First week of classes

FAST FORWARD: My first week of classes was great in some respects, interesting in others, and at times a tad annoying. The great = My teacher - Dilmo - is very experienced, organized, and entertaining. That is not always the case. And my classmates are fun. From left to right: "Nikolas" the German has a quasi girlfriend in Maceio and is looking to live there; Zoe is an American from N.C. who has lived in England, Portugual, and France and has a quasi boyfriend in São Paulo; "Felipe" is from Sweden (my blog from Monday mistakenly labeled him as from Switzerland - don´t tell) he is the baby of the group, working on an internship here to finish his bachelors degree; and Seppo is Finish and going to be living, with his wife, in Porto Seguro for two years. I´ve invited myself to stay at his house, his wife lived in Wisconsin for 7 years and I´m convinced I´ll really like her; and not included is Chris, another German who has a Brasilian girlfriend, who doesn´t seem interested in hanging out with anyone. Seppo´s last day was today so we ate lunch together at a kilo place (see below). I´m thinking about staying in a hostel nearby on Friday and Saturday of next week so I can go out with them (and others) at night. Even though most of my classmates have Brasilian mates (very different from Maceio) we are all interested in making friends and hanging out. I think it is great we skip the formality of "getting to know eachother" and just hang out. The interesting = We have no class tomorrow because it is a national holiday. Today during class they told us we won´t have class on Monday either, another holiday. But they are making up Monday´s classes since it isn´t a national holiday. I just find it interesting that they waited to tell us until today. The annoying = the school in São Paulo is much smaller then in Maceio so space is at a premium. That means six of us are in close quarters for the 200 minutes of instruction that we receive (they advertise their price for 4 hours of lessons but with three breaks instruction is less, and that is okay). Today, at our first break, two of the other instructors unexpectedly left, so our class and instructor joined the other class in a small hot room and watched a ridiculous film. And the fact that I live 30 minutes away with no practical way of meeting anyone for dinner or a night out is annoying, hence the hostel.


LUNCH: We ate a kilo restaurant - you are charged for your food by the kilo. I actually had quite a few options, and for the very affordable grand total of 8 reais (about $4.50), I had brown rice, chickpeas, cauliflower, tomatoes, two pieces of cucumber sushi, and goiaba juice. I actually wanted Açai na Tigela but we couldn´t find a place. The taxi driver pointed one out to me on my way home and I am headed there on Tuesday.


GOTAS DE FLOR COM AMOR: It is difficult to work at Gotas and take classes at the same time. I only worked at Gotas twice this week and will probably only work there on Monday of next week. I´m not too worried about it - I´ve put in one month and I´ll have to more months to work there when classes are done.

(Just to prove I was there...)