My second day at Salgueiro creche today. We arrived at 9 and fed the babies and then let them have the run of the main part of the creche armed with small plastic chairs. A kid called Pedroh I met the day before had drawn us some pictures and then spent an enthusiastic solid 15 minutes playing hand games. I also spent a long time with a 6 year old girl called Duda, swapping some English for Portuguese. I attempted to draw a picture of my house and label everything in English, she picks things up very quickly! I’m not so sure about my grasp of Portuguese on the other hand, it’s a difficult language to learn and unlike most English, slight mispronunciation results in you being stared at blankly. I’ve now got a handle on most of the colours though, she drew a picture of me where I apparently have blue eyes and a slightly shaved head! We then had lunch, where they’d even sorted me a meat free version and then we tried to talk to some of the staff while the babies were asleep. Brazilian women always have impeccable manicures and pedicures, which they were doing for each other, I’ve never seen so many different nail varnishes. She must have had about a hundred, but I now have a free manicure!
Shortly after a lady they clearly knew turned up with two teenage girls, pointed them in my direction and instructed them to “sit there and learn English”. We had a while of awkwardly trying to understand each other before I decided to cash in on the chance for a free lesson in Portuguese, it’s surprising how quickly you learn a language when you don’t have the option of being lazy and using English like in most countries.
Vittoria has now permanently attached herself to me and cries her eyes out of I stop holding her hand. I’ve now either got the option of trying to get her to leave me alone by letting her scream or given her my undivided attention. It would be a lot easy if she was so cute!
We left the creche at 4.30 and after one of the members of staff insisted on giving us a lift to the metro station, got home at about 6. After getting some food we went to watch the Botafugo VS Palmeiras match at the stadium. It was odd as in the stadium they only served alcohol free beer but in Rio itself no one batts an eyelid at casual drinking in the street, taxis, beach etc, totally the opposite way round to England…
The Kombi Chronicles 
o que uma criança doce!