Halloween (Dia das Bruxas) is not an official holiday in Brazil, but is increasingly celebrated
After all, what marketing giants can pass up such a huge opportunity? International companies have led the way in promoting Halloween parties in metropolitan areas in Brazil, and to some extent it seems to be catching on.
Please comment here on this post is you have had experience with Halloween in Brazil, or an opinion on the matter.
UEBA is a blog aggregator and social voting site.
Looking for some new Portuguese-language blogs, sites, news, funny videos or other generally entertaining ways to waste time? UEBA’s the place.
Basically, UEBA works like Digg or del.icio.us insofar as it is a place that users can bookmark webpages/site and then vote on them. The end effect is one page with a whole bunch of cool links that gets updated constantly.
Examples of the kinds of things you might find on UEBA include a movable toilet, a human helicopter, the new changes to GMail, and even a hot new online racing game.
Basically UEBA is a huge waste of time in the best sense, and since all the sites it links to are in Portuguese, you can even consider your procrastination education.
10. The last time Brazil hosted the World Cup was 1950
9. FIFA had decided to hold the tournament in 2014 in South America
8. Pentacampeão!!!!!!!!
7. Brazil has many major cities to hold matches. Breaking news!! TV Globo in Brazil has reported that the cities to host matches will include: Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo [edit] apparently Salvador and Goiânia will join the fun (12:47 pm 10/30/07)
6. Brazil has the largest soccer stadium in the world, Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro
5. No other country has better diminutives for their players, right Ronaldinho?
4. To give the best league players in every country across the globe a chance to play at HOME!!!
3. Soccer is THE national passion in Brazil
2. Brazil is capable of improving its infrastructure in time for the tournament
1. Colombia dropped out of the running in April
check out Brazilian Portuguese Podcast for more audio…
FIFA President Sepp Blatter has awarded “not only the right, but the responsibility” of hosting the 2014 Copa do Mundo or World Cup to Brazil.
Following Colombia’s April withdrawal of their candidacy, Brazil was the only remaining choice, but a terrific one nonetheless. Brazil’s passion for the game of soccer, or futebol, remains unrivaled. This country, whose capital cities contain up to 4 major soccer teams each, is the only in the world to have won 5 World Cup championships, earning the nickname of Pentacampeão.
Apparently FIFA did not guarantee Brazil the opportunity to host the tournament when it was clear they were the only candidate, and stressed the importance of a “comprehensive bid package.”
This article does not intend to promote the image of Brazil as a violent country. This film is a very big deal in the news, and I thought it appropriate to discuss.
Tropa de Elite is a film based on the book Elite da Tropa, written by Luiz Eduardo Soares, André Batista and Rodrigo Pimental, and directed by José Padilha, acclaimed director of Bus 174. Based in factual accounts, the fictitious film shows the world for the first time the inner workings of the BOPE (Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais) of Rio de Janeiro. The BOPE is like a SWAT team on steroids; these are the guys that get called into the favelas when total mayhem breaks out.
The film focuses largely on the corruption of the Polícia Militar in Rio, which necessitates an elite, incorruptible task force totally separate from the regular police. Towards the beginning of the movie, when the BOPE arrives to enter a favela, a young PM officer is heard saying, “Faca na caveira… e nada na carteira,” a witty slogan referring to the skull-and-knife logo of the BOPE, and their incorruptibility (Knife in the skull, and nothing in the wallet).
Here’s a terrific discovery tool that you can use to find more great resources for learning Portuguese.
del.icio.us is a powerful tool for researching and bookmarking anything!
Looking for a new way to keep track of your bookmarks as well as find great information you never would have come across? Look no further.
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service that lets you save your bookmarks not in your web browser, but actually on their site, so you can get them from anywhere. On top of that, you can find great sites that lots of people have bookmarked. Here’s an example, a search for “portuguese” on delicious. Pretty cool, huh?
You may have noticed that all the Portuguese Blog posts have a little ‘delicious’ link at the bottom of them, even when you get them in email. Once you have a delicious account (free, of course) , you can save your favorite posts by just clicking that link. By doing this you are also making it easier for people who are looking for the information in that post to find it, which makes your faithful blog writer very happy 
Other more advanced features of delicious include the ability to tag your bookmarks to easily categorize them. Let’s say you are really into Italian, and also skydiving. Well, you could save all your language bookmarks with the tag ‘italian,’ and all your skydiving sites/articles with ’skydiving.’ Then when you look at your bookmarks, you can sort them with just a click and see only the ’skydiving’ bookmarks, for example.
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