My first training was on the first weekend after I arrived in "Maracanãzinho", which is basically an indoor arena next to the Maracana Stadium of Rio and during the Confed Cup used as a center for the Volunteers.
It was pretty amazing to go through the Gates, finding your name on the official Volunteer list (they order after the first names o.O I don't know, but I am used to find yourself with the last name... never mind!) and being in between of hundreds of other Volunteers!
But there I already realised.... doesn't really seem as if there is ANYBODY not speaking Portuguese like me!! >.< It was pretty intimidating! The only few words of Portuguese I knew were more or less "Hello, my name is Sandra, how are you?" But definitely not enough to understand how we have to queue to get access to the volunteering area and so on...
As we were waiting for the training to start, I started to talk to a girl called Juliana next to me in my best 'Brazinglish' and my greatest fear came true... I am the only person in this room NOT speaking Portuguese -.- WHY?!
Everything the people from the organising committee said was in Portuguese! The presentation was in Portuguese (ok, I haven't had so many problems to read it, since it's quite similar to Spanish... BUT the pronunciation is just not!) and the whole first day was just theory... talking talking talking.... in Portuguese.
I was pretty tired after the first 2 hours and was waiting desperately for lunch.
They had a good range of different food (of course with arroz com feijões - rice with beans (like every day), I'll talk about that in detail in another post later!^^) and we had a lot of time to eat.... and talk if I could have spoken Portuguese, hehe...
We met some other really nice people who supported me a lot until the end of my stay in Brazil with understanding everything important :)
At the end of the day 'as a little treat' we went to the Maracana Stadium to get a first overview of this awesome place!
As already expected, the stadium was pretty far from being ready and it was even more interesting for me to see the Brazilians taking pictures of almost EVERYTHING in front of their eyes! A toilet sign, a dirty floor, construction workers, a piece of the wall.... what the heck???
I just knew this stereotype from Japanes people before... have you seen something like that in other cultures as well?! Pretty amazing and funny to observe! ;)
So the Brazilians basically freaked out completely when we went inside... of course there is a lot of magic going on, but I think for them it's even more special than for me, since it was completely renewed and before important games took place... I just went with the flow *scream*^^
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| Some Brazilians probably took pictures of almost every seat, haha!!! So cute! |
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| Alice (now one of my best friends I would say!! <3 And me (with awful hair -.-) And blimey! I got my jacket on, must have been a bit chilly somehow^^ |
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| Who doesn't love to call this 'working place???' :) |
The second day of the training took place outside and we walked around the stadium and leanrt about the entrances and transportation access (I barely listened, since I was too occupied with the heat and I thought >> if visitors ask me about transportation, I just tell them to ask a native << )
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| Still loads to do until the World Cup next year... |
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| And once again inside of Maracana, this time even on the green! :) |
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| Whoho, almost all the Volunteers for Rio! I am there on the right side somewhere...^^ Cannot even find myself... |
Have you ever volunteered for a sports event or something similar??
