Arghhhhh, I´ve been attacked!! No, not by men looking for a watch to steal, but by mosquitos! Goddamn. It´s horrible - I´ve got bites all over me. Big red blotches. Gross. Anyway, I´ve slapped on more suncream (with insect repellant built-in) than my skin can absorb today as a precaution.
Let me tell you a bit about my Pousada. It´s very nice, though when I arrived there on Sunday evening, I thought bloody hell. Brazil feels a bit like India in many ways. It´s hot and sticky, it smells in some places like human excrement and wee, there´s posh areas with big metal gates so the riff-raff cannot get in, and there´s beggars and thieves. To add to this, my room in the Pousada is painted the exact same horrid shade of green as my village home in Barwala, India. Thus, when I got here, I felt like a snob. But then, after a day I realised that the Pousada was great, and the green was growing on me. My room is massive, given that it´s meant for 3 people, but there´s only tiny me in it. It has a sink, a ceiling fan, a safe, and somewhere to plug in my hair straighteners (lol). There are plenty of bathrooms, and mine is 2 metres from my bedroom. It´s immensely clean, and the shower spurts out lukewarm water, a blessing after 30-degree heat and humidity. Each morning, the family who run it wake up at the crack of dawn to bake fresh bread and cakes and prepare the eggs and fruit for the breakfast buffet. Compared to some big hotels I´ve stayed in around the world, what we get for breakfast here is very good: fresh local fruit (melons, pineapple, oranges, tinsy-winsy bananas and some that I have never seen before, and so haven´t tried yet), scrambled eggs, fruit juice, coffee and the delicious home-made, warm vanilla cake that I cannot help but take giant slabs of. Mmmmmm.
Anyway, I should get some lunch, and then I will return to the school, for my first Afro-Brazilian dance class. Samba! Oh, by the way, Salvador is 4 hours behind London time (hence why I´m getting lunch and you´re probably just getting ready for dinner). Peace out.
