Ladies of the Night

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It´s the start of my 4th week - I still can´t believe I´ve only been here for 3 weeks. My Portuguese is improving but I still understand more than I can speak which is a bit frustrating. However, I can get the odd sentence out that makes sense!

My teaching week was pretty quiet (apart from a visit from the police and their rifles on Thursday). It was Mother´s Day here on Sunday so all the kids made cards and I translated their soppy messages into English. All the tough boys are just big softies at heart - it was really sweet.

Went to the Fluminense v Vasco cup game during the week. We didn´t have tickets so as I was trying to find a good deal I was getting called a tight arsed Scot in the process. The first guy wanted 25 reais for a ticket that had a face value of 15 so I told him to shove it (politely, of course). The girl I went with wasn´t impressed - it was raining (not heavily though) but to put this into perspective 25 reais is only 6 quid. However, I wasn´t being taken for a mug and I insisted we wait til nearer kick-off before buying and if they were then still 25 we´d pay it!! Whilst we were waiting in the rain outside the ground with a beer we found ourselves another guy who sold us the tickets for the proper price 10 mins before kick-off. I was very smug but for the sake of 2.50.......................

Saturday was an interesting day out. Went out with a girl from the house to a pub on Copacabana. As it was raining (again!) we settled in for the afternoon with a few pitchers of the local brew and watched the world go by. The pub is right on the beach and is frequented by the ladies of the night (or afternoon in this case) and it was quite amusing watching them trying to get any bloke that came in to buy them a drink. Anyway, I´m not sure if they thought we were competition (though we probably looked as rough as they did from the night before!) but one of them came over and asked for a cigarette, which then turned into another one. We got "chatting" to Luciana - which was quite entertaining as she spoke no English. However, my previously limited Portuguese had acquired a certain fluency with the aid of a few beers!

Not sure how long we were chatting to her but after a while we had ended up acquiring the company of another 3!! Linda being a generous soul and me not being a tight arsed Scot, in our wisdom (or stupidity) we ended up sharing our pitcher of beer with them.

It was quite late in the evening by this point and 4 Austrians at the next table asked us all to join them. We thought it best to point out pretty quickly that we definitely weren´t looking for a good time so Linda and I had another few beers as the ladies went about trying to negotiate some business. Not entirely sure how successful they were as we were making our exit by this point.

We had got about 100 yards from the pub when the train started so we hot footed back in looking like we´d just been swimming. Another beer consumed we set off in search of a taxi. The first one told us he wasn´t taking us to Santa Theresa because it was too dangerous. So, quick to learn (even after a few too many) we got into the next taxi before telling him where we wanted to go. Needless to say he was not very pleased but we had to get home and he was getting paid!

Woke up hangover free on Sunday so enjoyed the sunshine which has been lacking of late.

Unfortunately neither of us had our cameras with us so we have no pictures of our new found friends to share with you and we have also decided that it´s probably best if we don´t go back to the bar either!

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