thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
Hey guys! I just wanted to apologize for the long delay between posts! Ever since mymonth long trip around the northeast (blog post about that coming soon!) I havebeen out of synch about writing. But I would like to say a massive thank youfor everyone who checked out my blog and continuously asked me about my exchange inBrazil. Its nice to know people back home care. So hopefully you enjoy my blogposts even though they are a little late haha! And I promise I shall try andkeep on top of my blog posts from now!Beijos e abracos!Alisonoxox Imagine. Its three thirty in themorning, youve been dancing to samba all night. What did I want? A hot showerand my bed, what did I get? A cold shower and a five hour bus ride...I guess 1/2 out of 2 isnt bad? :pOkay so the way I put it above made it seemlike I was forced onto the bus, it was I did willing get on the bus. The reasonwhy the bus was leaving so early was because this weekend was the weekend myfamily were taking me to Termas Dos Laranjais. Its basically a massive waterpark. For anyone reading back home just think of Thorpe Park but instead ofbeing roller coasters there are waters rides. It had everything, from waterslides to Jacuzzis and the great thing about it was all the water was hot! All ofthe time! TermasDos LaranjaisWe arrived at the water park at about 9 in the morning (after leavingat about 4) I was soooo tired and wanted my bed more than anything but that wasntwhat I got. My cousin didnt go out the night before was they were ready to goso I had to suck it up and enjoy myself. After stripping down to my bikini I wasready to rumble. My cousins and I went on various rides as they day went on. Atabout 1 oclock it started to rain so we stopped and had lunch. An interesting thinghappened to me at lunch. I was talking to one of my cousins at lunch and I foundout that he speaks English. So he was talking to me in English and I wasspeaking to him in Portuguese. So he asked me whenever he made a mistake in Englishto teach him the correct way. So I said in Portuguese I like to teach but thething is, in Portuguese there are two verbs that sound very similar. To teachand to strip. So of course I said to him in Portuguese I like to strip,instead of I like to teach he looked at me abit strangely so I kept repeatingmyself until he asked me to say what I wanted to say in English. He realisedwhat I was trying to say and then just laughed at me, and then told the rest ofmy family. I guess my Portuguese isnt as good as I thought it was! our hotel :) Because ofthe rain we had to leave the park earlier than planned, as soon as I arrived inthe hotel I had a shower and went to sleep! Only waking
up to eat dinner andthen returning to my bed. :') They next day we set out early for the waterpark again. It was less crowed than the day before so we managed to go on morerides. And thankfully the sun came out and stayed out.After a few hours at thewater park it was time to return to the bus for a 5 hour bus ride home. It wassuch a good weekend with my family and their friends. I met new people and madefriendships. Win for the British exchange student I think! :D minha familiaa <3
Startedat midnight, ended at five in the morning; this party was going to be somewhat interesting....Baile Do Hawai is an event that happensevery year in Sao Pedro (the city Im staying in) People dress up in fancyclothes and go and listen to a band play...well thats what I got told beforehand.I thought it would be some kind of graduation ball but really I had no ideawhat to expect from this day. People had been talking about Baile Do Hawai for WEEKS before hand, planningwhat clothes they were going to wear, what shoes to buy, how they were going todo their hair, and naturally I got caught up in that. I decided that I wantedto wear a dress, but instead of going to buy a new one I used a dress I boughtback home in the UK and got it taken in to my size (totally LOVE the fact Ivelost weight since Ive arrived in brazil, bad side is I have to spent moneygetting the clothes taken in >.<)my semi- new dressI also went shopping with a few of myclass mates so I could buy the perfect shoes that went with my dress. After allthe shopping, the taking in and the countless hours of talking about Baile Do Hawai the big night finally arrived. Ikind of forgot about Baile Do Hawaidue to the fact of the whole moving house thing that was going on. But as soonas my (old) host parents had left my attention turned to Baile Do Hawai . Itstarted at 11:30 at night, so my family was going to turn up an hour later.After a quick nap (I get tired reaaally easily...or Im just lazy >.<) ashower and dressing session I was ready to party. The party was going to be heldat the local club which had a swimming pool. I had only been there once and I wasegar to see what they would do with the place. The theme of the party was Hawaiiand they really did pull it off! As I enteredthe floor had been covered with sand.the sand covered entrance As you walked in you had the option tohave a wreath of flowers given to you, I choose to accept :) They had Hawaiianbelly dancers and a massive water fountain. Once you had entered the main areayou could see everything. There was a massive table full of fruit that peoplecould eat when and how they pleased. There was a big main stage and a smallerstage. The main stage had a band and was playing all types of music; they evenattempted to sing in English. However the smaller stage was playing a type of Brazilianmusic called Pagode. I spent most of the night dancing with my school friendsto Pagode and only left at four in the morning when my mother decided to gohome. After taking a shower after I hadgotten home, it was time for me to sleep in my new bed in my new room with mynew separate bathroom. I guess this means that a new chapter of my exchange wasstarting. :) Soafter living in Brazil for
9 months one would think that I would have gottenbetter at planning out my weekends...yeah I didnt think so either SAMBOIS COMING TO TOWN! Minha cidade! Sao Pedro! For those back home that might notbe a big deal, but for us folk here in Brazil its a HUGE deal! For those whodont know, Sambo is a mixture of rock and pop songs with a samba beat added toit. Popular songs such as This Love by Maroon 5 and Bloody Sunday by U2 arebut a few to have had a saucy samba beat added to it. So obviously becauseSambo was coming to town everyone was needing a new dress...a new pair of shoes....A new belt that made an old dress look new...etc. I however already knew what Iwas wearing and therefore didnt technically I didnt need to go shopping ofany kind. But just like all of the other girls I was helpless to the powers ofshopping and found myself along with all the other girls in the shopsfrantically searching for something pretty to wear. After two weeks of preparing and re-preparingthe day of Sambo arrived. It was going to be held on a Friday evening ratherthan the Saturday evening because last Saturday was a holiday here in Brazil. Becauseof this hardly anyone went to school that Friday, and the few that did justspoke about one topic...Ill give you three chances to guess what it was :P.after a long day of waiting to get ready the night arrived! I met up with myfriends round about 10 oclock to get ready. After a massive round of no Idont want make up! and please, you will look prettier than you already do!everyone, me included (I lost the makeup battle :/ ) was caked in makeup readyfor the show! :D The show started at 1 in the morning but because Sambo is sopopular in my city people started to line up at 11:30 at night! Half an hourlater we finally got into the club and it was time to dance the night away! :D Wedanced to pre-Sambo music for about an hour before it was time for them to takethe stage...and they were soo worth the wait! The show was amazing! Everyone wassinging and dancing with everyone else. Half way through the show I ended up losingmy friends for abit but it was okay because the people I didnt know dancedwith me until I was found by my friends! The show lasted for about two hoursand I can honestly say I danced for every second of it. Its impossible to keepstill when Sambo is playing! Towards the end of the last song I caught the eyeof the one of the guys playing the ukulele. He smiled at me and I smiled backat him. When the song had finished threw the pic he was playing with towards meand winked. I can now say that I am the proud owner of a pic which was used ina live Sambo show! :D by time it was ready to leave it was early half three inthe morning and all I really
wanted was my bed. Unfortunately I couldnt haveit because my family and I were off to a water park five hours away from mycity....Readabout what happened at the water park in; the weekend I got next to no sleepPart II
Okayso where was I? Oh yes thats right, I had just passed my 15 day month mark....Jericoacoara. One of my favourite cities! This city was pretty special because we had toleave our beloved bus and ride a jeep for 30 minutes to get to this city. We hadto drive through all these sand dunes to get to this city, and no word of alie, it looked like Egypt! Once we arrived there we realised that there were noroads there, just streets paved with sand. There were no cars so everyone roadaround by jeep. The roads were so filled with sand nearly everyone didnt wearshoes, they just walked bare footed. The second day came and it was the daythat everyone had been waiting for, the day of the buggy rides! It was so muchfun, we drove (well we were driven) across all these massive sand dunes. We alsodrove across the beach; it was such an amazing sight! The night came and wewere allowed to just walk around the city on our own just as long as we wereback by 11 oclock at night. There was also a mini sand dune that you were ableto walk up and roll / jump down if you wanted. On the last night inJericoacoara all the exchange students walked to the top of the sand dune andwatched the sun set, it was so beautiful! <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>just chillin' on the beach.Another full days drive later and we were inNatal. During this time we said goodbye to our old coordinators and said helloto a new younger one. We also went on a tour of an old fort that used to be aprison, but me and my friends got bored and we and bought ice cream instead haha!The tour was followed by another visit to the beach :) . Two days drives later (they are increasing!!!)and we arrived in Itacare. We spent two days there exploring and findingbeaches. More often than not we got dropped off at the side of a motorway andeveryone would think we were lost, but after a trek through a mini jungle wealways arrived at the most stunning beaches! We spend our days playing footballon the beach and playing in the sea (or in my case nearly being drowned by thesea!) it was really nice just to be able to sit by the beach and just talk withthe exchange students as opposed to the other cities when were being showedthings.<><><><><><><><>me and my danish best friend on a beach!it says; "chelsea, i miss you more. te amo. alison" Another days drive brought us to arraial d'ajuda. This is my second favouritehotel. The pool was amazing and it was cute and cosy. One of these nights whenwe had nothing to do, the exchange students decided that it would be a goodidea to try and start rapping! I can honestly say I have never laughed so muchin my life, I thought it would be relatively easy to make up words that rhyme,but let me tell you it is soo much harder than It sounds! The second night wewent to a club
which was one of my favourite activates of the whole trip. When wegot there it was very quiet and no one was dancing. But we all changed that. All30 exchange students took the floor; dancing, screaming and jumping around! We finallyleft the club at about three in the morning only because we were going to haveto get up early the next dayTwo days later and we arrived in Rio. I dont know about you, but whenever I thinkof Brazil, I think of Rio so personally I was extremely excited to go to Rio! Allthe way to Rio we played samba music on the bus to get us excited! So by timeall the exchange students arrived in Rio everyone was sooo excited! Our hotelwas on the Copacabana beach front. We went to sugar loaf the famousrock/mountain of Rio. Where we had a beautiful view of the city. There was amini hard rock cafe shop there and everyone bought something there, I bought a Riohoddie which I shall be wearing with pride in the UK. We also took a trip toCopacabana and Ibanaca beach. One thing about Ibanaca beach, the sand wasboiling hot, like so hot you cant even stand on it! So of course all of theexchange students went running towards to sea as fast as we could so we didnt haveto stand on the hot sand. Because all of the other beaches had warm water, weassumed that the water here would have been warm as well right? Wrong! Im not kidding;the water here felt like the water we get back in Brighton...freezing cold! It tookus all by surprise I can tell you! The last day we all went to see the famouscristo redemor (Christ the redeemer) statue. At night we had our last groupmeeting and we did a mini questionnaire to see who would be awards what prize. Iwon best dancer on the trip for reasons only my fellow exchange students whowere on with me on the trip with know ;) after the little presentation we alljumped into the pool with our clothes on and just reminisced about all theamazing memories we had on the trip. We all stayed in the pool until about 4 inthe morning. It was then time for a quick shower and back onto the bus for ourlast trip on our big green bus. <><><><><><><><>UK, Denmark, Mexico and the US! The last day was filled with tears; (tbh I think I suppliedmost of these tears) as it was time to say goodbye. It may sound stupid but I becameso close with all these exchange students over that past month. I havedifferent memories with each and every one of those exchange students and I willnever forget them. Ive made lifelong friendships. I love them all with all myhearts and I am so grateful that I was allowed to spend a month of my exchangewith them! Tudointercambista que foi comigo em o nordeste muito obrigada para tudo! Voces saoMUITO legal e eu nunca vai esquecer do voces! Te amo com tudo domeu coracao!
What type of day would it be? A kind of with theexchange students... my favorite kind of day! It has been a while since I had spent time withall the exchange students together so obviously I was excited, when I received thee-mail from rotex saying there was a new project I didnt even read what wewere doing, I just said that I was going. Once I had actually read the email I foundout that the exchange students would be going on a buggy ride up a mountain ina city called Aguas de Lindoia. The day of the project came around and I woke upexcited. Unfortunately some of my fellow exchange students who went with me onthe northeast wasnt going to the rotex project so I was a little sad. I was especiallysad because my best friend from Denmark called Stine wasnt going to be thereeither seeing as she was going to Argentina to look at the waterfalls. However myother best friends from the states were going to be coming with me and I was ecstaticto see them! The meeting point was at a bus station in a city called Campinas. Thecity was about two hours away so it meant YET another early morning. I arrived ontime at the bus station seeing as we were told if we were late the bus wouldleave without us. But in true Brazilian style the bus was over an hour late. Thatgave all the exchange students who met up in Campinas to wander around theshops and catch up with each other. Oh just a little thing that happened in theshopping Centre that day. The day of the project was March 17th whichwas St Patricks Day! Brazilians dont celebrate St. Patricks Day but me beingfrom the UK, Im used to having some sort of St. Patricks Day celebration. I alsofound out that the American exchange students that I was with all alsocelebrated at Patricks day. There was a store in the bus station that wasgiving out free bracelets; to promote its store, and they had green ones! So allthe exchange students picked green bracelets to celebrate St. Patricks Day.campinis crew! When thebus finally arrived I couldnt hold in my excitement, there were exchangestudents on that bus that I hadnt seen since December! All the exchange students who were waiting in Campinasran towards the bus and pilled on. It was finally time to get to our actualdestination. The bus ride was about an hour and a half but it flew by. I dont thinkI actually sat down on the way there; I was too busy walking up and down thebus catching up with the old exchange students and getting to know the newones. Once we had arrived there was a little surprise for all the exchangestudents who went on the northeast. One of the exchange students from Mexicowas waiting for us! It was truly a surprise because I thought I was never goingto see her again! After saying hello to her it was time to pick our cars, well Isay pick but my friends picked for me, I just
followed haha! I ended up in a uswith my two best friends Camille and Wyatt from the states as well as exchangestudents from Canada, Mexico, Australia and India so I was happy :) representing, UK, US, India, Canada and Brazil It turns out the guy who was driving out bus wastour guide of the whole group and knew the area better than anyone so we got amore detailed tour as we rode up the mountain. We were shown a country club atthe side of the mountain that offered a beautiful view of the city below. We thendrove to the peak of the mountain. It has to be one of the most beautiful viewsI have ever seen of Brazil so far. After many picture taking it was time to descendback down the mountain. all the exchange students!On the way down we drove past a river and by thisriver there were these animals. I dont even know how to describe I t, they werentlike anything I have ever seen in my life! They looked like little pigs, butthey were brown and furrier and had longer noses. I personally didnt want togo anywhere near them but our driver promised that they were harmless. And I mustadmit, looking back they were quite cute >.<the "cute" animals! We made itback to the bottom of the mountain and thanked the drivers. We then walked overto a massive grassy area to have our picnic, all exchange students were askedto bring some type of food to share with all of the exchange students. I broughtmini hot dogs :D we spend the rest of the afternoon eating each others foodand just talking. We ended up in a massive huddle lying on each other, justcause thats what exchange students do. >.< all too soon it was time toget back on the bus home and head home. As various exchange students got off atvarious stops I became more and more sad. Im happiest when Im with otherexchange students and I was rather unwilling to leave them. However all goodthings must come to an end and I knew there would be a new rotex project netmonth so I had that to look forward too. So with that thought in my mind, I smiledand hugged my fellow exchange students goodbye with a smile on my face.
1 plane ticket to Manaus; R$1,300. Price tostay on a boat for 9 days R$3,000. Watching the sunset in the middle of theamazon rainforest; priceless. Day 1;Its four inthe morning and im awake on a Saturday morning, not because I have beenpartying on the Friday before but because today was the day! The day I leavefor the amazon! If I am completely honest at this point in time I was morescared than anything, spending 9 days in a hammock wasnt my idea of a greattime. But I knew it would be a unforgettable experience so I dragged myself outof my nice warm bed and into the shower. I arrived at the airport several hourslater with my parents. My flight was originally at 7:35 in the morning but thisbeing brazil it was delayed by several hours. Usually I would have minded beingstuck in an airport but I was with other exchange studnets so the time flew by.Also at the airport we met two new exchange students who wernt part of RotaryYouth Exchange but us being exchange students we welcomed them into the Rotaryfamily!amazing view from the plane! The amazon is in the state of brazil called Manaus and we had to gettwo flights to get there. When we finally arrived in Manaus about 4 hours latereveryone was exhausted and wanted to get some sleep but thats not what we got.What we got was a half an hour bus ride to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel,was given our instructions for the evenings and then given time to explore. Thehotel we were in was a 4 star hotel and it was huge, and I mean huge! It was sobig it has space for a shopping centre and a zoo! And not a mini zoo with justbirds, I mean a legit zoo, it even had a jaguar! After having exploring the zooand the rest of the hotel we had a talk by the guide who would be with us onthe boats. The talk ended and it was finally time to sleep...or so I thought. We wereinformed that there was a festa at night and because we were exchangestudents we managed to get tickets into the V.I.P area, which meant we couldget up close and personal with the dancers and even go back stage! There weremen wearing typical clothing of Manaus. Because it was the night of the redbull each one of us were asked to wear a piece of red clothing. We left theparty at about 1 this morning and after a quick shower I finally fell into bed (:Day 2;After an early start and I got shower it wastime for breakfast. A really funny thing happened at breakfast that morning. Herein brazil there are two companies that exchange students travel with. BeloBrasiland Terra Brasil depending on what district you are in. my company is BeloBrasiland usually the two complanies dont meet. However by a stoke of luck the twobus companies were booked into the same hotel on the same day, so there wereover 100 exchange students at breakfast speaking every language imaginable! It