Oh The Joys of Companionship.... and SHOPPING!!!

Okay people I will just say now that i'm sorry that I haven't done a blog in the last month, I've been so CRAZY BUSY!

On Friday 2nd,  I picked up my good buddie Billi (from none other place than Horsham, Australia!) from the bus station after her 4 hour trip to my city! we went out to savassi and I introduced her to my friends, and had some fun with them just all hanging out. we had a really girly weekend, with lots of shopping and movies. it was great to have her here, it is nice to spend time with the other aussie's every once in a while.

we went and saw Eclipse at the movies which was amazing. Joanna came with us and we were all super dooper excited to see it!!! Jacob is so amazing! hahahaha
we went shopping and got a bit carried away in the shoe section of one of the stores. I dont know how many pairs of shoes we picked up between the three of us. 

Surprisingly I was the only one who came out of there with a new pair of shoes in hand though! they are amazing! mums first reaction was 'oh my god' hahaha


on the sunday we went to Feira hippy, which was very fun :) we once again bought a whole heap of stuff that we needed and even more stuff that we didn't need, but we had fun all the same. there was a store with a whole heap of very pirated looking dvds, which was 4 for 10 reais, so Emma and Billi also went a bit crazy there too hahaha.

I ended up with 5 movies and she had 4. so what did we do when we got home? bought junk food and watched heaps and heaps of movies! it was sad to see her leave on the monday.

so the next week, was pretty good. (im just thinking what i did during the week) On tuesday i did a mad dash around savassi looking for a dress to use for festa junina at school on wednesday, but i couldnt find any that wasnt ridiculously expensive, so i just went as emma hahaha
we had a lot of fun dancing and being silly, although it was a bit lame, but the good point being that we got 10 points for PE just for dancing hahahaha. BONUS!

went to savassi again on friday as usual, but went home earlier, as marilia went to brunas house, and regina picked us all up from savassi at the same time.

 I got home to find ingredients coming out my ears for glofballs and honeyjoys. we were having a surprise going away party for marilia on the saturday, so i got up in the morning and spent 2 &1/2 hours cooking sweets. i made 90 honeyjoys, 140 golfballs and 60 brigadeiro balls.
i was pretty impressed with my effort for that time space!

My last week or so with joanna was great, but in the same time, we both knew it was going to be superdooper hard to say goodbye. we went to praca da liberdade and took some photos and just chillaxed and as usual acted like idiots. she came and stayed at my house for a night after savassi, and we were up til 4am watching sempre ao seu lado which is the most beautiful film ever and, well we used a lot of tissues hahaha.

Then it came time for me to change families. I had soooo much stuff to pack up an take!!!!
leaving the Bengtsson family was really hard, because they have been so amazingly wonderful to me in so many ways. 
but i had to leave because they were going on a holiday just before marilia goes away, and then they will have another exchanger stay in their house. i stayed in Beatriz's house (past president of my club here) for 4 days or so, cramming homework like the world was going to end, because they told me that i would go away on holiday with one of the members of my club, and that i probably wouldnt have the time or internet to do my work. 
 on the last night that i spent in beatriz's house, we had a going away party for joanna with rotary. Unfortunatly because i was going away, i couldnt go to the airport with her on the monday. :( 



I had a very funny awesome present for her, as you can see, and she gave me a beautiful pendant with polish stone. 
well, im not going to say we didnt cry, because that would be lying. 
it was hard to see her go, because unlike leaving australia and knowing i would only be away for a year, i dont know how long it will be before i see her again. she was my closest friend here, and it was soo hard to say goodbye. 

♥ Eu saudade ela MUITO! Te amo Joanna. ♥

now i am here, in Sao joao Del Rei with my friendly rotarian Rita, and her daughter Cissa, and am having a lot of fun. but that is a story for next week, because my adventures here are not quite over yet :) 


sorry about the wait people. i have been busy, and the following week looks like it will be just the same! ai meu deus! e eu precisar voltar pra escola! urgh, muito chato. eu nao quero ir. eu nao quero ir pra Belo horizonte. eu quero ficar aqui! tehehehe 


Boa noite gente! 


xxxxxxem

STOP LEAVING ME!!!

Okay so this goes out to all the exchangers that are leaving/ have left me.....

I will miss you!!!!

... So obviously to all you guys back in Australia, Emma has come to a time in her exchange where she has to say goodbye to people, which isn't the most fun thing of all. you see, the rotary exchangers from the rest of the world exchange from around about july-july. Australia on the other hand, goes from jan-jan, so at the middle of the year I have to say goodbye to all the good friends I have met, and watch them all fly home. 

The upside of this I suppose is that I get to meet and get to know all the other exchangers that come in, in the middle of the year!

I am actually really looking forward to being able to look out for someone the way that Joanna has done for me. Take them shopping to the cheap places, go to the movies, get them to try acai, and different foods. Take them to savassi with me and introduce them to all my friends, and help them with the language. 

so although I will miss Fabian, Lara, Jonas, Joanna, Ale, Mariah and all my other friends that I have made; I know that I will make a whole heap of new friends, and that I will keep in touch with the friends that I have made. 

Exchange is amazing. 

Thanks for all the amazing times guys. love ya all!

Happy Birthday Sweetie

To my Dearest Maddi Page.


PARABENS PRA VOCE
NESTA DATA QUERIDA
MUITOS FELICIDADES
MUITOS ANOS DE VIDA!!!!

I hope that you have the very best day in the world :)
love you so much 
xxx miss you 


lots of love ... 


xxEm

COPA DO MUNDO!!!!!

This is it! World cup fever has well and truly set in!!! Never used to be a big soccer (futebol) fan before, and really wouldn't give a rats bum about it if I was in Aus, but when you are in Brasil, and the world cup is on, everyone just switches into futebol and party mode and you just cant help being swept away with the crowd of futebol crazed Brasilians! 

Me and my host sister :) 

(according to Alicia Titchmarsh we look alike... well actually, she got us mixed up hahaha good job hun )

Words really cant describe my futebol day on Sunday, so if I was you, I would just check out these videos on my youtube instead :) You will get the idea of how... Brasilians are when it comes to futebol :)




during the game:http://www.youtube.com/user/emmymay1993#p/a/u/1/Cgm6fjbYaEU

after the game:http://www.youtube.com/user/emmymay1993#p/a/u/0/MOTclPEFOi0

OOO OOO OOO OOO! I found out yesterday that the John Butler Trio is playing in Belo Horizonte on the 3rd of July! I don't care what it takes, i'm SSOOOOO THERE!!!!! I am really super excited about it, and I want to go more than anything! I have to find someone to go with me, but other than that .. OH MY GODDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway hmmmm, what else interesting can I talk about? 
umm Well everyone is leaving me and going back to their home countries this week. Fabian goes to Mexico on Friday, Lara to Germany Saturday (but she is super dooper sick at the moment and bed ridden, so if she doesn't get much better , she wont be able to go home then) and Jonas to Germany Monday. I don't know when Fie goes, and I know that Joanna still has a month. She leaves the 26th of July, so we have still got some time. 

I'm going to try and get everyone left together for one last outing on Thursday night, Fabian is staying at our house for the next 2 nights, so we can hopefully get as many inbounds and outbounds together as possible. 

we went out on saturday to savassi and were going to go to jonas' going away party, but the bus was full, and we would have had to wait 45 mins for the next one, then 45 mins on the bus, then had 1 hour at the party before we had to turn round and come back again. it was such a shame because we even made him a cool balloon hat! (we gave it to the statue instead) and the lady at macdonalds let me have the cute koala on a love heart (we decided it was a koala hahaah)


Things have settled into a routine for me now, which is really good. School during the week is good. No more sleeping for me because I have correspondence work from Aus to do now. I am doing three VCE subjects and hope to pass three subjects in school next semester so that I can go back and go straight into year 12 instead of repeating yr 11. There are a couple of teachers who I don't think like me having my laptop in class, but it means i'm doing something and not sleeping so pfft. they will get over it/ used to it hahahaa


I got a giant A3 envelope the other day from home, which is really cool! I was so excited! We know that packages take forever (still waiting for one) but worked out that if she posts things reasonably flat in A3 envelopes, we can get it through in the regular post, so it costs less ,and gets here in less than two weeks! YAY! She is now sending another two with my course stuff that arrived in the mail in Australia, and needed to come to me hahaa. :) 

I got a platypus finger puppet from mum, and a beautiful handkerchief from Faye (she sent it to mum for my birthday to forward on to me, but because we were unsure of a postal address, she didn't want to send it until now.) Thankyou fFaye its beautiful, only thing is that I dont want to blow my nose on it (although it would be handy right now!) It's from italy! My darling little sister Leah also made me a very cute card, and its sitting on my bedside table right now. It's so beautiful, and no one could believe that my 12 year old sister made it for me! This is what happens when people live in Brasil and don't have art classes or any creative outlets in school until uni. they don't have any creativity and cant make pretty things. They would rather buy them and save themselves the hassle. 

OOh i just remembered that i havn't told you all about my outing to Parque das Mangabeiras :)

sooo last sunday, i headed off to feira hippy with joanna and suvi, then afterwards we headed up to Parque Mangabeiras with my friends :) oh my god i love it hahaha

there are cute fuzzy animals everywhere! monkeys and coati (little fluffy things) and the monkeys like to eat mandarin, as i have shown in this following video:

http://www.youtube.com/user/emmymay1993#p/a/u/2/7U4SjHpIw8Y

(tehehehehe yes emma has gone a bit youtube crazy, but its just so darn cool!)

anyway, so me and my friends had a picnic at the parque! we have this special secret picnic spot in the forest, and we had a couple of old sheets that we chucked on the ground to sit on, and ate sandwiches, chips and cookies :) oooh and we cant forget the mandarins (but i think the monkeys ended up eating more mandarins than we did). one of the ungrateful little blighters decided that it was funny to bite a mandarin then drop it on my head so it smoshed as it sort of ran down my back haahah

oh well, not every day that you have that happen is it!

ummm Today, i'm heading up to Parque Mangabeiras again, because I have a task for english where I have to 
go to one of my favourite places and do this sensory thing. 

(Really its giving me an excuse to just go back there again)
I will take plenty of photos, and add them to this post after. I might even include my sensory piece of writing for you. Could be an interesting one. 

I'm sitting in class right now being a bit bored. School today is going to be boring. We had a test first for History (I did my History work for Aus instead) and now we have Quemica. There is like a protest assembly for the students period three (im off to the library with Jeff and Bia, they are studying for Geografia. do something that is not a waste of time) then we have recess, Matematica, and Geografia... another test. fun fun fun

(yes that is a little gecko on someones work hahaah)

I have to buy some leggings or shorts to go running in with Marilia and Adelina. I only have trackie pants, and trust me, running in 25 degree humid Brasil, (its hot again) is not too smart. I've been borrowing a pair of Marilia's. 
im going to the movies with Joanna and her friends tomorrow, so i might try to find some near there. there are all the cheap stores around that area :P


okay thats it for now


toodle-oo, until next time :)


Tchau!!!!

silly hats, silly sickness, silly fairy floss mustaches, silly movies.... Brasilly! (get it... bra...silly... brasil+silly... brasilly... oh... you got it!)

hey people, so Emma is feeling a bit off colour at the moment. which is such a big pain in the arse. i was going to be going to one of my rotarians country houses with them, but yesterday was feeling sick, so didnt go. still not feeling great today, but its not as bad. urgh. stupid sick.

 

anyway, so instead of curling up in a ball on the couch all arvo, my host mum took me and my fellow siblings to BH shopping (big shopping mall) and we had a bit of a wander around. we went into the shop O Boticário, which is like a perfume and makeup store, and i was like, i need new perfume, so i was looking at them and found a really nice one that was actually only 27.90 (which is cheap) but i only had 20 reais so left it. we went to a burger place and had something to eat, my host mum went off, and came back with a bag from that place with the perfume in it! shes such a sweetie :)

lol so we all needed more shampoo but i wouldnt let her pay for my shampoo because she bought me perfume hahah and she just threw her hands in the air, rolled her eyes and sighed. lol

so here is emma feeling slightly better than before, which is good, but still not great. everything is making my stomach funny. driving was fun... not.

hmm so this week we had a 3 day school week and a 4 day weekend, because there was some sort of public holiday on thursday and friday. 

on wednesday afternoon, marilia, bruna and i went down the street, and they made me wear a stupid had, because they were, and so we walked around looking like tools with stupid hats on, taking stupid pictures. 

then closer to six we met up with some other friends, had some maccas and california coffee (like gloria jeans)   and then headed to praca da liberdade where there was some jazz music being played :) it was really fun :)

we ended up with fairy floss stuck to our upper lips, and well, pretty crazy :) thats what happens when you buy lots of fairy floss :) tehehehehehehehehehehe yummy :) (yes that green stuff is fairy floss)

thursday, adelina (my sister) invited me to a churrasco with her, so we went there at about 3pm. it was really cool, just her, and all her friends from uni, and me hahaha it was fun :)

ummm what else... oh yeah, on tuesday i went with joanna to the movies and we saw... (yes yes i know)... sex and the city 2.
its not normally a film i would pay to see but it was actually a pretty good film, i certainly laughed quite a bit, and for 3.50 (plus joannas ticket and popcorn and coke... so okay, for 20 reais) it was better than the first film at least. 

joanna and i are planning two days this week to hang out. the first to work on our rotary presentations (her to make hers, and me to translate and fix mine up) and the second to make pavlova hahaha :) mmmmm gostoso!


ummmmmmm... i guess thats it for now! until next time! Tchau!
xxem

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