My name is Andrew Downie and I am a foreign correspondent based in Brazil.

I write about the country for a host of publications including Time magazine, The Financial Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Monocle magazine and The New York Times. I am South America correspondent for the Chronicle of Higher Education and I also do some consulting work.

I started writing about sports and sports-related business stories for Reuters in February, 2012.

The purpose of this blog is to comments on the stories that I have been writing about from Brazil and draw attention to others. Although Brazil is becoming increasingly important and influential, the level of interest in South America’s largest nation is not huge and newspapers simply don’t have the budget to cover it properly. Yet there is so much happening and so many stories to be told.

The idea here is to call attention to some of these stories, as well as highlight some of the unusual and entertaining stories that make Brazil such a unique place.