South America on a shoestring

Florianopolis, July 24th - 29th

I´m intending to race through some stuff now to get myself up to date. I´m going to be based in Florianopolis until Christmas but am intending to take a few trips in between, hence why this entry only runs until July 29th!

I arrived at the rodoviaria in FLN and instantly got a shock as I stepped off the bus and was accosted by a tout in Portuguese. I totally forgot what I was doing and replied in Spanish - good one. It was here that I would meet my new housemates Marcia and Luciana, and the day would hold a few surprises. Firstly Marcia turned out to be pregnant, the girls had a dog (which I am renowned for hating), and the apartment was certainly nowhere near the beach as I had been told in an email from a 3rd party. Nonetheless the girls were great and I was soon attempting to pollute their minds with my bastardised version of Portuguese!

I knew classes weren´t scheduled to start for another week, but I needed to get there early to register and decide which courses I would take. I met with my exchange coordinator who turned out to be a really nice bloke, and learned that the non teaching staff were all on strike indefinitely.... this meant that I couldn´t actually register anyway so I thought maybe I should take another little trip. To be honest I was finding it very difficult to be thrust into the Portuguese speaking world without an English speaking pal, and was feeling the need to find another gringo. Despite the kindness of my flatmates I was feeling a bit lonely and bored and thought maybe I should head off for a few days, and then give it a proper go when I got back and had classes to go to and things to do. As such I got hold of the emails of a few of the other English speaking exchange students and decided I´d contact them when I got back from wherever I decided to go. After 8 days without an English conversation (and with Portuguese so basic that this meant 8 days wihout really understanding a fucking thing), I jumped on a bus for Rio de Janeiro.

I´m going to stop the good and the bad section now, as I´m intending this to become more of a blog and less of a journal.