Lesson learned: "help" is universal!

I know our blog posts have been a bit scarce lately, but we've been spending our days enjoying our many Brazilian adventures.

We spent last Tuesday evening at a dinner during which one of the Rotary Club members was installed as the president of a school that several of the Rotary Clubs support. I decided to make a trip to the bathroom before the dinner started. Without thinking, I closed the exterior bathroom door (there were several stalls inside). When I tried to leave the bathroom, I discovered that the exterior door wouldn't open. I pulled on the knob with all of my weight (which I think has increased by a few kilos as a result of the amazing food here), but it wouldn't budge. One of the bathroom stalls had a window that opened into the kitchen, and I even climbed on the toilet and opened the window to see if I could see anyone. I wasn't quite desperate enough at that point to stick my arm through the window to try to get someone's attention. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to say "help" in Portuguese so I resorted to pounding on the exterior door for several minutes and yelling "hello" and "saida" (which means exit) -- one of the Rotarians later told me that "help" is understood universally. I assumed that another female would need to use the restroom or my group would begin wondering where I was, and I was very thankful that someone came and opened the door for me after about 10 minutes. Leave it to me to get locked in a bathroom in a foreign country! (I also learned that night to be careful with the gestures I make...some gestures that are very innocent in America have drastically different meanings in other countries!)

We spent the weekend at the district conference which was in a small tourist town about 3 hours away. The scenery along the way was beatiful, and the hotel was like a resort. There were trails to hike, and the town was only a 10 minute walk away. It was nice to get out of the city and have some time to relax after our busy schedule. We met our new host families at the conference and rode back to São Paulo with them on Sunday afternoon in preparation for our last week in Brazil!

Eu sou nao muerto!

Howdy from Brazil! We just wanted to let everyone know we aren't dead yet! Actually we have had a really busy week with Rotary meetings almost every evening. They start at 8(ish) and last til 10:30(ish). We are picked up from our host homes sometimes as early as 1-1&1/2 hours before in order to reach the location in time due to the traffic! So we often don't arrive home till almost midnight. Then we have to start over the next morning and be picked up at 7(ish). This all started on May 17th, my birthday!!

The 1st 4 pics are of our RCSP-Santana meeting. They treated us to samba dancing for my birthday! What a fun evening!

Next is RCSP-Vila Alpina. William was a team member to our district in April. He's standing with a lovely young woman who was a Rotary Exchange student from this club to Bolivia (if I remember correctly.) She gave the program about her experiences. She didn't speak English, but spoke Spanish, so I was able to talk with her. It's so wonderful how we are able to communicate in some way through a combination of languages!

The next pic is of me and Rhonda at the RC Botucatu-Cuesta.

As you can see, we haven't had time to blog because we are having such wonderful experiences! We are currently in Aquas de Lindoas, a lovely little resort town in the mountains, famous for its magic thermal waters. We are participating in the District Conference and gave our big presentation to the Rotarians Friday night. We added a song at the end where we all grabbed people out of the audience and taught them to 2 step! We were a huge hit!!

Everyone but Vanessa and me are still at the Governor's Ball, but I will let them fill you in on that later. Also, I plan to blog about my vocational experiences soon.
-Betsy

Lost in Translation

Between our limited Portuguese and the limited English of some of our new Brazilian friends, we've experienced quite a few linguistic faux pas in the last two weeks. One of my experiences involves my job title – Program Coordinator at the George Bush (o pai) Presidential Library Foundation. Evidently, "program coordinator" means something drastically different here. In Brazil, there are "program girls," an occupation that is illegal in the majority of the U.S. (except maybe in Las Vegas), and the "program coordinator" is the person who coordinates the activities of the program girls. There have been a few surprised expressions and follow-up questions regarding what "programs" I coordinate. Thankfully, the bio in our printed brochure goes into a bit more detail regarding my job description! We've had numerous other minor miscommunications, and we're keeping a journal of the ones that aren't necessarily appropriate for blog posting.

This weekend has been very relaxing, and I've had a chance to catch up on a bit of sleep. After a dinner of pizza and vinho with my family on Friday evening, I was able to sleep in on Saturday morning. I fixed my own breakfast, wandered downstairs, and managed to find the gym on my own. My family lives on the 19th floor of an apartment building, and the complex has beautiful landscaping, a swimming pool, and even a pond with turtles. It's been interesting to see that most of the places we've visited (schools, apartment complexes, etc.) are gated and have security guards around the clock. At this apartment complex, the guards even open the car door and look in the trunk before allowing entry through the gate.

After a good workout in the gym, we had a traditional Brazilian lunch of feijoada (black beans and rice) that my family typically eats on Wednesdays and Saturdays. And then I had a few hours of rest before joining the rest of the group at a pizza party with the Liberdade Rotary Club and then a techno balada. It's very common here for parties to last until the morning hours, and then people sleep until noon, have lunch in the mid-afternoon, and then have dinner sometime between 9 and 11 pm. It may be tough to switch back to my 8 am work schedule in a couple of weeks!

New host families, 3 schools, and a Rotary Club meeting

This is Vanessa posting. Last night, we changed to our second host families and I feel as though I'm in a new town and it's a new week (although it's Friday). During our first week in Sao Paolo, we were shown around primarily by the Liberdade club, which is in the Japanese part of the city. This week, Rhonda and I are being hosted together in the same family and our team's coordinators are Italian (as is the area of the city we happen to be staying in - called Mooca). Mooca is in the east side of the city and last week, I was in the west side.

Today we visited 3 different schools. The first one is called SENAC and is a private vocational school for students at the post-high school level. One of the GSE members of the group who went to Texas last month works there, so he was the one showing us around. We saw classes such as cosmetology and computer design:





We were really taken with their espresso machine, which freshly grinds the coffee beans and automatically dispenses the cup before filling it:



The second school, sponsored by the local Rotary district, is a 6 month job prep program for disadvantaged students in area high schools.





We attended the lunch meeting of the Vila Alpina Rotary Club, which was held in the facilities above the school. We gave our short presentation, which consists of us saying not much more than our name and profession in Portuguese and exchanging banners with the Club president.



The third school was a technical, industrial preparation school for high school aged students; the name is SENAI. It was a marathon visit...4 hours!! The director of the school spent 3 hours talking (in a lot of detail) through a Powerpoint presentation (with David translating so very well!!...we have felt blessed to have his language skills every day!). Students at this school learn how to operate various types of machinery during the 2 year program.







Tonight, I had the earliest dinner yet in Brazil - finished by 8 p.m.!! It seems to be typical for people here to start eating dinner at 10 or 11! So, I'm glad to have had the energy and time to post a little about our school visits today...and still have time left to go to bed early!...TGIF!! :)

Feliz dia des Maes!

(We're a little late with our posts, but here's a recap of our activities from the last few days.) On Mother's Day, we woke up with a mission – to sneak away and buy a gift for our host mother. David and I tried to make up excuses to visit the supermarket, but our host family had such wonderful hospitality that we didn't actually need anything. We were finally able to slip away to the supermarket across the street and buy flowers for our host mom. We weren't quite sure how to sneak them into the apartment, but David had the brilliant idea for me to create a diversion by running into the apartment while screaming and waving my arms. The family would then follow me to find out "what's the matter with this gringa" while David got the flowers into the apartment…luckily we didn't have to resort to that plan!

We've had an amazing host family this week, and have eaten delicious Brazilian, Italian, Arabic, and Japanese food. Thankfully, we were able to spend a bit of time in the gym that afternoon. We were also able to show off our karaoke skills with our host dad. We sang everything from Elvis to the Beatles, U2, and Banda Eva in both English and Portuguese.

That evening we enjoyed a family dinner at a churrascaria at Murumbi. We met the rest of the family and really enjoyed our time with them. I tried some new foods including raw oyster, raw kibi, chicken hearts, goat, and warthog.

We got home from dinner about midnight and then packed our things for our early morning departure (5:30 am!). David and I rode the metro by ourselves to meet the rest of the group and then boarded a bus (a Brazilian version of a Greyhound) for a 3.5 hour ride to Botucatu. We visited the city hall and then attended a Rotary Club meeting that night. Our Tuesday activities included a visit to UNESP's (Sao Paulo State University) Fazenda Lageado (very similar to Texas A&M University's Agricultural Experiment Station) where we met with several professors of the college of agriculture and life sciences. We visited the eucalyptus plantation where we saw examples of the amazingly quick growth of this tree species. The trees grow about 10 feet the first year and can be harvested after 8 years. They are used for paper production and as an energy source. We also visited the coffee museum where we learned about the process of harvesting, drying, roasting, and grinding. The free coffee samples at the end of the tour were a definite bonus!

We had our first Rotary Club presentation that evening, and the club members were extremely welcoming and generous. We had worked hard to learn how to present our presentation in Portuguese, and they were very receptive to our efforts. It was a great first presentation experience!

more pics from RC of Botucatu

Here's a few more.

Back from Botucatu

Here's a few pictures from Tuesday night's Rotary meeting. They were taken at the RC of Botucatu Norte by a Japanese Brazilian gentleman. It was our first formal presentation and went very well.
We're experiencing so much! I spent a day with a veterinarian last week and will get to do so again tomorrow. M-W we spent in Botucatu, a smaller town about 3 hrs from here. It's the home of a large veterinary school and agronomy/agriculture university. It's truly an awesome experience!
When walking thru the vet school and their small animal clinic, I visited with some students and saw some clients waiting with their pets. My hands were itching to examine them and reassure their owners. (I miss my job!)
I'll leave the details of this beautiful town of aboout 150,00 to M'Randa. She's already planning to move here! The area had a small town feel like any other University town. It's wonderful to see that college towns, students, and faculty are the same everywhere. We felt so at home here.
Mais tarde....
Betsy