Sunday and Monday from Jacque

Hi All,


Checking in from Brazil finally!!! We have been so busy and without internet access so it has been impossible to blog. Let me first say how amazing it has been here for all of us. After a nice day on Saturday, we finally got to sleep in on Sunday. As a matter of fact, I did not wake up until 10:00 am on Sunday. Woohoo! Finally some sleep. After a slow start, we picked up Joe and were off to the beach. As we are on Brazilian time now, we were supposed to be there at 11:00 am and didn't arrive until 1:30 pm. No problem though, Clarissa, Marcos (the lovely team leader who will be taking his team to California and Nevada in May), his family and Luciana were already there and having a fabulous time. Because we love to eat so much, we ordered a bunch of food. Chicken kabobs, crab empenadas, cheese fries and some fried crab balls (can't remember exactly what it was called, but was definitely delicious!). After the delicious snacks, we headed out to the water, which I must say feels like bath water. There is no body shock to get in!

After the water, the snacks, and the hot sun we were ready to go shopping. A HUGE "thank you" to Marcos for taxing us around all afternoon to help us find exactly what we were looking for even after he had spent all day with us at the beach! Marcos and Luciana, we can't wait to entertain you and your team in California. Now, time to go home.

When, I arrived home, Ramon and Monalisa presented me with some fabulous gifts! Pedro loved them so much, he started playing with the soccer ball. (Pedro, is my one year old brother from Brazil. I absolutely adore him). I then had 40 minutes to get ready for the comedy show. One thing, among the many, that I have learned in Brazil is to get ready fast! It is awesome.

So we got all dressed up and headed to the show. Despite not being able to understand him, it was hilarious!! I had a ball, he acted most of his jokes out and Ramon and Mona translated some so we had so much fun.

After the comedy show, off to pick up Joe and head to Cariri. Cariri is a Forro(Country) restaurant and bar. There we met Ramon and Mona's friends, Lay, Gracie and there family. We have hung out with them all week and they have been so gracious. The girls gave me a CD of all the Brazilian music they have been trying to teach me. It was so fun, the band gave me and Joe a special shout out for coming all the way from California and we both learned had to dance Forro. Can't say we are good at it, but had a lot of fun learning. Might I add that I tried cow intestines while we were there...ewww!..kind of taste like crispy bacon. After Cariri, it was off to bed. :)

Thank you to all of our FABULOUS hosts in Aracaju, we will miss you!!

Monday


Got up early on Monday to figure out my packing. Yes, as if I haven't already had enough issues...I had to figure out how to fit everything I need in one suitcase because we will be taking a domestic flight from Feira De Santana to Maceio. This was interesting, but I survived and made it to the van at 8:00 am. We were now on our way to Feira De Santana, four hours away. About one hour into the trip, we stopped at a road side stand to use the restroom. Our so gracious driver bought us coconut water, we have all tried it, but are not to fond. However, because he already purchased it, I passed, but pointed to Clarissa. She was lucky enough to accept the water. Now, the big challenge...what to do with this coconut that none of us wanted. We found a place to lodge it in between the seats, so we thought that we found the perfect solution! We spoke too soon, the first HUGE speed bump that we hit, the coconut went flying all over the van. We were all laughing so hard, we forgot to pick up the coconut. It rolled all over the van several more times before we finally got to a location to dump it. Clarissa did take several drinks of it to confirm her decision of it not being to her liking. :)

We arrived around 12:30 at Flor do Maracuja in Feira De Santana. There we were met by more lovely rotarians. We were given our host assignments, ate lunch and were on our way home. Lucky for me and Clarissa, we got placed in the same home so we have now been roommates all week. Monday evening was just for settling in and getting some rest.

We are hoping to blog some more tomorrow to bring everyone up to speed. For now, good night and orbrigada.

Jacque

This is Adrienne writing today:

I want to tell you about out host families in Aracaju. Can you imagine having a visitor, who doesn’t speak your language, for whom you now do everything (drive to, pick up, house, feed, launder, introduce to your family, entertain) for a week! Yes, Brazilians do just that, with élan!

In Aracaju, I stayed w Dr. and Senorah Joao Santana. Clarissa with Paula and Lelah Gomes, Joe w Dr. Rosemary, and Jacque w Ramon and Monalisa. We thought we’d won the lottery, but they acted as if they had! Such gracious and welcoming hosts! (Can you imagine a week w me in YOUR house?) Even as we drove away Monday morning, Dr Santana called to remind me that should we need anything, he’s the man to call. Guess what: all our hosts said it and mean it!

After meeting with the Rotary Club Presidents Monday lunch here in Fiera de Santana, we were swept away into new host homes, again greeted as their family. Clarissa and Jacque are together, Joe and I have our own host families. I’m most familiar with mine, so let me tell you: Dr Jurace and Uyana Dourado, and their two children are amazing. Neither Jurace nor Uyana speak any Inglais, but the computer provides good translation. That and facial expressions and hand gestures really do work!

They have 2 children: Daniele, also a dentist, and brother Davi, one year from graduating dental school. Both have some English competency (I have LITTLE Portuguese), and when you add a computer translator, it works!

I feel like the most revered aunt they might have as a guest. Wednesday, for example, I needed to meet with my wonderful Team (yep, occasionally there’s Team business, blogging and other stuff that needs to be attended to.) The Dourados hosted us on the patio, with warm welcomes, hospitality, fine food and drink. Then next day they hosted everyone for a fabulous lunch. Then invited us all back for our “free” day this weekend. YES!

Onto the wonderful Rotary Clubs! Tuesday we had lunch with the Rotary Club of Fiera de Santana. It’s a larger club, with so many terrific community projects. We then met w the Rotary Club of New Horizon, a small dynamic club that, uniquely, doesn’t meet over a meal. The next day they toured us to the center they sponsor in an impoverished rural area. Using the lure of youth soccer, they’ve successfully engaged boys, girls, their parents and community in activities that strengthen and support all residents. We also visited a cultural center showcasing indigenous music, at risk of extinction. Visit them at www.quixabeiradamatinha.com.br

Another meeting at lunch with the Rotary Club of East Fair in a Brazilian Steakhouse, the kind a few of us have been lucky enough to see imitated in US. Wow!! We were toured through the Fiera de Santana Art District, and finished that night with a dinner meeting w the Rotary Club of Subae.

Re our presentations. As well as we planned and created our presentations, we knew immediately we needed to tweak ours. Our audiences vary in size, location and room amenities, but one thing is constant: Many of the Rotarians have no English fluency. On a bus ride, we spent 3 hours reducing our power point slides and more importantly, the words that accompanied each. Paulo Gomes (thank you, Paulo!) translated the power point into Portuguese. While we’ve had interpreters so far, with Portuguese written on the slides, we can manage unaccompanied as needed.

OK, I’ve been long winded, but there are still 2 things I need to state. I am overwhelmed by the hospitality, effort and personal commitment of our family hosts, the Rotary Clubs, and the countless hours that go into making our vocational and cultural experiences resonate so personally with us. This is amazing! My second point: I love my GSE Team: Clarissa, Joe and Jacque are each the consummate ambassador, achieving a perfect performance and pitch in every situation (despite intestinal or mosquito issues.) They are THE BEST!

It’s 12:45am, tomorrow’s already here, and the sun will be up on our new schedule before I know it. Good night!

Friday and Saturday!

Hey There Everyone,

We have been a bit backed up with items of running around and finding more meetings to get to. For Friday, we drove back to Itaporanga to visit a few factories. The Leve factory (toilet paper) and the Mabel Factory (a cookie factory) both were extremely interesting especially since we saw both processes from start to finish. We also scored some napkins and cookies to bring home with us which should be interesting on the flight, that is for sure. From there we headed to another vocational meeting with a Rotarian that shared about his business in consulting for hospitals and other administrative businesses. It was short but definitely sweet. Off we went back to our host families and spent our time sleeping.

Sleeping? Yes, you heard me, sleeping to get ready for a wedding reception at 10:30pm. Here in Brazil, they begin most parties after 10pm and this was no different. With 600 people attending the reception and a long night ahead, we went home, slept, got ready and hit a night on the town. We would like to extend a HUGE "Thank you" to Dr. Santana and his family for inviting us to his son's wedding reception.....It was, least to say, INCREDIBLE. We left the party at 3:30am and it was still going strong. Apparently, it made it all the way until 6am, we just couldn't hang.

It was nice that our next day was to be spent at the Governor 4390 of Itaporanga's farm and we didn't have to be there until 9am. We did get some sleep! There was a catamaran ride to the island, a tour of his familys' farm, and then a short car ride to his farm. We started with appetizers of fresh crab and shrimp with the heads still on and yes, Jacque did eat it. She loved it....especially banging the fish with a mallet and granite block. From there, Jacque and I decided to horseback ride about the island.

We rode through the blazing sun and found ourselves riding into a poor village. It was beautiful but definitely a poor area. We came back to a HUGE lunch, like we hadn't eaten enough! We walked around the farm for a little while longer and finally had to come home.....back to our catamaran and you should have seen the mud. We had to walk 50 feet through the mud in our bare feet and that was hilarious. Jacque and I screaming, Joe laughing, and Veronica kicking mud the whole way, it was great. We must send our "Thank You" out to the Captian of our ship, Governor Elder of district 4390 for treating us to such an excellent day, and all of the other people who made it quite special. For now, I am signing off with the thought of that day! Pictures of this to come soon......

Ciao and Obrigada!

Clarissa

The days are passing and we are leaving Aracaju soon

Hello All,

We are trying to keep this blog as updated as possible but at the moment, I am the only one that has constant internet access but hopefully you will from the others soon. We have had some very interesting trips and definitely some fantastic working visits. After our day trip to Xingo on Wednesday, we picked up right back where we left of with meetings and visits.

We first saw Ciras, Centro de Integracao, which is a school for the mental handicapped and disabled children. It is in a part of Aracaju that is extremely impoverished that Carolina Freier de Carvalho has opened her school to these children and young adults. It is one of the most beautifl things I have seen in a poor community. She has everything for these children and adults from arts and crafts, cooking, and cosmetology, to physical therapy and just giving them a safe place to play everyday. It is a nice school but constantly needs help for new items to improve the school for these people and Carolina, who is an American that moved to Brazil more than 20 years ago, has been the amazing woman behind the project. We had the pleasure of seeing the entire school and all that she works hard for and we would like to "Thank" her for allowing us to see the amazing facility and for her time translating. With that, we followed on to another facility that takes care of the poor people of Aracaju called Projecto do Hospital Sao Lucas. They are another facility that feeds, gives day care and health care, dentistry and even counceling to the needy of the area. Jacque, Adrienne, and I (Joe was at a vocational visit) were fortunate enough to see that this facility is helping the need of the area that has had major floods and almost come down.

These were both sme of the BEST facilities in the area and it is good to know that these people are getting the help they need for themselves and for their children. We soon were off to another Rotary club meeting. We would like to thank the Rotary Siqueira Leste for a great lunch and our gifts!

We soon carried off to see Sao Cristavovao and met Paulo Roberto de Almeida Menezes. He showed us the entire city that used to be the capitol of Sergipe (where we are staying). It was filled with stone buildings dating back to the 1800's and beautiful artwork. Thank you Paulo for the tour of your city! Then we were trailblazing to another Rotary Meeting Siqueira Campos where we met the GSE Team that will be traveling to California soon. They are great people and extremely excited to see Pasadena, Apple Valley, and Upland......get ready California, here come the Brazilians!

We finally got home and were looking forward to the factories of Friday. I will try to get the others perspective for you on that at another time but for now, CIAO and Obrigada!

Clarissa

FINALLY! Something New to Report...

Hello All,

I am writing, FINALLY, from Aracajua, Brazil. It has been a whirlwind since we have arrived but definitely fun! When we got here, Jacque's luggage was lost but we were all fortunate to get it a day later, especially since I'm most positive, it was my fault. That behind us, we started staying with our separate families right away, going to Rotary Club meetings twice a day, along with vocational visits, a visit to the Governor of Itaporanga's house for a late night meal, and a visit to the University (UNIT as the locals call it) and their brand new medical school buildings. It has been incredible, I must say and the FOOD! Oh the FOOD is amazing and consistent. We are definitely not going hungry in this country. We finally had a free day today and we were taken to Xingo. I would try to give you some help with that one but I just learned to pronounce it myself. It was a gorgeous fresh water river that we were allowed to swim in though, and the much needed day, was fantastic. HOT but none the less fantastic. We are all hoping to blog more now that we have the evenings off so please, keep in touch and thanks for being so patient. We would like to send out Many Thanks out to the Rotary Aracaju Norte, Rotary Club de Itaporanga, Rotary 13 de Julho, and Aracaju-Nova Geracao for allowing us to present to their clubs and all of the wonderful trips and vocational jobs they have taken us on.

Obrigada to all,

Clarissa Cassara

From the Top....

Greetings from the GSE Team 2010!

So far we have had a roller coaster of events occur. We went from 1 team leader and an alternate leader, 4 team members and 3 alternates, down to the alternate leader, 3 original team members and the 1 alternate who is now a team member. That may be a bit confusing but just imagine how we felt! We will greatly miss Mike Driebe, our original team leader but we are so HAPPY to have Adrienne Cox lead us in replacement. We are also ecstatic to have Joe Lawrence as our newest member of the team! We wish the best of luck to

Cara, Manny, and Phillip on all of their future endeavors.

Now, on to the good stuff. Our team has spent some time together in getting to know each other and I must say, so far, we work very well together. Adrienne lead her first full meeting last week and MANY things were accomplished. We have forms completed, flight arrangements settled, and uniforms chosen. We would like to thank our separate cities for sponsoring us (Monrovia, Apple Valley, Las Vegas, and Alhambra) because without you, we would have no uniforms, which I might add, are quite fantastic!

As you can see we are quite excited to be heading off to Brazil in April for four weeks. Thus the reason for this blog. We want to keep you all informed throughout our meetings, our actual trip, and the aftermath. We may not be able to keep in touch as often as we would like once we are in Brazil. We felt this would be the best way to keep all of our family, friends, and local rotarians in the loop.

The other team members and myself will be posting once a month for now and once we get to Brazil, hopefully, on a daily basis. I hope you all enjoy this blog and we would like you to know that we greatly appreciate all of your support.

Melhor Considera (Best Regards),

Clarissa Cassara