Just a quick one this as access to the internet is limited – an adendum and an erratum for the last blog.
I neglected to mention our lovely German volunteer Marcus (a cross between robocop and a bucket of ice cream.) and I spelled Reginaldo's name wrong. In addition we have now picked up a new volunteer from Brazil (Delma, pronouncd Thelma) who is also wonderful.
Since my last post we have been very busy working with the children but mostly the staff providing english classes and technical support. We have also painted the building from top to bottom and took part in a competitive football match; playing for the local team (eldorado.) We won but to say that my contribution was pitiful would be to pay me an undeserved compliment. It would appear that Brazilians (and Spanish) are quite handy when it comes to playing football!!!!
We had Sunday off so we were free to a bit of exploring. To see the whole of Sao Paulo would take a few hundred years as it is intimidatingly huge but with some guidance from our colleagues in Telefonica we were able to eat a disturbing amount of barbecued beef and walk in a lovely park – a park with black swans, vultures and goldfidh the size of domestic fridges; not like parks in the UK!
Sao Paulo is a very interesting city with something always going on but boy is is ugly. At the begining of the 20th century the population was about thirty thousand. It is now in excess of twelve million not counting the surrounding favelas. All the buildings seem to ave been designed by the architect of Nelson Mandela house from Only Fools and Horses and by comparison looking at the meagre homes of our friends in Diadema is a pleasure.
Got to dash now as we will be perfoming a presentation for the children about the UK!!!
Ta-ra, Bryn
Bryn is one of our Pronino volunteers and is blogging from Latin
America. To find out more about Proniño, head to
http://dnc.o2.co.uk/home/Pronino.