These few days haven’t been super exciting for me as the Resident Director. The students are out and about with their families for a homestay. I’ve already heard about a horse ride, waterfall hike,
Me and the pig.
wedding crashing, eating amazing food and having fun with young children.
I am mainly at the hotel, resting, doing sink laundry, getting caught up, being connected to wifi and reworking the program syllabi for future years. The rest came at good time as we are just over halfway through out planned program and our long 10 day road trip starts Thursday night after the class exam. Though I have been able to sleep until I wake up, I do miss the students and it is quite lonely and they are such a joy.
“Screen shot” of the tv with one of our group photos!
Diligently listening at the JBS meeting.
Friday morning we were highlighted on the Brazilian Rural Channel. It is a daily show at 7:00am that gives commodities updates for the different states, provides education about production and policies and some fun stories. When we visited JBS a couple of weeks ago, their reporter followed us a bit and did a story on our program. The same day we were in the newspaper for our service project, we were on the national ag news! The reporter sent us a virtual hug and invited our host, Shirota, to come back after the program and give a full update.
The pots used to cook and serve the beans and pork.
Saturday Cristina took me out for feijoada at a traditional restaurant and Alex N came along with Cristina’s son (his family stay host). It is a food made of black beans, rice and various pork cuts and sausages. The slaves created the dish and Brazilians adopted it as a national dish. There is everything from pork loin to hogs feet, ears and skin. They didn’t have ears the day we went, but I did try a bit of skin and feet. Not so bad!
Two students will be blogging about their family stays upon return. Not a lot of excitement here until then.
Feijoada: black beans, rice, kale and pork. They recommend cutting it with fresh fruit.