What a difference a plane flight makes! I´m now in Olinda two and a half hours on the plane north from Rio. It´s way more hot and humid here. Nobody speaks English, so my bizarre Spanish/Portuguese cross over is getting a real pasting right now. My accomodation quality has taken a bit of a dive too towards what I was expecting all along. Eric, I´m in Africa now! You know what that means! Today was pretty much a travel day sitting at the mostly deserted Rio airport, chatting with a Brazilian family from Peabody, Mass, then taking an uneventful flight back into the chuva (rain). At the hotel, I´ve already got a tour guide attached to me who seems decent enough - there are hordes of kids around who I expect will be haunting my steps ... read more

I´ve had a pleasant time so far, although the weather has not been cooperating, exactly. I ate last night up on the 23rd floor of the sister hotel to the one I´m in and spent most of the meal stumbling around basic Portuguese with an extremely friendly but equally incompetant waiter. After the appalling attempts we made to communicate, it was actually a relief to get back to the sanctity of my little, incredibly expensive room. I´ve tried the Brazilian beer of choice, Skol, as well as the food, and very pleasant each of them were. I was back in the hotel by 9:00pm and asleep shortly thereafter. Amazingly, I had to force myself out of bed close to twelve hours later to catch breakfast. I´ve got to retrain myself to eat like a horse at ... read more

It's Friday, and I fly on Monday to Rio. I've just had a brilliant few days wrapping up school - the play turned out to be fab, the last day was fun, we had an excellent pool party, interupted by a couple of vaccinations, then more tom foolery in the pool splashing about with my students. Usually I get hurt at the end of year party, but this year I got away scott free! I met up with Lucille, Eric, Mike C, Kristin, Karen, Kristina, Adrian, et al for a fun bash at Orleans in Davis Square, then rode home very carefully. Today, I went into school early, crashed the room, finished the paperwork, then found a travel agent who was able to sell me a Brazil airpass, then had a two hour traffic jam to ... read more