Boa tarde!
Over the last two weeks, Christa and myself have had the privilege of visiting other awesome places in Brazil, meeting some incredibly generous people, and continuing to install ourselves in our school placements. We have been planning full lessons, activities and pedagogical assessments for our Tuesday classes since we arrived in Goiânia, and we are lucky that our partner teacher Roberta has been very accommodating and supportive of our lessons. We’re currently working on an interactive Shark Tank/Dragons Den type assignment! Meanwhile in the public school we frequent on Mondays and Fridays, we mostly just observed for the first few weeks but I think our presence proved to be too distracting. We’ve started to separate the classes into two factions to help with English learning, and I think this has proved to be effective for classroom management at this school.
As a lifelong second language learner, it’s been interesting (and honestly weird) teaching grammar concepts that we ourselves never had to learn in school, but it has been a very rewarding process. The students have been incredibly friendly and generous, always curious and they’ve been teaching us Portuguese terms and expressions while we’ve been helping them learn English. Sometimes they even bring us lunch from the school cafeteria even though we haven’t asked.
Left: School is truly an inclusive environment in Brazil!
Right: The Grade 6 students hanged cutouts to whom they want to dedicate their studies
During the last two weekends Christa, her daughter Machara and I have had the chance to explore more of Goiás, and more of the local scene in Goiânia. First, our friend Geraldo invited us to accompany us to his family’s farm just outside the city, owned by his parents. It was a fantastic weekend and we were very warmly welcomed with very hospitable people, Brazilian barbecue, and enough bread and pastries to last us our entire stay in Brazil. This was a very welcome retreat from the vast, bustling city to a more quaint and relaxed environment. Geraldo’s nephews have since invited us to their house for pizza and games. To cap it off, we visited a Jabuticaba farm during the large harvest.
The next weekend we ventured to a town called Caldas Novas, a hydrothermal resort town featuring numerous water adventure parks. We met some more awesome people and got to relax, swim in the thermal waters, and get away from school for a couple days. We’re heading to Rio de Janeiro next week and I’m so looking forward to exploring the city and checking out the amazing beaches.
Tchau e até já!
Brad