Recife!

Well, that sure took long enough. Didn't it? But here I am, after two very frustrating trips to them embassy where words like 'too vague' and 'not government authorised' were thrown around a lot. I cried a little, and I think that must haven softened this guy up, so when I went in the final time, and he had all the papers that anyone could ever have imagined existed about one person (including photocopies of my diary...but that's a different story), it took all of 3 minutes, and now I should be holding my visa in a couple of days. Which lead to my new favourite person Jonathan King, booking my flights and sorting my finances out, so that I shall be on a plane on Thursday 25.2 (God Willing). Slowly, I am getting a little more excited. As of yet it doesn't feel so different. I am sat at work, I have to get up tomorrow morning to go to work, so that doesn't feel different. I have to bury my mothers mother on Saturday morning and to get through 2 nights of l...

Hey! So here I am, beautiful Drumnadrochit. I have definately been missing Scotland since going home, and it's great to be back. The things that I have liked the most so far: *Walking to the Post Office to have each person that I walk past smile at me. *Chatting to lovely touristy folk in the restaurant and have them tell me all sorts of stories and such (In Finland the only story the customers were likely to tell you would involve the quality of their food, or the number of their cupons that they expected to work at that restaurant) (Also Speacial commendation goes to the lovely austrailian couple who gave me a boomarang shaped fridge magnet on my second day here! - It's the little things people, it really is). *Continental Breakfast *Reading my paper everyday. *Naptime! (yes, I have naptime) Well, the list could go on. But the point in the end is that 4 days in I feel that I've made the right choice coming to Scotland to await the next part of the Visa proceedings (No w...

Hey one and all. Yes, I'm a day late, as was alreayd pointed out. But I figured that since yesterday was my birthday that I could have some mercy time. Apparently not. ;) So now I turned 24, although I did have a long argument about it with one of the chefs. Apparently when you reach a certain age, your brain tells you that really you shouldn't be that age. So I had convinced myself that I ws turning 23, and argued with him about it for a good 10-15 minutes. I then took out a calculator (this is how convinced I was) and showed him how I was turning..........24. whoops. So there you have it, it appears that I'm having an age crisis. Sarah has been visiting and it's been lovely, I've had an excuse to stay in bed late, and to eat good food and to watch awful movies. I like having her here! So plans have changed slightly since last week. Where the plan was to quietly wait in Helsinki until my visa comes through. Instead, I have been given an opportunity for something ne...

Hey there. I'm just going to write you a wee note about the current Visa situation, and then hopefully later on this week I can add another little note about what I have been learning about silence (if you ask my workmates, they will say... "nothing" ;) So as it turns out the Salvation Army in Recife, maybe not so great at getting paper work in order, at least for my part. So we have decided to let them go and go about the visa another way. This is both good news and ok news. The good news part of it being that I am now going to be enrolled at a seminary in Recife as a student, to study some theology (which is great, because Ive always wanted to study theology, and Judith reccomends it, so I trust her). This means that I shall be able to get my student visa (which really we should have done in the first place..but alas.. such is life). Student visas should not be such a pain to get, and might even require less work for my friends at the embassy, who despite my grumbelings...

This week has included much serving customers based work. And that's about it. Unfortunately no news on visa, we are still waiting on the Brazilian Salvation Army to resend the invite. My birthday is coming up in a week and half (hint hint) and a friend from uni is coming all the way over to Helsinki for it. So have that to look forward too! Really this is another week, with not much to say, so I shall not waste space. But instead I'm going to add an interesting story that I heard in church the other day, Enjoy: On a cold day in December , a man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. Since it was rush hour, it was calculated that a thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the v...

Hey there! I had a surreal day the other day. I was on one of my famous days off (I.E. headed to work last minute because there was a crisis), this would have been quite a nice saturday morning, if it wasn't for the fact that this job was ridiculously far away, and I had no idea how to get there, so had to wake up at some time of the morning that I generally don't see (not as early as I am trying to make it sound). Having dragged myself out of bed, stuck a banana in my mouth and put some Brazilian samba on my ipod, I started walking towards the bus stop (turned out to be the wrong bus stop, that first one, and the second one that I went too). I then bumped into a friend of mine Bom Cabello, one of the capoeiristas in Helsinki, and my first human interaction of the day was in portuguese. Next I was sat at the right bus stop (eventually) and was sat enjoying sunshine in Helsinki (in AUGUST!) when the couple next to me started arguing. In Portuguese. I kid thee not. They were conf...

Hey there, So I didn't write last week, but here is a quick recap of what happened last week: Sleep. Yeah, that sounds about right. I was visiting Dion and Montse in Barcelona, and it was lovely, really warm and relaxing, but I found myself docking up more sleep hours than Hamish the cat. I don't know why I was so inclined to sleep, it could have been the heat, or work exhaustion, or a number of other things but it was nice. What wasn't nice was sleeping on the floor at Gatwick North Terminal waiting for the flight back to Helsinki, which is where I picked up whatever this bug is that I have right now (Not swine flu. I promise), but even then I did manage to sleep. Dion was very jealous at this new found ability of mine (well he thinks it new found, my mother was quite aware of it from a very early age). In any case, I thought I would update everyone on the newest on the visa, it's a bit of an epic really, but here goes nothing: Apparently the invitation letter that I r...