Our First Weekend

Greetings !! All 19 students are still accounted for on this fifth day in Brazil. Friday and Saturday the students were in class all day. Prof. Mello emphasized the economic history of Brazil. National Geographic’s Guns, Germs and Steel video was shown and they discussed it and its relationship to Brazil’s history. The students have learned about Carnival, the samba, religions in Brazil, and the diversity of people in Brazil. Cristina, as always is a big hit with the students. Her expertise teaching survival Portuguese is awesome. The students have learned to introduce themselves and carry on a brief conversation in Portuguese. They have learned many of the food items on a menu, months, days, time, numbers, articles of clothing, utensils to eat with and much more. Each student will be expected to introduce him or herself to the group of host families so Cristina has been preparing them for that as well. The evenings were spent exploring and experiencing the different restaurants within walking distance of the hotel sometimes in small groups and others in a large group. It is Brazilian culture to spend two hours for lunch and much the same for supper. That is something most Americans have difficulty imagining and handling.

Today was our first activity away from Piricacaba. We traveled about two hours to Brotas which is a small town noted for its rivers, rafting and scenery. Let me first introduce our two undergraduate student interns I mentioned in the last blog. Ana Vitoria and Andres are shown below ready for rafting.



We started out the morning with our safety instructions and commands used in the rafts by the leader. The instructors in Brotas are fantastic with the tourists. One instructor spoke in Portuguese and the other in English for us. He picked up on the facial expressions of those who were nervous about rafting immediately. We then broke off into our groups and met our raft leader. Our life jackets, helmets and paddles were distributed and we all loaded on the bus and headed for the river.



Each group boarded their assigned rafts and practiced the commands before starting down the river. I am not sure how many rafts were in the group but there were several. We were on the river a couple of hours. Our raft used the commands forward, back and floor most often. The rapids and waterfalls were challenging at times. One of our students did fall out but was quickly snatched back in the raft before she barely realized she was out. She was pretty amazed. The funniest was it occurred when they held their paddles up to cheer for the raft. You can tell by the pictures a good time was had by all. At one point we were able to get into the river and swim which was pretty cool for those who did it.








After the rafting we got back on the bus and went to a restaurant/entertainment place that had a lake with swimming, slide and several zip lines. We ate lunch and then enjoyed some free time before we had to quit because of thunder and lightning. We got cleaned up and headed back to Piricacaba. Most slept on the return to the hotel. Decisions for supper are being made as I write this.





Until next time, take care and we are having a great time!!