Hi all from not-so-sunny Rio. Today´s my last day, and tonight I fly back home. It´s an 11 hour flight over the Atlantic but it´s direct which is nice! I´m quite excited about going home but I´ll definitely miss Brazil! It was sad leaving Salvador yesterday.
I went into hospital yesterday morning and we had a mini party. It was really fun, despite the fact that I had to make a speech in Portuguese to about 30 people (the whole haematology department)! Scary stuff, although I guess it shows how much my Portuguese has improved as I´d have found it much harder 4 weeks ago. I think they´ve enjoyed having me but as they said it´s been crazy time in the department- they´ve just started doing bone marrow transplants there which is huge progress, they´ve had new students in and most significantly, the residents (like junior doctors, they´re the first 2 or 3 years after graduation) were all on strike for a month, and only came back a week and a half ago. From my point of view it was a shame as I got on really well with them when they did get here, but from everyone else´s point of view it was a nightmare and all the doctors were really overworked. Although actually this last week they seemed to spend a fair amount of time in the afternoons sitting around doing nothing whilst the residents did it all! I can´t believe they´re allowed to strike, especially for that long. When I talked to them about it it did seem a bit more fair though- they get paid about 12000 US dollars a year which is about 8000 pounds, before tax. Brazil is expensive, and although that´s probably more than most Brazilians earn by a long way it´s still really not much after 6 years of study. Anyway I´m glad I´ll be working in the UK!
It was a fun week. I went out for a friend´s birthday on Monday and then on Wednesday one of the nurses at the hospital took me out to another all you can eat meat restaurant with her son and step-daughter. It was so smart- we drove up and were met by a man who parked the car for us and the restaurant was really smart and very expensive I think. Really how the other half live! We ate so much. Then they drove me to the other place they like to eat and showed me the restaurants by the sea with glass-floored balconies so that you can see the fish beneath. It´s by the marina and they pointed out their friends yachts! They used to live in England and were comparing Brazil and the UK and asking whether I though Brazil was entering the ´1st World´ I think their Brazil probably is but for lots of people it isn´t. One of the doctors drove me to the airport yesterday and showed me how much of the city is made up of favelas.
On Thursday night I went to a folkshow in the old centre which was really fun- lots of Afro-Brazilian music and dancing and a really impressive capoeira (Brazilian martial-art) show. The culture of Salvador is very unique in Brazil because of the huge African population and it was good to see a bit of it before I left! It´s all still part of the culture too- you see young boys all the time doing capoeira on the beaches.
I left Salvador and it was sunny and really hot, in Rio it was much colder and raining. I guess it´s good to slowly be introduced to the cold before I get to London!
Love Sophie
