastic. So far I've just done introductory games, throwing a ball around a circle to learn names and famous people on their backs, Jeopardy. Gotta start proper lessons tomorrow and I haven't really started planning yet! Next lesson starts in an hour. Still got to have lunch!

END OF WEEK ONE
Well week one is almost over, it is now Friday lunchtime and this is meant to be our planning day!! Last night though we got rather drunk at this bar and attempted to sing some English songs with this guy who knew the tunes on the guitar but we couldn't remember all the words.
Brazil is damn hot. On the coast it's pretty unbearable about 33 degrees centigrade and really humid. Where we are it's about 30 degrees and fairly pleasant. It actually rained here last night and we've got a leaky roof!!! So there was water dripping down our light fittings today... all very safe I'm sure. It's all sunshine again now, but at least I got a chance to wear my coat to school this morning! I was hoping for some tropical rainstorm but it was a disappointing English shower except by 11am it was about 35 degrees again.
We've still got no running water, but they are now fitting some new water tanks to the roof so hopefully we may have running water before too long. The problem is that the workmen start at about 6am and hammer away at god knows what on the roof and it sounds like the ceiling is going to cave in, hopefully the ends will justify the means!!

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