Busy week. We seemed to have found ourselves in a busy week. I don't have much time to write here before going back to my lesson planning. One reason for being busy is that teachers are being observed by managers this week. It's like in-house OFSTED for English teachers. Anyway, mine was yesterday and it went fine. I emailed my group before hand and told them to be nice to me and speak no Portuguese during class... they must all be exceedingly loyal as they were upright students for the whole period and didn't utter a peep of any language other than English.

Things I miss about England #21: not much gun crime. The shooting of a young boy in Liverpool last month and other news coming out of England suggests gun crime is on the up back home. In Brazil, it's a massive problem in built up areas and the mega-cities of Rio, Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Recife. In a referendum a couple of years back the Brazilian public voted to keep personal guns legal. It may seem like madness to vote this way, but it is a classic political catch 22. Nobody trusts the system to enforce the law, so they consider themselves better off with the option of having personal weapons for self-defence...

Anyway, little old Natal has the lowest crime for a state capital in Brazil, but that's not low enough for there not to be the occasional local horror story. This was all brought home recently with two incidents in the space of a week outside the English school. Two university students were mugged at gunpoint on Thursday and then on Sunday night some skirmish resulted in a young man being shot dead just down the road, again a supposed mugging. The news has spooked a few of the staff here, but I think the best response is to accept it happens, take every measure and care to ensure your safety and get on with life. Should anything happen, comply quickly with anybody who wants your money. (In Recife, Rio and Sao Paulo when people go out onto the streets they take an extra R$50 as "robber money" to pay off any threatening advances). But here we remain relatively safe. After all, so far there is no indication to me that what happens here is anything more than in Clifton where we lived in York...

Things I love about Brazil #50: the walk home. This might sound strange after what I mentioned above, but during the day the 5 minute amble to our house from the language school for lunch is one of life's little pleasures. Invariably, the sun will be shining, I can see the sand dunes and park to my left on the horizon. Just beyond them is the sea. I pass old folks sitting outside their house and I try to greet them jovially, even when they call me "Alemao" (German). At lunch time the streets are scented with the hazy aroma of beans and delicious Brazilian food. Then I pass the 5-a-side football pitch where some game might be going on, and over the square where the old men clunk their dominoes. Then it's past the pink Cathlic church, past the yellow building where folk practice singing for mass, turn right at the clinic onto our street and home... the stresses of the day just seem to ease off after this gentle stroll. And, I think I might be mad to ever consider swapping this for a commute on the London underground.

play.blogger.com. I've been enjoying a very clever little website that the people here at blogger.com have set up. Simply, every time a picture is uploaded to blogspot anywhere in the world, they display it live for all to see. This is happening so frequently the effect is of a never-ending slide show of random images. You can find out about any of the blogs in question or click straight to it from the picture. It's surprising how many people blog from Brazil! Anyway, through it, I've seen some very interesting photography and found some fascinating blogs. Give it a go here, at play.blogger.com.