When the rodeo came to town...

Last week saw Quirinopolis's annual rodeo event at the lake.

With this comes music, the fair, horses, and crime. This year the event started off with a shooting (and of course subsequent death) the night before it launched. Why  the night before? I'm not really sure to be honest, perhaps the people of Quirinopolis were just very, very excited.

Anyhow, the rodeo came to town and for a while it made everyone happy. Every night last week there were

A weekend back on the farm

The cow after the deed. Yep, that's all from
one of them.

It was only my last post that I mentioned that people here in Quirinopolis like wanton animal slaughter, and alas I must fulfil that stereotype again. Carlinho wanted to kill a cow, so therefore Cristina, Daniel and I headed to the farm with Ed Carlos and (the heavily pregnant) Shinayda for the weekend.

After arriving and helping them milk the cows (with surprisingly little excrement sprayed by them this time - it appears as though they've got used to me) I listened to Ed Carlos talking to his mum about the pros and cons of killing the new litter of 5 kittens that had been born. Apparently she had been waiting for his arrival so that he could do it (I'm not sure if it's seen as some sort of honour or not). He wasn't too fond of the idea however and hasn't as yet taken on the task.

So, whilst Daniel was off riding horses and calves

Bovine CSI... In Quirinopolis...

Now that we're in the sleepy town of Quirinopolis I'll be honest and say there isn't a tremendous amount to see or do. That being said, I thought I'd take my camera on a trip up to the school I'll be teaching at and see what kind of things I could take pictures of along the way.

Now, I've been slated a few times about my involvement in wanton animal slaughter, so I see this post as somewhat of a justification in the peer pressure sort of way ('But everyone's be doing it). Please see exhibit A, B and C below. Each of them taken at various points along my exciting trip up the hill.

Andre the loverat and the destruction of a toilet

The farm...

I've mentioned Andre and Diana (the latter pronounced Dee-an-a) in passing before, but now I've decided that they both (Andre in particular) deserve their own little historic background.

After Mauricio left (not entirely on friendly terms) about four months ago there was a bit of a handover period while Carlinho and Euda looked for new people to help on the farm (somehow I didn't seem to be top on their list. Mind you, Cristina was happy about that). After a week or two of waiting for applications, one of Carlinho's brothers (Paulo) found a possible candidate. A guy had walked into his mechanic shop and asked for a job for him and his girlfriend. There were none going, but Paulo referred him to Carlinho. Now, these two apparantly had no experience of working on a farm, came from Mato Grosso (a more northerly state), and were desperate for a job as they were to be turfed out of their home by the end of the week. I don't think either party was too enthralled with the idea of them working on the farm, but

Inexplicable footage of the gents toilet of a bar

After browsing my videos on my camera to find the footage of the gourmet frog meal, I came across some additional footage. Footage of me in the gents (not in the act of using the hole in the floor). Now I can only hypothesise why I took the footage, but I seem to remember using the ladies on a previous visit to expel

UPDATE: Roasting the frogs! Erm... That's not the French by the way...

What the frog looked like before
its' heinous murder

Remember back in November 2010 when Ed Carlos, the Frogfinder General, and I went hunting for frogs? Well at that time I was unable to eat the 'delicacies' as I was going to the farm the next day... Drat!

As it turns out, the Frogfinder General had been keeping all of the frogs in his freezer. After receiving quite a few threats from his wife about them, he decided that he was fed up with 'holding onto them for a friend' and dumped them in our freezer. Well, last night we decided to finally crack them out and give them a try!

Carnival - more of a fantasy than a Brazilian reality?

We've all seen the Rio and Sao Paulo carnivals on TV - the splendour, the party, and the dancing - but what's carnival like when you are actually in Brazil?

Well, for the most part, in the smaller cities people appear (to my layman's eyes) to find it a bit tedious and a good excuse to stay at home. Mind you, I don't tend to mix with the young and single crowd. Wikipedia for example states that 80% of all the country's beer sales are over the five days of carnival.

In Quirinopolis for example many people (mainly between the ages of 18 and 25 I suspect) had a big party at the lake. I didn't opt for this option as I value my life, and the chances of getting into a fight and shot are relatively high. Add to that, with all the drinking, and the lack of any worthwhile police force, afterwards the roads are particularly hazardous.