COUNTRY: Brazil
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Wildlife Conservation & Youth Work
WRITTEN BY: Sarah Camden
Working at the children's centre has been so much fun. The kids all have really outgoing, happy personalities, and so much energy!! As soon as we get to the centre we have kids running up to us, giving us hugs and fighting over who gets the first piggy back. The first part of the afternoon is spent playing games and running around outside. The younger kids really like playing tip and the older ones like to play games like soccer or skate. Ellen and I taught them how to play cat, cat, dog (duck, duck, goose but we only knew the Portuguese words for cat and dog). We were really happy to see how much fun they have playing it. Almost every day now they yell out "gato, gato, cashorro" and get a group of kids together to play. Even though we can't understand everything the kids say we eventually figure out most things and they are very patient when it comes to communicating with us.
We have just started teaching English to some of the students and our first lesson went really well. The children were really excited to show us what english they have already learned at school. We practiced colours and by the end of the lesson they were able to match the Portuguese and English words together without our help. For our next lesson we are going to teach the kids about Australia and make origami koalas with them!
Our other project at the centre was to repair and paint a cabinet where the children leave their bags. A group of them helped us paint the shelves and got paint everywhere! It was an absolute mess but they really enjoyed themselves. We painted the shelves so one side has a day theme and the other side a night theme. The teachers at the centre were very happy with the end result and so were we!
During our second week a German girl named Kitty joined us on the program and lives with Steph'a family. We also have two girls from Holland who are working at the centre so it's been a lot of fun getting to know new people and learning about two other cultures.
We have been making the most of our weekends exploring Floripa, trying different restaurants and doing activities that Grazi has organised for us such as white water rafting which was so much fun!! One weekend Ellen, Steph and I were meant to go on a bike tour around the Lagoa but it was raining so much that it ended up being cancelled as soon as we got there. The meeting point for the tour was a really nice place called Cafe Paçai so we decided to stay for breakfast until the rain cleared up. All Brasilian people are so friendly and helpful, so it was a welcome surprise when the owner of the cafe spontaneously lent us two kayaks and a paddle board so our day wouldn't be wasted!! It turned out to be such a good day paddling around the lagoa and exploring the area.
Last week we realised last minute that we had an extra day to our long weekend and decided to travel to Garopaba for a girls weekend. We stayed at a beautiful hostel on the beach and spent two days at Ferrugem and Praia do Rosa beaches which was really relaxing. It is serendipitous moments like these that have made our trip so special. That same weekend we travelled to Blumenau to go to Oktoberfest. We watched the parade during the day, tried German beer and food and went to the party at night. There was so many people there from all over Brasil. Kitty especially had a lot of fun singing and dancing along to all the German songs. It was such a good night!
This weekend we will be heading to Curitiba. We will miss the kids a lot but we are also super excited to go to a new place and work with the animals. We have already made plans to go to Rio and Iguasu Falls so we are all looking forward to more exciting adventures to come!!
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