“So what brings you to Brasil?
Vacation?
Work?
Or Sexual tourism?”
“All three.”
“Then you’ve come to the perfect place.”
I think it best to keep the three aspects of my whirlwind tour of Rio De Janiero compartmentalised, for no reason other than I haven’t yet done anything vacational yet.
So we’ll talk about work first.
This marks my first successful application to something worth succeeding in (Successful job application to Marks & Spencer does not count). Flights paid (£1000), School fees paid (£3500), Accommodation paid (£400).
Fast-Forward a month and I and my fellow Scholars flew out. Matt, Alice and Joana. We arrived at Rio’s Galeão and drove through town to our Hostel (30R each.) We were told by the course director, Dorian, that the hostel was fully booked for the night so we spent the night in another hostel. Jet lagged, we shrugged over the fact that accommodation was supposed to be paid for, and forked out another 40R for this. The following day, we were introduced to our other 8 classmates. As a bonding exercise we were ordered, by Dorian, to pay 60R and go to a “Funk” Party in a Favela. Granted it was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to. Due to my experiences with Raffaella at COSMO festival (I’ll digress another time), i found that after one drink, (Vodka coke, 15R) it wasn’t worth the money, and I could have even more fun Sober, so I waltzed out of the Tourist compound and onto the Brazilian dance floor. Funk music has lyrics, thanks to Google translate, like this:
“I wanted to walk the line you gave me no value,
Then all that cock went good up the womb (it was good) hehehe,
Now I sit down, punch, punch, watching porn, Caged pussy now going to tell you,
If they play with the cunt I’ll give you a tea cup!”
So you can Imagine the dancing. It was Man on woman on woman on man on man on transvestite on tourist on woman. And so on and so forth until 5am. There was the occasional dance off, which was spectacular. Real live shirtless men, breakdancing within inches from my Catholic eyes. I got called into a dance off at one point, and in that moment, with all these scary black and Beige people staring at you, you pull something out of the hat. And so I picked Beyonce (of course), and the popular song “Get Me Bodied ” as my inspiration, and chose the move “Wind it back, wind it back, till your head touch the floor, wind it back.” and to my and everyone else’s surprise, I wound it back till my head did indeed touch the floor, then wound it back up, then my heart fell out of my mouth.
I realise i’m supposed to be talking about work. Don’t worry, it’s going somewhere.
Next morning was a Monday and we were to go to school. Dorian met us at midday and took us for lunch (30R each) and introduced us to his friend Leandro, who played Li’l ‘Ze in the film City of God. This is him back then:
He invited us to his house in the real City of God (A large and dangerous Favela in Rio de Janeiro) for Feijoada (Brazilian traditional meal), of course, for a cost, made payable to Dorian. At this point, we’d been in the country 2 days, and after a quick bit of math we found that Dorian had already coaxed upwards of £100 out of us. We realised we should stop listening to him on the tuesday when he told us to go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant because he can get a discount for a group there. We gave him our money, he got a discount, he pocketed the discount. End of trust.
The rest of the staff at the school are fabulous. We have Ana, the endearing multilingual Brazilian Goddess, with flowing hair, who is somewhat of a friend to all. Calica, the fiery Portugese technician, whose slight body odour and quick temper gives everyone something to day dream about, and Diogo, who I think generally just does odd jobs, but he has a big round face which draws the attention. For week one, we had film screenings at 11am, followed by class, followed by lectures at 6pm, so it was a full week. Managed to attend an Art festival though, and start my daily running along Copacabana beach.
We also met Georgina, the Intern from London, who, thanks to Diogo’s handy work, has been left with not many odd jobs, so we hang out a lot, when we should be at school. I’ve found the group mentality quite hard to deal with here. I’m used to doing things alone, or trying to, at least. I just ran the London marathon, it was a one-man-job. I just attended a documentary course in which i was taught how to single handedly make a documentary, and then proceeded to make one, taking on the role of sound-man, Director, producer, camera-man etc. It’s quite a shock, then, for me to then be taught the importance of always having a crew of 10+ people. But the last two days, i opted out of Matt, Alice’s and Jo’s daily excursions to have some alone time, which has had a positive effect, I think. And we started filming today, and everything went more than well. I am provisionally the Co-director, with Alice. But we think that Dorian is after the Role of Director and Producer, when he is in fact, neither.
There is in fact a lot more to talk about than one would first assume, and I could go on, but I think that the end result would be that it would take you 24 hours to read an account of my day. Basically, after 10 days here, I have learnt many lessons:
Dorian - Do not trust.
Teamwork - learn how to do it.
Rio De Janeiro - Fucking expensive.
Mobile Data Roaming - Do NOT use it.
Bunk Beds - Sleep on the bottom.
Steak is sometimes cheaper than bread.
I don’t need to drink to have fun.
I can survive 10 days without chocolate.
