I must admit I haven't been terribly interesting lately, and I apologize for that.
In ballet news, I finally got one of the boys to show up, and he is so sweet and amazing at dance. It turns out he was already accepted into the national ballet school as a beginner but couldn't make the classes because they were when he was in regular school. All the other kids are excited to audition in September and I hope it's because of my encouragement.
It's a four day weekend here due to Corpus Christi, and I've been in a frenzy sending out my resume and trying to get freelance work (a fun post on that next week). So unlike most people, we didn't go away this weekend, as usual, and I've been working on a whole number of things in a desperate effort to get some money together.
Yesterday, though, Eli and I had a fun little adventure. First, we went to Ipanema to watch the sun set, and found that the Two Brother's Mountain was actually on fire.
If you remember reading my story about baloes (balloons), you'll remember that people like to set off these enormous hot air balloons in honor of holidays, birthdays, soccer teams, you name it. People often follow the balloons across town, or even across country, until they fall so they can be recovered. This holiday weekend there were tons and tons, and one even fell on a house. This fire appears to be the work of a balloon because it started on a very hard-to-reach part of the mountain, and was difficult for firefighters to get to. As a result, it destroyed 30,000 square meters of forest--about 3 football fields. This year alone, balloons have caused 500 fires in Rio. Balloons are illegal but they're also traditional. It's not going to be easy to make people stop.
After that we went to an event at the Federal University. They're having a huge conference on Cuba-Brazil solidarity, and we thought it would be cool to check it out. What we found was a group of very hard core students, self-proclaimed commies, and a ton of people from Rio Grande do Sul, since the organization that sponsored the event is from there. We went to a concert part that turned out to be really bad and we left, and I wish I had gone to see the speeches, which were probably more interesting. Eli got really annoyed by it, wondering out loud why these people weren't in solidarity for their own messed up country, and I got really annoyed by a whole bunch of very vocal pro-Palestinian people (wasn't the event about Cuba?).
What was really cool, though, was the building. UFRJ's main campus is in a really ghetto place, far from Zona Sul, on a disgusting swamp in a building that looks like a jail or a mental hospital. But this place looked like a mansion, albeit a little rough around the edges. Also, compared to the University of Buenos Aires, where plants grow out of the ceiling, it really was a palace. I don't think they have that many classes there, though--I get the impression it's used a lot for events and whatnot.
In ballet news, I finally got one of the boys to show up, and he is so sweet and amazing at dance. It turns out he was already accepted into the national ballet school as a beginner but couldn't make the classes because they were when he was in regular school. All the other kids are excited to audition in September and I hope it's because of my encouragement.
It's a four day weekend here due to Corpus Christi, and I've been in a frenzy sending out my resume and trying to get freelance work (a fun post on that next week). So unlike most people, we didn't go away this weekend, as usual, and I've been working on a whole number of things in a desperate effort to get some money together.
Yesterday, though, Eli and I had a fun little adventure. First, we went to Ipanema to watch the sun set, and found that the Two Brother's Mountain was actually on fire.
If you remember reading my story about baloes (balloons), you'll remember that people like to set off these enormous hot air balloons in honor of holidays, birthdays, soccer teams, you name it. People often follow the balloons across town, or even across country, until they fall so they can be recovered. This holiday weekend there were tons and tons, and one even fell on a house. This fire appears to be the work of a balloon because it started on a very hard-to-reach part of the mountain, and was difficult for firefighters to get to. As a result, it destroyed 30,000 square meters of forest--about 3 football fields. This year alone, balloons have caused 500 fires in Rio. Balloons are illegal but they're also traditional. It's not going to be easy to make people stop.
After that we went to an event at the Federal University. They're having a huge conference on Cuba-Brazil solidarity, and we thought it would be cool to check it out. What we found was a group of very hard core students, self-proclaimed commies, and a ton of people from Rio Grande do Sul, since the organization that sponsored the event is from there. We went to a concert part that turned out to be really bad and we left, and I wish I had gone to see the speeches, which were probably more interesting. Eli got really annoyed by it, wondering out loud why these people weren't in solidarity for their own messed up country, and I got really annoyed by a whole bunch of very vocal pro-Palestinian people (wasn't the event about Cuba?).
What was really cool, though, was the building. UFRJ's main campus is in a really ghetto place, far from Zona Sul, on a disgusting swamp in a building that looks like a jail or a mental hospital. But this place looked like a mansion, albeit a little rough around the edges. Also, compared to the University of Buenos Aires, where plants grow out of the ceiling, it really was a palace. I don't think they have that many classes there, though--I get the impression it's used a lot for events and whatnot.
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