Vamos a Brasil!: Recollections of a Volunteer Attempting to Teach English in Brazil

By Mike Fox

This is the story of a visit to Brazil by Mike and his wife, Sylvia, in January 2008. Sylvia is a trained and experienced teacher; Mike is not, but he knows a smattering of Portuguese. They were invited to teach English in a mission school in the industrial city of Belo Horizonte, and the story covers their exploits and attempts to teach a lovable but very lively class of students from all over Brazil. Most of the action is set in and around Brazils fourth largest city, but they did board an eccentric train ride to the Portuguese colonial mining town of Ouro Preto. The icing on the cake was their last day spent in Rio and one of its favelas. They arrived in Brazil knowing no one, and they left having made a lot of friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546285717

Book preview

2018 Mike Fox. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/19/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8570-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8571-7 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Contents

Friday, 4 January

Frustration in Paris

Saturday, 5 January

The Stunning Sahara

Sunday, 6 January

When Mike means Mikey

Monday, 7 January

Shopping Downtown

Tuesday, 8 January

An Anaconda makes the Papers

Wednesday, 9 January

The Teaching Begins

Thursday, 10 January

Rich’s Neighbourhood

Friday, 11 January

Wicked Cartoons

Saturday, 12 January

Picnic in the Park

Sunday, 13 January

The Hippie Market

Monday, 14 January

Secret Friends

Tuesday, 15 January

The Life Giving Properties of Açai

Wednesday, 16 January

Mike and the Freight Train

Thursday, 17 January

The International Evening

Friday, 18 January

The Municipal Market

Saturday, 19 January

The Botanical Gardens, an Artificial Lake, and a Beautiful Church

Sunday, 20 January

Is this a Rock Concert or a Place of Worship?

Monday, 21 January

My Awkward Blister

Tuesday, 22 January

How Difficult Is English?

Wednesday, 23 January

A Surprise Presentation

Thursday, 24 January

The Best Fish Casserole in the World

Friday, 25 January

Going out with a Bang

Saturday, 26 January

Ouro Preto: The Valley of Black Gold

Sunday, 27 January

Rio

Monday, 28 January

Homecoming after a Fashion

About the Author

Friday, 4 January

Frustration in Paris

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The journey to London Heathrow is misty with a lot of spray on the motorways; in fact, it’s a bit of a drag. We are aiming for an afternoon flight to Paris, with plenty of time and nothing to get excited about—yet. At the airport car park, I experience some initial frustration when I realise that perhaps changing jackets at the last minute before setting out from Torquay wasn’t such a clever idea, because I have mislaid some key addresses.

I give my inspectorate mentor, Baz Juniper, a quick call on my mobile once we get to terminal two. He tells me he has inherited the hearing I asked to have dropped from my schedule the day after I return to these shores from Brazil, but it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.

Even at Heathrow, I am very tired for some reason, and although I don’t know it yet, it’s going to get a whole lot worse. On our Air France plane to Paris, the crew seem to be getting us to practise our French from the moment we step on-board. Is there a national linguistic crusade going on here? We also receive a five-minute lecture on not smoking in the toilets; it’s absolutely forbidden, the cabin crew tell us. (Now they are sounding more like Germans.)

But the flight to Paris Charles de Gaulle is smooth. After arriving, we amble along to the check-in desk for the Air France flight to Rio de Janeiro. On the way, I try to take a photo of an aircraft, but I end up with my reflection in the glass! It’s a slightly disturbing photograph. We are then told that the 23:15 flight has been cancelled and will be replaced by one scheduled for 8:10 tomorrow!

The helpful lady at the Air France information desk advises us that we will miss our connecting flight from Rio to Belo Horizonte tomorrow. She says we can stay overnight at a nearby hotel, and she unsuccessfully tries to switch internal flights in Brazil for us the next day. At least she tried.

It’s now about nine at night, and we have to find our way to our overnight hotel. This turns out to resemble an obstacle course. First, we have to take a light rail train for one stop to another part of the airport, and then we wait in the rain for a hotel bus, along with about two hundred disgruntled Brazilians (and one Geordie) who are in the same boat. My Portuguese isn’t brilliant, but I am picking up some naughty things being said about the French.

After waiting for an eternity, we manage to get onto one of the overcrowded minibuses laid on by the hotel and arrive there at 11:00 p.m. We make the dining area with about one minute to spare; the area is cordoned off after the person immediately behind us in the queue for seats. Just when I think this adventure can’t get any worse, I crack my dental brace in two at the start of my meal.

On the positive side, we get talking with a young Brazilian couple, and both are very friendly. The young guy, whose father apparently comes from Argentina, asks, Didn’t your country have a fight with Argentina over some rocks in the Atlantic?

Yes, I seem to remember something like that. I end up telling them the parrot story. In it, an English guy, according to the Guardian newspaper—so it can’t be wrong—had two parrots at the time of the Falklands War in 1982. He trained one of them to say, They are the Falkland Islands! while the other one was trained to say, Oh no, they are not. They are the Malvinas!

At least they find it funny, or they are just polite Brazilians. We talk about football—or the male half of the couple does. He claims his team, Corinthians from São Paulo, was asset stripped and has now been relegated. Skulduggery in action. Greed is killing the beautiful game, he says.

It turns out to be a pleasant meal, and the food is quite passable. Well, we are in France, after all.

We are in bed by 12:30 a.m., with the alarm set for 4:30 a.m. I think we get some sleep.

Saturday, 5 January

The Stunning Sahara

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We are up before the larks, but at least there is an opportunity for a shower, even if there’s no time for the complimentary breakfast at the hotel. It’s raining as we make it onto the second hotel bus to leave in the early morning for the airport. It’s a twenty-minute drive through dark and wet streets, illuminated by the remnants of the