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

Separation anxiety-not!

This is Betsy, putting in a good word for my team!
Some may have been concerned by the fact that we were split up at first, with Rhonda hosted farther away. But all is well. The team is back together for our first adventure outside the greater Sao Paulo City area.
Rhonda was being sponsored by the Piretuba Rotary Club, where they have many projects related to illiteracy. There are some very poor areas near this club. According to Emi, because this club hasn't as big a budget as some of the others, they could only sponsor 1 team member Also, as it was so far removed from the other clubs sponsoring us, that it was a bit of a hardship on the host to drive back and forth each day. Imagine someone from the Santa Fe club hosting a member when the rest were in Montgomery. Similar situation, traffic and drive-wise.
I am so proud of my team! They have been so willing to adapt to last minute changes, and what seems like little foreknowledge about the next day's activities!
Emi is wonderful. She's so funny, cheery, and a very hard worker. She is one of the most intelligent people I've met in a long time. She can make puns in 3 languages and even bilingual puns! She is Japanese-Brazilian, an Opthalmologist, a mother and a dedicated Rotarian. She speaks Portuguese, English, Japanese and maybe just a touch of French and a bit of Spanish. She's our fearless leader, the chairman of GSE in her district. She is also my host "mom." (Probably more like older sister!)
Today we are in Botucatu, the home of a very important branch of UNESP, the State university of Sao Paulo (State). They have very impt. biotechnica and veterinary programs. We were to meet with the mayor of Botucatu (Bow-too-cah-too) today, but he was apparently called out of town for an important last minute meeting. We met instead with the assistant mayor, or Secretary or something. He didn't speak English, so Emi translated. It's amazing how I can now understand the gist of what they are saying!
Emi wasn't pleased that the mayor was a no-show. To her, nothing is more important than the visiting GSE team! We are once again adapting to the situation! We were glad to be done early with what may have been a long, possibly boring meeting, with a politician! The Secretary was very nice and presented with a nice book about the city, it's history and all about the area. I'd like to read it excpt it's in Portuguese!!
Well, this was a bit long-winded, and no pictures, yet either!
Mais tarde-
Betsy (or as the Brazilians tend to pronounce my name, Bet-che)

Here are some pics of my host family and some of our group having fun. Don't be concerned-most of those bottles on the table are olive oil and mineral water :) I was planning to wait until I had some time to post a nice long discourse about the wonderful time I am having and my absolute perfect day with a fellow Veterinarian named Viviana last Wednesday, but i think if I wait I will never post.....................Enjoy. Mais tarde! (later!) Oh, and Feliz dia das maes! -Betsy

5.9-Families are families everywhere!

First off...I apologize about the orientation of the pics on this post...my computer and/or the program are just NOT tolerating my formatting requests.

This is M'Randa posting after a long day of eating...luckily I am a professional! Today was Mother's Day, so each of us spent the day celebrating with our families. This is my story. (Insert Law & Order sound here)

Fabio picked me up around 11 this morning to go to a bakery and pick up some pies and then pick up the rest of his family. We went to a neighboring town, Aruja (ah-roo-jah), to his sister's house. We were some of the first there, but were soon followed by the rest of the family and some neighbors. There were about 35 people there and thank goodness there was not a name quiz at the end!

I was amazed and comforted by the fact that families are families everywhere! In fact, they were the Brazilian equivalent of my family...cooking, talking, eating, watching futbol on tv, kids playing with the dogs, grandmas yelling at the kids for being too rough on the furniture...you know, the usual. But this was, in fact, the most cultural Mother's Day! A day in Brazil with my Brazilian/Japanese family, speaking Portuguese, English, and a little Spanish, and eating Spanish-style food (pallea and drinking homemade sangria). What a GREAT experience!

We head out for UNESP tomorrow morning...Emi is picking me up at 5:40am, so I am headed to bed! Happy Mother's Day to all those wonderful moms out there!

A day on the water...and in the rain!

This is Vanessa posting this time. (The others went to a birthday party last night, but I opted out because I had a cold from the lack of sleep earlier in the week. It turned out to be a very late night for them...maybe one of them will write about it sometime later, when they've fully recovered!)

Today, my host family planned a boat trip to the beach for our whole team. For the last few days, they've been a little uncertain about the weather forecast, and indeed, it rained most of the day. :( We had fun anyway...it was nice to see another part of the area and to have some free, vacation-like time (i.e. no uniforms required!).



Luckily, there was a below-deck area, so when the rain intensified, Erin and I went down there, soon followed by the others.



Once we made it back to the marina, we went to the restaurant there and had a delicious meal - some ate steak parmesan and others of us had flounder. We weren't given menus (although we saw other tables with them), so those were the choices the host family told us about. Good recommendations!



Now, it's Saturday evening. I'm sitting with Rhonda, Erin, and David and my host family. There's a nice fire burning in the fireplace and rain coming down outside. My host parents are in one side of the room watching TV, and we're on the other side talking with each other and their son (who is 29 and in Rotaract; he went on a GSE exchange to Germany last year).







Tomorrow is Mother's Day here, so each of will spend the day with our families.

Balada

Olá. Bom dia. Boa tarde. Boa noite. Aqui é Erin e David.
David and Erin have been staying with the same host family for the last few days (which is a definite plus since David is a pro at speaking Portuguese). Last night we experienced a bit of Brazilian nightlife at the balada. There was a live band, and we danced the night away at a Brazilian country music (or setanejo) club. The dance is very similar to a Texas two-step or polka so it wasn´t too hard to pick up the steps. Thankfully, we had free time this morning so we were able to catch up on a bit of sleep after our late night.

The weather here has been amazing. We had a few sprinkles of rain one day, but we´ve had beautiful sunny weather here the rest of the time. It´s fall here, but the temperatures have been very similar to the springtime Texas temperatures that we left behind. Most of the homes don´t use air-conditioning much so we´ve been able to leave the windows open to enjoy the outdoors.

This morning Erin and her host dad had a mini-concert, singing "oldies" music in English and Portuguese. Many of the radio stations here play the same songs we would normally hear in the U.S.

We´ve learned that flexibility is the name of the game here. We´re not sure what the rest of the day holds, but we´re sure it will include a few more adventures as we enjoy the Brazilian culture.

5.6-Rio Branco School

This is M'Randa, again! Well, today was interesting...when I woke up, my host mom was gone to play golf with her friend, so I was left with the maid to take care of me. Language barriers are funny when you look back on them! Yesterday, Fabio told me that his wife was probably going to pick me up...so when the call came that someone was downstairs to pick me up, I thought the maid was telling me that she was in a Suzuki car...I was wrong. I had forgotten that Suzuki is the name of one of the Rotarians that is taking care of us. So, it was Suzuki in a Nissan downstairs to give me a ride. :)

Rhonda is still out visiting sites in other areas of Sao Paulo at this point. Betsy, Vanessa, Erin, David, and I visited the Rio Branco School today. It is a school that was founded by and is still supported by the Rotary Foundation. It is also a private school, like the Oshimon school we visited. Our tour guide, who is in charge of international relations of the school, was a hoot! She has so much energy and passion for the school, the students, education, and life. The teachers were also very excited to have us there. They were very willing to show us how they educate their students, and to share their methods. We were able to go into a few classrooms and interact with the kids...my favorite was the music class...who knew The Girl From Ipanma sang in Portuguese could be so beautiful? The students at this school are also being exposed to English most every day. We would see students interacting and studying in class and realize that kids are kids all around the world. At the end of the tour we made our way to the 5th floor of the building which is where the Leste Rotarians meet. We had lunch and presented ourselves to the group.

After the meeting, we made our way back to Emi's office where we were met by an Interact member. He took us back to the Mercado that we visited the other day to spend some time. We were able to try some of the nuts, cheeses, meats, olives, etc....A tasty afternoon snack! We then returned to Emi's office (from the pic you can see that she is an eye doctor) and worked on our presentation for a couple of hours before dispersing to our host homes.

I find the diversity of this area interesting. As we ate dinner, we communicate using a combination of Portuguese, English, and Spanish...as we watch Japanese tv. Sao Paulo has a truly unique culture!

5.4 and 5.5...the blur

This is M'Randa posting, and I am going to do my best to recall the last couple of days. Between jet lag, time change, culture shock, busy days, and just general lack of sleep, I will more than likely forget some details to this already amazing adventure!

5.4-

On Tuesday, 5.4, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed to pack our bags and have a quick bite at our hotel (Nikkey Palace Hotel). Our fearless resident leader, Emi, took us to the Metro Station headquarters. Here we learned about the Metro system as it is now, problems they are facing, and development plans. We were then led around the city by Metro services and were able to see the control center and security. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes than you think!!

We then ate a wonderful lunch at a market place. The food was great...I will have to leave it to another team member to fill in the holes on what the food was (I would compare the set up to something like fajitas, for all you Texas folk reading this) Sizzling beef and onions on a hot plate...YUM! We walked around the market for a bit before heading back to the hotel.

We had a little rest time (30 mins) before we left for the futbol match (soccer for all of you gringos!). We met up with some Rotary people and headed for the game. I believe that it was Rhonda, Vanessa, Betsy, and Erin's first professional match. Please correct me if I am wrong... after the game, we returned to the hotel to retrieve our luggage before getting carried away to our host families. Maybe a few nerves, but the excitement is, well, exciting!

5.5-

Happy Cinco de Mayo, amigos!!

I think we have all learned that sleep is a precious commodity! Today we were split up by vocational interests. Rhonda was by herself at a school, Betsy was at a vet clinic by herself, and Vanessa, Erin, David, and I were at a school together.

Our group visited Oshiman. The word incredible sums up my feelings about this school! The students speak Portuguese, learn English, Japanese, and Spanish. Their art department was great, too! They have music classes where they don't just play instruments, but are now learning to build guitars. They work with outlets such as stained glass, clay, quilting, and let's not forget...they recycle and make their own paper!!! Melting paper, screens, hang-dry and everything! At this school, they are also trying to recover some of the Japanese culture, such as the tea ceremony, to pass on to the new generation.

The students eat lunch in their classrooms with their teachers (good food, homemade in the kitchen everyday). We were separated into classrooms so each of our experiences are slightly different during this time. I was sat at the front of the room, and the students were each required to ask me a question in English. I thought this was a lot of fun! Most of questions were simple..."Do you have a dog?" "Do you like music?", etc...By the way, even the 5th graders in Brazil like Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and the Beetles!

In the afternoon we visited one of the tallest buildings in Sao Paulo. Here we went to the top and were able to get some great photos of the city from a birds-eye perspective. We also visited one of the stock exchanges, walked around the "zero point" of Sau Paulo (the center of the city), and visited the foundation place of the city before walking back to Emi's office and then dispersing to our homes.

My host family is wonderful! Mr. and Mrs. Yoshioka and their son, Fabio, are taking great care of me! I may pack Mrs. Yoshioka in my luggage if she will come to the US and cook! I suppose this is a good time to mention that Sao Paulo has the largest population of Japanese people outside of Japan. The culture is an interesting mix of Brazil and Japan; for instance, I had a huge, Japanese style dinner...with beans and rice... :)

Well, I hope that this is the last "marathon post". We will try to be more diligent in our posting frequency from now on!

We're here!

We arrived in Sao Paulo and were greeted by Emi and Governor Juvenal. We attended a 53rd anniversary celebration for the Rotary Club of Suzana. We were treated like kings and queens!

I'm having an awesome time at Texas Multi District Conference here in San Antonio!  There are 7 inbound teams presenting this weekend. Here is a pic of the whole bunch of them.  Thanks to the Rotary Foundation for this great program!
Betsy

-- Sent from my Palm Pre