Week #2 Monday through Wednesday

January 12 – Cristina covered many topics in each of her lectures.  We covered letters, number, months, food, food habits, ordering in restaurants, family and friends, types of clothing, shopping, greetings, common verbs, the majors of the students…  They are expected to introduce themselves to their host families.  They will say their name, where they are from, their major, the number of people in their family, what they like to do and their favorite Brazilian food.  The pictures below show them shopping at a store and picking out clothing to buy.  You can see that Stephanie and Nick make great manikins.

Prof Mello continued his lectures and the students were hyped for the Buckeye’s football game.  We were able to have the game televised in the lobby of Antonio’s Palace in English. Many of the students took a nap and had supper or vice versa after classes since the game didn’t start until 11:30 pm. AZP Class 16 was pretty confident the Buckeyes would win but in the end it was hard to believe what the team was able to accomplish this year.  They were able to overcome each obstacle that was put in front of them and it felt good to be a part of the OSU community.  The students finally got to bed around 3:30 am.  It was a short night for classes starting at 8:00 am the next morning.  Tuesday was a struggle for all after a very hot weekend in the sun and then the late night with the game.

January 13 - A new instructor began his lectures Tuesday morning and we warned him about the game and staying up late because I am sure the students had a tough time focusing and staying awake most of the day.  His area of interest is economics and he graduated from OSU with his PhD.  Prof Peres told us about his family and as he said “tried to make a boring subject interesting”.

Tuesday was also Brittany’s 20^th birthday.  Cristina taught the group how to sing Happy Birthday in Portuguese and then after lunch we had a Brazilian cake for Brittany and sang Happy Birthday in Portuguese.  Brazil has a tradition that instead of cutting the cake by slicing down the birthday person slices upward for good luck and then gives the first piece to someone special.  Isadore received the first piece.  We all enjoyed the cake which had a custard filling and gave Brittany a card signed by everyone.

Tuesday night everyone went to bed early and tried to catch up on some much needed sleep.

January 14 - Wednesday was a day of Eucalyptus trees.  It started out with a breakfast of fresh fruits and bakery items.  The fruits and juices are just amazing.

We boarded the bus at 8:00 am and drove for about 2 1/2 hours to Itatinga and a research station focused on Eucalyptus trees.  We learned about the impact that Eucalyptus has on the Brazilian economy.  It is used in paper production, construction, boxes and honey.  It is a fast growing tree and can be harvested in seven years.  At this research station they have been able to triple production over 30 years.  They are cloning or growing seedlings with homogenous DNA that is disease resistant.  We were able to see the seedlings all the way up to an over mature tree.  The clinical garden of seedlings is kept isolated from everything else to protect the seedlings from diseases and insects.  They also are planting Acusa, another type of plant that is nitrogen bearing to see if it is beneficial to the Eucalyptus.  Eucalyptus Grande grows very fast but is not very dense.    The large Eucalyptus Grande is about 50 years old.  Some types of Eucalyptus produce citronella from the leaves and others produce honey.  The Master’s student that did the tour for us is living at the research station and conducting research on the impact of nutrients:   phosphorus, calcium and nitrogen on growth.  We were able to see her actual research plots and she explained what she was doing.  We are now on our ride back to Piracicaba.  As I look back, most of the students are sleeping after a day of being outside with the trees.