This weekend we've done a number of cultural things and had a nice day out to Paqueta.

Firstly, Paqueta Island is an island 1.5 hours by boat from downtown Rio. Situated to the north-west the boat takes you past the naval docks, Isla Fiscal, under Niteroi Bridge, past tied-up offshore support vessels at mooring, past various LNG and oil loading jetties - to a quiet (by Brazilian standards) island about the size of Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour. We were surprised that there were as many heading to the island - the ferry had capacity for 2000 and was probably 50% full and most of them were Brazilian families with picnic baskets. We were met by a line of horse drawn buggies and bicycles. We only saw one car on the island! It was to this island that Bonifácio was exiled - the father of Brazil's Independence - he fell out with the first King, Pedro I - and spent two years on the island. We walked past his house by pure chance shortly after landing and after two hours had seen most of the island! It was a dull day weatherwise - so we probably didn't see it at its best. The waters all around in the Bay of Guanabara are meant to be heavily polluted - and certainly didn't look inviting. There were many terns feeding - so must have been something live out there! It was a very human sized island - good for a stroll and lunch of fish (not local we hoped) and chips (and rice and beans!). We spent a happy couple of hours pottering before getting the ferry back. Seeing Rio from a different perspective is always interesting.

Saturday we'd spent the afternoon in the National Museum reading about Independence, Dom Pedro I, his wife Leopoldina and José Bonifácio of Paqueta fame. The last two were the architects of Brazil's independence who convinced Dom Pedro to go along with it. Leopoldina endears herself to Patrick as she was a fan of Mineralogy - as was Bonifácio! She died aged 30 after masterminding the independence of Brazil and giving birth to 6 children - one who eventually became King of Brazil - Dom Pedro II - and one who became Queen of Portugal!! History has some amazing characters - and Brazil/Portugal is throwing up lots of new ones for us!!!

Other cultural events of the weekend were screenings of Elite Squad and Elite Squad II. Kate was worried that they were going to be overly violent but in fact they turned out to be very thought-provoking. Downloaded onto the ipad we watched these in the security of our own home! These films are rather close to reality here in Rio - enforced by our students saying so! If the drug dealers of ES were bad enough, wait till you get to the rogue policemen in ES II. To cap it all the 'hero' of ES II is a human rights academic who is based on a real life character standing in the current elections on an anti-corruption ticket. He has a big fan base among students and the liberal left but it doesn't look as if he's going to win as Rio is booming under the current mayor. All this makes us wonder if we're living in Rio during the making of Elite Squad III! The elections will be held on Oct 7th and are very high profile here in Rio.

While we're on the subject of culture, it should be known that Patrick in particular is being very assiduous about reading books in Portuguese! He's currently reading the new Paulo Coelho as well as '1822', the follow up to '1808', (both significant dates in Portuguese/Brazilian history) and is getting very knowledgeable as a result. He also enjoyed a book in portuguese about Darwin in Brazil and hopes to find some other books on the subject.

I (Kate!) find the act of reading a book in portuguese less satisfying than Patrick does. I'm not prepared to just get the gist of what's going on and read slowly enough in english so find the constant looking things up in the dictionary detracts massively from the pleasure of reading. I managed to find that Granta have just brought out a volume of the Best Young Brazilian writers and have bought myself a copy so that's something to aim towards before we leave here.

My favela english classes are now into week 5 and seem to be going well. Last wednesday was tricky as the temperature was 42 degrees (despite the fact that we were still officially in 'winter') and, inevitably, the students were not at their most receptive. We are also having to work round the fact that the number of students changes from week to week - we now have had 18 students through the doors - but usually only have about 10 per week, still ranging in age from 6-40, and only 4 of them have come every week. Who knows what's going on in their lives so we just try to create a fun, welcoming atmosphere in the class for whoever shows up even if this means we may not make the progress we'd hoped for. There are some lovely students in the group. Our 36 year old, Marcos, has taken to baking us a cake every week - and very good it is too!
I feel very privileged to be having direct contact with young Brazilians and finding out about their lives, whether it's uni students at UFRJ or favela students from Santa Marta. I hope they're learning as much from me as I am from them.

To end on a far more mundane subject, something else we had to contend with last week was termites! We kept finding a pile of what looked like sand by the door in our bedroom which reappeared after we'd swept it up so we were able to rule out us having brought it in from the beach. Patrick googled termites and the resultant pictures confirmed his suspicions. Having invented paper funnels to attach to the door and catch the tiny wood pellets they were expelling, we managed to find some spray which seems to have done the trick. We think it was the sudden rise in temperature last week that may have caused the outbreak and from talking to other people, it seems that it's a common problem out here so it may be just as wll we bought a big can of anti-termite spray!