After a very cold spell last week, the weather turned to a better 25 degrees and sunny. Normal winter day in Rio! Locals have been complaining that this cold was not normal and blaming global warming! By cold weather I mean about 16 to 19  degrees during the day … maybe a drop down to 14 at night, so pretty much similar to a damp British summer J

In any case last weekend was glorious and we went to the beach in Copacabana yesterday to meet Alistair’s new BFF (Best Friend Forever – Sorry Steve, see how BA replaced you so fast!). His name is Yanis and he is coming from London as well to open an office in Rio. While the boys played a bit of futball I did my best to get a bit of a tan and stop looking so much like a tourist!!

We had some good news last week. Alistair finally has his CPF number! This number is asked for everything! You buy a fridge and want it delivered, you need the CPF number, you want a phone, you want a bank account, rent a flat, buy a washing machine or even adopt a dog and guess what! You need the bl**dy CPF number! So now we may try to open a local bank account and not have to pay our rent in cash! Walking in Rio with one month rent in cash in your pocket IS NOT a good idea!

But we also had some bad news! After 3 months of paper work, the application to register Alistair’s company was rejected by the government! In the UK it took us about 10 minutes to register our company online. Here God knows how long it will take. So now he is providing more info and we hope we can get it registered by end of this month. Only once the company is registered can we apply for a permanent (i.e. 2 years!) visa. So we hope it won’t take forever as otherwise we will have to go back to the UK to apply again for a business visa of 3 months in September! We live in hope! This is Brazil! They love their bureaucracy almost as much as the French do!

Today I started my 1^st class in Portuguese. I joined the intensive course (3 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks) at Casa de Caminho in Ipanema (http://www.casadocaminho-languagecentre.org/).

It’s a charity that supports an orphanage, so the money goes to a good cause. Also the tuition is reasonably priced and of very good quality. I am very pleased with my choice! Also I am lucky. I joined the intermediate course ( as I speak Spanish!) and everyone in my group (with the exception of an American lad) are Spanish speakers,  so the course should move fast!

That’s all for now folks as I have 14 irregulars verbs to memorise in Present and simple past form for tomorrow!