It's been about a month since I wrote about my nice little (but not little) birthday surprises so now they're all well underway. Job, volunteer work, soccer, Art of Living, capoeira, dancing & dancing buddies...New life in Rio: Success!!
First of all, my job is great. A sincere thank you to my man, Tim, who generously left me all of his private students on his way out of the country. I go to the Olympic Committee for a few hours every day to teach the wonderful people who are planning the Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics. The atmosphere is wonderful--everyone is always happy and they have that beautiful, international, cooperative spirit of the Olympic Games flowing at all times. I'm teaching English and some Spanish and loving every minute of it!
I'm also volunteering at a nearby favela on Saturdays, teaching English to the kids there who want to learn but don't have the money to go to classes. Gabriel, a young guy who lives there and already speaks English, started this program on his own. It's at his house, he uses his own computer and he bought a few books and a whiteboard to use with the kids. He's been working with Dawid, from Poland, for the past few months but now a couple of his friends, as well as Luise from Germany and I, are there as well. The number of kids is increasing each week and we're just planning lessons together over facebook and dropbox. It's really fun starting from scratch and figuring out how we can best help these kids.
I'm doing a language exchange with a new, dear friend of mine that I met online, who lives about two hours away from Rio and, on top of that, I'm taking two Continuing Studies courses online and learning a ton! I even found Art of Living here! Life is seriously a freaking success.
I finally got to play soccer, too, but I only lasted a week. Beach soccer is totally different than the soccer I've always played and it's a complete blast but it totally destroyed my feet. People here are used to playing in the sand with no shoes but I am not. After a week of kicking the ball (including one night that we played foot-volley and I served with my right foot all night), my feet, especially the right, were swollen and useless. It's now been three freaking weeks and they still haven't healed (although they're finally starting to....thank you anti-inflammatory pills!) so I haven't played since but I'm hoping to get back out there at some point before I have to leave.
The funny thing about my injured foot? Even though it hurts when I walk, run, kick the ball, try to bend it and sometimes throbs even when I'm just sitting, when it comes to dancing salsa, I don't even feel it. It's like I forget that I even have feet. My friend that I met in Cuzco and I go salsa dancing each week. There's a live band that's really good and we always have at least each other in case other people don't dance but usually there are a few decent dancers.
I also went to a week of capoeira lessons with my friend and they were great but I've since been taking it easy because of my foot. As soon as it's healed, I'll be back for more! I've met some really nice friends there too, particularly a girl from France, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with them.
Random thought that made me laugh: My two grocery stores were shut down by sanitation this week. Nothing more needs to be said.
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