another week in paradise :)

hey guys, so another week in paradise has passed. humph. time is flying and its definitely not fair at all.

okay, so ive pretty much given up writing day to day in my diary unless there are thoughts or feelings that i need to write down, because i do a account of events here every week, so whats the point in writing it twice? (its also easier reading this than my handwriting in my diary) 

aah, as im writing this, im catching up on a good bit of triple j. god i miss it so much. they play all that mainstream crap music over here too like lady gaga and britany spears and all that other stuff that i dont like at all. i thought i would maybe get away from it over here, but it seems that they are even more justin beiber obsessed over here than in aus, which is quite sickening. lol

ive gone a bit download crazy lately, and have downloaded heaps of olden golden music that i would normally just go to the cd rack at home when i wanted to listen to it, as well as some classic favorites that i was just craving, as well as a few musicals thrown . lets see... i now have some... Beatles, Bob , Boz Scaggs, Bryan Adams, Cat Stevens, Crowded House, Eagles, Elton John, Hootie and the Blowfish, Hunters and collectors, Jimmy Barnes, John Lenon, Meatloaf, Paul Kelly, Paul Simon, Phil Collins, Sting and the police, U2, powderfinger, INXS, silverchair, oh, and les miserables, and the phantom of the opera  :)
good mix if you ask me.

this week has been a good week, the greve (strike) at school of the teachers is finally over, so i have had total classes with all the teachers for the first time in 2 months... not that it really affects me though, i just sleep a lot. hahaha
i sent some more postcards, which involved a hell of a lot of writing. im sorry if you only get one this year, but you have got to realise that my poor hand needs a break, and cant be writing soo tiny constantly. hahaa there are a lot of people to send postcards to. i was talking to my friend kett, from over here on MSN while i was writing, and she asked where was hers, so i got out my cool aussie writing paper and envelopes and wrote her a letter (in english, so its a good thing she understands english) and she told me that she got it on friday! hahahaha

went out yet again on friday with my friends to savassi (yes this is a regular thing) and had yet again, more crazy random fun. i always seem to come home from savassi with no exchange student cards left in my little container, and 10 more friends that i have to remember the names of! its really fun and its a really great way to meet more people!

friday night, after savassi, we left to go to the farm.

saturday, we just sort of slobbed watching movies, which was fun, and i managed to make great advancements with my Rubix cube! only to completly stuff it up again, with no idea of how to get it back to where i had it :( stupid thing.

i will get it one day though. and no! for the last time, im not looking up the instructions on the net, or pulling it apart and putting it back together correctly, because where would the fun be in that? i promise that i will have either solved it before i come back to australia, or have gone mad in the process.  lol
i got to ride one of the horses at the farm too. :) that was fun, i love horses :)

so now im home again, its sunday night, i am picking up the courage to get a haircut tomorrow (apparently hairdressers in brasil cant be trusted, but im desparate for a trim, coz my ends are feeling ratty.)
i have played guitar, uploaded photos, eaten subway (yes they have that here too) and i think i will call it an early night after i have finished this post.

okay so until next time, have fun, keep safe and stay tuned!
xxxxem

eu amo Brasil :)

right now i don't think life could really get any better in Brasil.
School is good, starting to understand more of the language, therefore more at school :)
i amaze myself a little when in the car with my driver or at school talking to people, becuase i actually realise that my portuguese is actually coming along very quickly now, and i can have these half awkward sounding conversations with people but i understand, and they understand, even though the way i word things isnt really correct all the time, i am now reasonably understandable! its a really good feeling when someone says to your friend who speaks english: 'tell emma ... blah blah blah...' and i can turn around and say, 'its okay, i understand you, i dont need a translator!' tehehehee im happy.
i am learning a song called sutilmente, by a brasilian band called skank. :) it is a really cool song, i can play it, now i just have to polish up my singing of the words haha
if you want to check it out here is the youtube link :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geDHzXg56UU


tehehehehe has anyone else played google pacman? its the 30th birthday of pacman, so googles head bar thing is a miniature pacman thing! you actualyl play it! theres one wat to get distracted while going to look up something lol. but its soo fun! hahahaha

anyway went out with some exchange friends as well as a bunch of other people (god im popular these days, everyone wants to know me! we had a lot of fun and took photos, most of them are heading off soon, either going home, or leaving on their big adventure :)
it was a really nice catchup. kinda a last thing.

pretty normal week this week, i went for a massive 2 hour walk around my neighborhood the other day trying to find everything, turns out there is a massive hill i have to walk down for 6 blocks to get to the supermarket! YAY! that was fun to walk back up, trust me.


went shopping with joanna and her friend which was really cool, i needed a jumper or something, becuase i really only had 1 cardigan, and it is getting colder here. wow yes i know, in ballarat if it was 25 degrees we would be in tshirts, but all of a sudden the humidity has just dropped here, so its 'cold'. lol

i ended up buying a hoodie, a cardigan, and a pretty dress (i know the dress isnt exactly cold weather stuff but i dont really have a nice dress that isnt really dressy for partys and stuff and it was only 20 reais! i got it at a indian style store, and i swear that is where i will probably end up spending all my money on clothes from now on! it was cheap, and had beautiful fishermens type pants for 20 reais and tshirts for 10 and its all good quality and really nice, but most importantly, completly me, and cheap lol!


I made a chocolate cake on friday, my yummy flourless chocolate cake, and it is all gone already lol.
went oout to savassi last night again with some friends from school, and i swear, i know more people there now than Ana, my friend from school. lol
my friends would fit in sooo well with this group of people, i always described my friends in australia as the type of people that you dont need to give alcohol to to get them to be loud and fun :) this group is exactly the same, they are so cool :)


i have had a really great weekend. last night, (saturday) marilia said that her friend bruna had invited us to a  baile (dance party) so we got our stuff together and went to brunas house to get ready. so we got all frocked up and went out at 11pm. (... this is a normal time for brasilians to go out.) now, i thought it was going to be a party type party, but turns out that bruna does dance lessons (and by dance i mean zouk, salsa, tango, forro, and all those other latin type dances. ) so we went to the club/dance studio, for a dance night. it was really cool, i attempted to dance a Forro, but then gave up and just sat with Marilia and Rodrigo and watched everyone else dance for the rest of the time lol. everyone danced great, and towards the end of the night, i found out that this dance studio/ company has a group of dancers that have performed all over the world, and they did a 1 hour set which was the most amazing dance i have ever seen, no jokes. they are incredible, and i definatly want to go back another time even just for watching that again. totally worth it :) was amazing! i think they have a video and i am considering buying it, because there are so many people back home that would just love it. :) they were playing it earlier in the night on a screen in the background, and it is mesmerizing. 
ooh i found them on youtube! check it out :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga6WpZxCaXE&NR=1


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3K-iBImbYs&feature=related


absolutly amazing guys!


anyway, we got home at like half past 2am, and decided that we were hungry so hunted down some food, and i made a 5 min choc cake for us to eat lol
we started watching an anime movie at brunas before we went, so we finished watching that at home (everyone was sleeping over at our house) and then went to sleep at around 4am lol. it was a great night. 
woke up at 2pm today, and we have pretty much slobbed all afternoon, watching movies and eating crap lol.
good times here in Brasil :) doesnt get much better than this :)


tem escola amanha, eu nao quero ir, prefiro ficar em casa e dormir mais 
(i have school tomorrow, i dont want to go, i would prefer to stay home and sleep more )
(i suck at portuguese, bruna just helped me correct that lol)


anyway, im off for now, tune in next week for more adventures of Emma in Brasil


tchau!
xxem

Another week in the life of Emma :)

soooooo... this week has been a pretty normal sort of week for me. no big adventures, maybe a few little ones, but not that many. oh well, i will fill you all in anyway, i will probably find something amusing, embarrassing, or exciting to share, knowing my very hyperactive mood at the current time :)
why am i hyperactive you may ask? because i am just having such a good time at the moment. :) its great.
okay so my week...
so even tho i posted my blog last friday claiming to have a sore throat, i actually wrote that on wednesday, but just didnt post it til Friday. so by friday i was right as rain from my throat infection (infecção na garganta)
and ready to go out and socialise as my normal healthy self once more. lol

on friday night, i went to savassi with my host sister to hang with friends for a bit (shhh dont tell dad, he doesnt like it when kids 'bum' around the streets for no reason lol) got home at about 11, then packed a few things, and waited for pedro to get home from a party so that we could then go to the family farm, which was a three hour drive away.
the idea was that we would sleep in the car during the night on the way there. um okay. lol so pedro got home at about 3am and we drove for 3 hours and got there at about 6:30am. it was quite funny, because you would think that the reason that we went at night is so that we would have the whole day there, but when we got there, we all headed straight to bed and no one got up til 11 am lol.
we headed into the town for some lunch at a churrascaria, went and got icecream at a sorvetteria, and then waited at a park with a big church in it, while the adults went and saw a surveyor. they are going to build a new house on the farm, as they think they two bedroom cottage is too small lol.
i think its rather cute.

anyway, the farm is really cool! they have 2 horses, (one that is pregnant) and i will be able to ride them (or at least the non pregnant one lol) and have lots of cows, but the coolest thing appart from the animals is the fruit. they have mandarin's and oranges coming out of their behinds there are so many of them lol. i was wondering why we had crates and crates full of them, and why we got fresh orange juice every morning... now i know lol.
they also have a plantation of Pineapples, which will be ready in a months time, so then we will have pinapples coming out of our behinds too! (which might be slightly more uncomfortable than the oranges on account of the spikes)
the best thing (but unfortunatly they are out of season) is the fact that they have about 10 mango trees too! YUMMMM drool worthy lol


the farm is pretty fun (will be funner when i get to ride the horses!) we had a big water fight coz it was really hot, then played cards and ate popcorn out on the deck an chilled, then went and picked mandarin's to bring home (about 3 huge tubs of them) and got ready for a 6 year old birthday that we were invited to in the town.
we went to the party for about an hour then hit the road and headed home to BH.


mothers day was quite a nice day, skyped mum in the morning so it was mothers day in Aus and Brasil, and we can tell things are going well at the moment because i didnt even cry the whole day from home sickness.(special occasions are quite terrible in the tears department if you are not in an extremely happy mood, with other things to occupy your mind. lol) i love my mummy!


we went to a fancy restaurant place for lunch but got there and were told we would have to wait at least an hour for a table. there  were so many people sitting there waiting as well, so we left and found another alright churrascaria, and had lunch there. my host dad bought all the girls a rose each, as the restaraunt was selling them. :) its really purdy and its sitting on my window sill!


most of the days this week have been pretty much the same. go to school, sit around not even in class for half the time because the stupid teachers are on strike ( and have been for the past month), the other half of the time when we do have class we are at the point of the year where they are either revising or doing tests, so a bit more boredom for emma lol.

then i go home, eat, play guitar, watch tv, go for a walk, find guitar tabs, play on facebook, go for a walk, play guitar, eat, play guitar, and so on. lol  (just thought id include a picture of my guitar at this point, you will get updates on its sticker process over the year lol)


on wednesday i finally went and saw alice no pais das maravilhas (alice in wonderland for anyone dumb enough to not be able to work that one out lol) with joanna! it was awesome! didnt get to see it in 3d, but i am considering going back for a second time lol. my host sister wants to see it so might go with her :)


i made m&m cookies and chocolate brownies yesterday. they were both really yummy, but i dont know what happens to my brownies over here. they end up being 1 cm thick! it must be the flour or something, i used 2 tsps of baking powder and it still did nothing! its really weird. lol. oh well, they are still really good warm with sorvette (icecream)


maybe will be going out to savassi tomorrow night for a bit with a heap of other exchangers. its a last hoo-ra before everyone really starts dissapearing. :( will be fun though!


okay, im off for now, until next time, stay safe, and keep tuned for more adventures!


tchau


Em!

Nova Familia e Nova Adventuras na Brasil!

eeii tudos!
tudo bem? estou muito feliz. (i was going to make you google translate that instead but google is lame and made it come out all funny, so in Portuguese that means, hey everyone, how ya goin? im really happy!) lol


anyway, its been a week since my last post so thought id better put up another so as to keep all the antsy people at bay, who love to read my blog, and find that it is the highlight of their week! people just love to find out what i have got up to over here in the party country (yes steve i finally agree with you lol :) not that i have broken any D's though, because im an exchange student and exchangers always stick to the rules :)

okay, so in my last blog i mentioned that i was at district conference for district 4520, BRASIL!  i had soooo much fun at conference, a week in a hotel with pretty much just all other exchangers ( the conference and therefore the rest of the rotarians were in another fancy hotel, but that was alright with us coz we didnt have too many rotarians to spoil our fun!)

we went to some of the night conference bits. on the opening night of the conference we went to a coctail party type thing, and a tree planting, and on the last night we went to a massive party and got all dressed up and danced all night long lol. it was fun.

the only conference type part we really went to was one of the night sessions when we had to do a presentation. first we watched the GSE (group study exchange) group from my district 9780 in aus do their presentation. the GSE team are really cool, and its a shame we didnt get to hang out more coz its just so nice to talk to other aussies! 
they had a really good presentation, and it even helped calm my nerves of intruducing our presentation in portuguese. watching the video of our district governor trying to speak portuguese was the funniest thing in the world. i just love aussies who cant for the life of them pronounce portuguese. and yes i was probably in that boat at the start as well, but at least i have the accent right now. lol

anyway the exchangers, (inbound and outbound) did a 40 min presentation, made up of us singing (me singing and playing guitar and the others singing the chorus) to Good riddance- greenday; the outbounds did a couple of skits of situations on exchange which were very funny; the mexicans did a mexican dance (or ale did the dance, and fabian tried not to trip over his own feet :P) and then some of the inbounds, outbounds and rebounds did some short speeches of their time on exchange or what they were looking forward to.
it was a really good presentation. :)
the city that the conference was in is Aguas do indoias, which is a pretty little city in the state of Sao Paulo. 
the shopping was really cheap (tehehehehehe) and it was really nice to walk around the city and explore. unfortunatly it was pretty hot, so walking long distances was a pain in the bum, but we did it anyway. lol


i got so many things for my blazer, including a top hat which i think i will pin onto the shoulder...(dont as) hahahahahaah


ummm okay so after conferencia, i came back to Belo, and have had a pretty exciting week. 
on... now let me just think lol....


okay so at the conference i was invited by one of the rotarians from the rotary club of Belo Horizonte- Sao Jose club to come to their Monday night meeting. the primary reason for this being that the Australians were going to be there doing their presentation :)
i went along to the meeting which was really cool, Lara and Fie (2 other exchangers) are being hosted by that club, so i got to hang out with 2 other exchangers and the 5 aussies for a few hours. it was a really good night.

Wednesday was a pretty full on day. on monday, one of the people from the Sao Jose Rotary club, Marcio, invited fie, lara and i to come to his house for lunch on wednesday. he picked us up from our separate schools, and took us to his house and we had a really nice lunch, he is going to be the next youth exchange officer for the district, so its good to know him.
after the lunch i went back to lara's house, as the previous night she called me and told me that she had two spots booked for her and her sister at a night time horse riding thing, but her sister couldn't go so would i like to. i of course said yes lol. so we went back to her house, we got our nails done to fill in time lol and we headed off to the riding at around 6. :) it was such an amazing night, the riding was in nova lima, a small city outside of BH, and the riding trail was through the mountains suroulding Nova Lima and BH. there was a full moon and it was absolutly amazing. my horse liked to go fast but i got used to it after a while and was quite comfortable with galloping up hills and things in the dark by the end of the night. lol


stayed the night at laras, went to school the next day, went home for 3 hours, then went off again! the aussies had told us that they were going to the futebol on thursday and then the rotarian organising it said that he would get us tickets as well. the game started at 7, so we left at 4pm to head to the minerao (the futebol stadium in BH)
the match we saw was Cruzeiro ( the team that i support, a local team) and Uruguai (national team... obviously from Uruguai)

brasilian futebol is absolutely crazy. for the whole game pretty much no one sits down apart from in the break, there are people with drums, the whole stadium chants for the whole game, there are people with big flags, and people with flares and fireworks and stuff as well. and it is ALL legal. lol Rob and i were just sitting there going, oh my god, the things that happen here would never be allowed in Aus. but it was really good fun, and afterwards we went to a feira and had a look at the various things for sale there, and introduced the other aussies to some other typical brasilian feira foods that they hadnt tried yet, like açai, batata fritas (fresh potato crisps/chips) and so on. very yummy :)


so on friday, i went to school as usual in the morning, and when i got home, marilia had some news for me. my club president had called her that morning and told her that i was moving houses that night. rotary didnt want me staying with a family that spoke a lot of english to me   for 6 months, they thought three months was enough, so they decided to move me to a new family. i dont mind, because its good for me to change around families and experience different people and  places while im in Brasil. 
so now i am in a new family, i have 2 older sisters and a younger brother, and a mum and dad who speak no english. lol

makes things interesting for sure!
i am currently sick with a throat infection which is just lovely, (not really, it feels like tonsilitis all over again) and had to go to a portuguese speaking doctor with my portuguese speaking host mum today... intersting. lol at least i could communicate with them that yes i did have the swine flu vaccination in aus, therefore, no i dont need it, and no i dont have swine ful, and no you dont need to give me another vaccination lol.


anyway people im feeling pretty much like crap right now, and feel like sleeping, so im going to head off to bed and get a early nights sleep.


toodles guys, update you in about a week.


tchau xx