Meet my new friend Adriano Lima, Paralympic gold medalist. On Tuesday I had the enormous privilege of interviewing Adriano Lima who is a student at Cultura Inglesa, Tirol unit. Adriano, who has minimal use of his legs, is a member with the Brazilian national swimming team. He has a gold medal from the Athens games where he was a winner in the relay. The medals he is holding in the picture are from this summer's Pan America Games which were in Rio. Adriano picked up seven gold medals, in front of a partisan home audience which included his wife and baby daughter Gabriella.

The reason for the interview is that Cultura produces an annual magazine which is given to parents and this will feature in it. Some excerpts from the article I'm working on about him:

How did his swimming career begin? Adriano, who has minimal use of both his legs, was not crippled from birth. He worked as construction worker until he was 17. But, 1990 was a fateful year for Adriano, as he fell off a high wall and broke his back, a terrible incident that was to deprive him of the use of his legs. This tragedy could have cut short Adriano’s hopes of a happy and fulfilled life. After what must have been three difficult years Adriano took to swimming and his evident skills were noticed. Soon, he was competing in his first competition in Recife at an event where he came home with a haul of gold medals. One year later, he was astonished to find himself on a plane to Italy, competing for his country internationally. Despite a harsh start to adult life Adriano seems free of bitterness in spite of the accident. “I’m very happy”, he says with a contended smile on his face. “I have no complaints about my life”.

I ask him about his routine, his training and diet. “Every day, I swim five hours and then I go to the gym for two hours”, he explains. “I never drink beer or soft drinks and never smoke”. And what food does a top class athlete like to eat? “I like to eat food like beans and rice. We eat a lot of fish and white meat to make us strong".

FIVE...
...mates.

Wherever I've lived, I've always had a bunch of blokes around who've been good value for banter, advice, fun and if Chrisitans, prayer and support too. In no particular order here are five Brazilian versions of those:

1. Fernando - teacher at Cultura, upstanding Christian and all-round good egg.
2. Dyego - teacher at Cultura and fellow film, comic, PS2, guitar, writing and YouTube geek.
3. Paulo - Computer guy at Cultura, believer and fellow lover of açai and guitars.
4. Artur - Private student training to be a diplomat: for debates on current affairs and international politics there was no better person to while away a couple of hours (and get paid for it!)
5. Rach's Dad Steve - always up for a beer, a banter and the chance to watch football.

And an honorable mention to Adriano Lima the disabled swimmer (see pic below) who, along with his wife and daughter, have become very good friends of ours in the last few months.

One thing or another. It's probably going to be a busy weekend so I thought I'd write a short update now. Life's been pretty full on for us - but rewarding at the same time. My students are coming up for their first assessments next week. I still haven't learned all their names yet. Mind you, one group of 20 or so teenagers has an annoying mixture of people with very similar names - Gabriel/Gabriella, Graça/Jessica, Isadora/Isabelle, Marcia/Marcella, Joao Vitor/Joao Henrique. I mostly just point and say "you there!".

Olympics over but Paralympics anyone? Brazil did moderately well in these Olympics - they lost a bunch of finals to the Americans which they were pretty sore about but their women's volleyball team managed to get gold against the States, prompting scenes of delirious jubilation on the podium. See here for an awesome interactive medals table from all Olympics up to and including 2008 as done by the New York times. Also, Brazil won their first individual women's gold medal ever when Maggi leapt 7.04 metres in the long jump. However, Brazil were denied a chance to even attempt for a medal in the women's pole vault when the ladies coach misplaced the poles after qualifying. The competitor had to borrow somebody else's pole but it didn't work out too well - it was like something out of Cool Runnings.

The Paralympics start at the end of next week and we'll be keeping an eye out for two possible medal contenders - Adriano Lima and Clodoaldo, both from Natal. The first is a student of the language school and I met him and interviewed him last year and wrote a post about it here.