Thursday and Friday saw me pushing myself to train 3 times a
day even including a 7am class. I was quite surprised to find it was as busy as
the other classes though the general age of the black belts was a bit older.
This may have been coincidence, I'll check if I ever make it to another class
that early ;)
The odd dizzy spell
aside my body is beginning to adjust to the time change and the heat which is
good, I'm still very much bottom of the class but hey the only way is up! One
of the great things about being in Brasil is the sheer numbers of black belts
on the mats and everyone at Fightzone whether they speak English or not will
always give you little pointers or show you techniques to help improve your
game. A normal group session can turn into a series of mini private lessons
with alot of different black belts :D Saturday was a big sparring class and the
busiest so far, I assume alot of Checkmat black belts who teach in other parts
of Rio & some of their students come down
for this session which is why it's so busy.
On Friday between the 4.30pm and the 8pm classes I took a
little walk to the Copacabana Night Market. The Night market is on every day
from around 6.30pm until about 9ish AFAIK. and is about 5-10mins walk from
Fightzone Academy into Copacabana, it is held in the island of land in the middle of
the Road by the beach.
The market sells a
whole range of things and it is always worth looking around the whole market
before you buy anything as price for the same items can vary wildly from stall
to stall. It is great for souvenirs selling nearly everything you can find in
the souvenir shops for a fraction of the price. There are also a couple of good
havaianas stalls, some clothing - tshirts, bikinis etc, Brazilian artwork and
much more. Some stalls have fixed prices which they will have on display others
have no prices and are more up for negotiation. Unusually for Brasil nearly
every stall owner does speak some English but if you can manage it I would
recommend using Portuguese (as you are more likely to get a cheaper price) On
my last trip I asked one stall owner the cost of something in Portuguese she
replied with one price in Portuguese and then 'repeated' what she said in
English but the price suddenly jumped by 10 Reais. I simply repeated the price
in Portuguese back to her and bought it for the cheaper rate.
Even if you don't speak any Portuguese all you need to learn
is how to recognise the numbers up the
amount you would be prepared to pay for something and learn how to say
" how much?" which is
Quanto custa? - (Kwan-toh coos-tah?)
Local hand made purse + Keyring I bought at the nightmarket
And the back R$8 for Purse inc name on back R$2 for the Keyring
Referring to my previous post about Rios Buses, one morning
as the bus was winding around the mountain on the road ahead of us was a solid
wall of smoke from a fire, much to my alarm the bus simply sped up and drove
through!!!
The bus driver must have watched days of thunder recently.
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