Wednesday 26 February 2014

We are Curitiba...STILL a World Cup city

We've linked songs over the last year to our mood, feelings and events that we have been doing. For whatever reason some songs have just stuck. For example:

When we climbing Ben Nevis this Curtis Mayfield tune seemed to fit. It also reminded me about when I did Machu Picchu and as a group we decided to wake up at 3am to run to the sun gate at 4am which would make us some of the first people to arrive before the other 500 tourists.


We had the Get Lucky - Daft Punk ft Pharrell tune which was a constant throughout the summer and our beach event, but also the Brazil Days.


One of the Brazil Days went absolutely crazy when Fuse - Antenna came on the shuffle. It made the event though as pupils and staff just broke out in dance!


Of course there have been other songs that stick out across the year, but these were the main ones. We are still waiting for the VISA and hopefully we have some good news in the next few weeks. There are two songs at the moment as we play the waiting game including a Curitiba inspired video!


Another Pharrell version of Happy!



Obviously we are both relieved that Curitiba remains a World Cup city after FIFA confirmed the stadium would be ready. It was always going to be our city, but now we can use the World Cup to help create positive memories!

Saturday 8 February 2014

Road to Brazil...Stadium Delay...Visa Delay...Perdido!

We started our fundraising a year ago today, climbing Ben Nevis, which makes it hard to comprehend the impact a decision we made in November 2012 is now influencing our lives and decisions as we sit waiting in Newcastle.

We spoke last night about how proud we were of what we had achieved given limited resources, a target of £10,000 to support us and no experience on how to start the "Newcastle to Brazil" journey. We started with a year in Brazil from January, but if truth be known since we decided in 2012 Brazil has been a major part of our lives whether that was fundraising, partying, with friends and in sport. We've both developed as people and made new friends along the way. It does become difficult to say goodbye or see you soon after spending time with people, but we've learnt to deal with that and soon that will be us. You realise the people who care about you and those who are interested in the idea behind our story. Luckily we've made some good friends to help us settle into Brazil.

We've had our fair share of media interest which is brilliant, maybe it might inspire people to take a step in the direction they would like. We can draw our inspiration from the people who are able to raise £40,000+ for charities like Tiny Lives and Childrens Heart Foundation. It is all inspirational!

We came up with the idea of a Brazil Day and yesterday we held our 10th at Star of the Sea Primary school. We raised about £600, but with it being a last minute decision we didn't know what to expect. I had personally forgotten what the experience was like, not only for us delivering, but for the pupils and students from International House Newcastle. They are literally celebrities for the day with children swarming around them to get an autograph and ask questions about their country. For us it is nice to see the young people enjoy the day taking part in different activities that seems to be catching the imagination of the schools as they are now recommending it to others!

Our VISA is still in limbo as we wait for it to be processed which is proving difficult especially as we both finished work in expectation to go. They say that happiness is not the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them. So we should have left on 29th January, but instead on the 7th February we had 455 children engaged in a Brazil Day. Positivity!

We have heard about the stadium situation in Curitiba and hope that by the 18th February they have came to a safe decision. Whether they hold World Cup games or not we couldn't really have a Project Curitiba and not be based in the city. Unfortunately if they can't hold the games then maybe we can come up with a solution, we've already came up with random ideas before and it has turned out to be quite good. 10 Brazil Days and 3894 pupils engaged.

It's been a fantastic year for us, a pleasure to meet all the people we have and hopefully we've left a lasting memory of Newcastle for you to remember.

The waiting game continues for us and Curitiba. Ate logo!