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!! :)