aitz... the post-swim post

Right. I'm freaking zonkered. I just came home from my first swim practice at Colégio Boa Viagem, and I had two options – read Nietzsche or write a (short-ish) long-overdue post. The post won out, in the end.

I can only recall one workout session in the pool since I quit the swim team. If that was after grade ten, it makes it three years. Right now, as far as hardcore-ness goes, my body's only used to medium-sized runs and sleep deprivation. And heat. But not swimming in hot water. I only swam about a kilometer, but that did me in good, gave me a nice sailor's stagger toward the changing room. Once I stepped into the shower, I sat down, cross-legged, under the falling water, my back braced against the wall. I didn't trust my legs to keep me off the ground. The feeling of my head expanding and shrinking in time with my heartbeat – first my temples, then the back and behind the eyes –started going away. My fingers were still tingly when I got out to chat scheduling with the coach (which in Portuguese felt like a lot of effort), and my upper lip was salty again.

Then I took the lovely Piedade bus home, after having perhaps the second-best soda of my life. (The best one was certainly at the football game, in the sweltering stadium, chanting about the Nautico mascot-rat teaching us his dance). The bus is always lovely here, crowded, hot, hard to keep your balance on, but interesting every time. There are people to watch, to talk to, streets and stores to recognize, windows to hang your head and arm out of, breezes to feel on your skin.

So these photos are all from an amazing trip that Erica and Italo arranged for me, before they had even met me! I spent an absolutely wonderful week on Fernando de Noronha, an island of only 26 square kilometers. This is all it is (and sorry tons for the crud on my sensor).

There were tons of tourists on the island, and still, very few people could speak English. I went on a minibus tour of the place (6km of paved road) and had the opportunity to translate for a neat Swedish couple I met. The next bay down the line from this picture is Baia de Sueste, where I snorkeled for an hour. Saw the most marvelous creatures under the surface – a few green sea turtles, which are fantastic, huge, graceful, seriously prehistoric-looking creatures. A couple rays, a shark and a barracuda, both about leg-sized. There would be schools of fish that looked like prickly-pear leaves lit up from the inside, one fish, two fish (and often huge schools of many more very close), red fish, blue fish (more blue than red, actually). That evening I realized why the red fish had been hiding – they had been scared away by the big reddening one in a life jacket, Bermudas and snorkeling gear. I peeled bad a few days later.

Here, in a restaurant, I came to adore "musica popular brasileira". Guitar and voice with chord progressions that I had never imagined existed. And poetry that I could appreciate just for the sounds of the words. It's nice to just listen for this, without needing to look for the meaning. Something I can't do in English, and probably not in Portuguese anymore. Ahhh, I'm reduced to fragments. It's time to go to my second option.