Foto da Semana 9

This past Saturday, Elisabeth, Amber, and I went to Sarah's daughter's school where they were having a fair. The children dressed up and performed dances that represented the diverse cultures of Brazil. She's soo cute.

Os filmes são melhores em outras línguas

This past week we had a few things take place. Sarah had asked Amber and I to translate the transcripts of students that will be going to Canada. Initially I thought this would be a simple task but I had forgotten how meticulous I can get. The whole of Wednesday was spent translating courses from Portuguese into English and double (triple) checking that everything is in order.

Official Mulheres Mil Meeting

Since Sarah will be in Brasilia for the whole of next week, we had an official Mulheres Mil meeting on Friday to discuss the plans for the up-coming weeks related to Mulheres Mil.In attendance were four IFCE professors who are dedicated to keep the Mulheres Mil program going. The other two interns from Montmorency College, Elisabeth and Denise were also in attendance. They have been here for about two weeks now and they seem cool. I envy them both in their knowledge of the Portuguese language. While Denise is a Brazilian-Canadian, Elisabeth has been studying Portuguese for the last 3 years. I hope one day to get on their level of Portuguese.

In terms of my language skills, I am always trying to continuously improve my Portuguese. Our roommate, Kevin from France, has “somewhat legally” downloaded Portuguese movies for us to watch. Some are Hollywood movies with Portuguese voiceovers while some are Brazilian movies. I prefer to watch the movies with Portuguese subtitles, this way if I hear and see a new word, I can easily write it down and look it up later. Watching these movies is helping me not only improve my pronunciation of words, but also realizing when to use certain phrases in a specific context or situation. Here are just some of the movies I’ve seen so far in Portuguese:

Thought I would throw in a random, somewhat funny, story of the week:

When Amber and I had initially landed in Fortaleza I had mentioned in a previous blog about the stares we constantly get when we are out in public. Amber and I have gotten used to ignoring the constant stares. Once, while waiting for the IFCE driver on the sidewalk with Sarah, our Mulheres Mil boss, she was astonished over the amounts of looks that Amber and I receive from people in vehicles driving by and people walking by. Apparently staring is something Brazilians don’t do to each other, just to foreigners.

On the topic of staring, yesterday while sitting on the bus there was a man standing and staring down at us for what seemed like forever. Assuming he had grown tired of looking at us, he eventually took a seat in front of us, while Amber and I shared a moment of “that was awkward.” However, he then proceeded to turn his head around to stare at us more. Not only has he chosen to sit in our line of vision, but he has no issue making it even more obvious that he’s looking. I must say, this was one of my main breaking points because I then shot him the look of death and shouted “What! Stop staring!” My only regret is that I was too annoyed to say it in Portuguese. However, I’m positive my reaction alone got the message across because he never turned his head around again.

Next mission: how to tell people, POLITELY, to stop staring in Portuguese. :)

Foto da Semana 8

Ellen Oleria, great musician, she performed at the Feira da Musica this past Saturday....LOVE her songs

Centros comunitários, fazendo a diferença

Along with attending meetings with Sarah and Portuguese lessons, for the past two weeks we’ve been working at Emaus’ Casa do Saber. There they run a sort of afterschool program for the children to get help with their homework, as well as improve on other subjects like math and portuguese. The children are split up into two classrooms based on their ages, 6-12 and 13-16. Along with homework help, the children are provided with snacks and access to books and computers. During our first week of observation, one of the girls had asked me to help her with her history homework. She had to read two pages and answer questions related to the text. Mind you this is all in Portuguese, a language I am still learning. I made her read the text out loud and we went through the questions together. Honestly, at this point Portuguese is easy to understand when it’s written down, but I can’t say the same when it’s spoken.

Besides from helping them with their homework, we are also responsible for teaching them the universal language of MATH! Numbers have the same meaning in every language, who knew (sarcasm). Teaching math in a different language can be difficult at times but the great thing about kids is that they are patient. Our lesson plan consists of teaching the younger group math and the older children English. For the first English lesson with the older group, we had planned to teach them the words of English songs they knew. We first made them listen to the song and write down any words they recognized. “Love” seemed to be the most recognizable word. We gave them the lyrics to sing along and a breakdown of the meaning in Portuguese. I think whenever I hear Bob Marley’s “Is this love,” I will forever think of that first English class, since we played the song repeatedly.

On a personal note...

Many aspects of Casa do Saber reminds me of my childhood growing up in Ottawa’s Debra Dynes neighbourhood, a low-income community (by Canadian standards of course). At one point in time the neighbourhood had gained the reputation for being “Ottawa’s primary drive-in drug store.” The Debra Dynes Family House was opened in 1995, shortly after my family moved to Canada and into this community. Simply known as the Family House, this community centre served the community by providing services such as food banks, computer classes, English classes, summer camps, and homework clubs, just to name a few. Considering the fact that the family house was located right beside my house (we literally shared a wall with them), I grew up going to the homework club, attending day and summer camp, and taking part in community activities. I eventually started doing volunteer work and working in the same day camp programs I used to go to when I was younger.

I can reflect back and see that I wouldn’t have had some of the childhood experiences I had without the Family House and I am very much grateful to the dedicated people of Debra Dynes Family House. From my personal experience, such community centres do have a positive impact on the communities they are meant to improve.  Emaus is one such community center working towards improving the Pirambu neighbourhood.

Foto da Semana 7

One of the girls at Emaus drew a picture of Amber and I, we even have matching outfits lol

Foto da Semana 6

"Now that the holidays are over, we can jump into some work"...I guess we spoke too soon because now the IF is on strike <_<

Estamos em Greve

This has been a very interesting week. Last Monday was the first day of school and the IF was filled with students starting the new semester. However, a few days later it was announced that the professors would be going on strike. Despite this, there has still been some Mulheres Mil work for us. This semester, the project will be taking place in a new community. We tagged along with Sarah for a meeting with Father Sydney, who runs the church and community centre. This community centre provides support for three low-income communities: Brasilia, Traveva Matadouro, and Santa Terezinha. Following the meeting, he showed us 2 of 3 community centres that were large yet empty. There are no programs running, hence there are no people working within the building. It is clear that this vast amount of space that this community has is being underutilized.

On Friday we went to Pirambu to meet up with the staff of Emaus Casa de Saber. We were shown the classrooms where children are taught and assisted with their homework. We were given a tour of the community centre, which is made up of 2 floors. At the moment, they’re fundraising to build a bigger community center. The place is bustling with life and activities. The contrast of activity between Emaus and the community centers we had seen a few days ago is shocking. Emaus is a French NGO that has been running in Brazil since 1986. (See Amber’s blog about Emaus). Emaus has had time and commitment on its side, allowing for it to become an internationally recognized development program.

This week, Amber and I will be sitting in on the classes at Emaus just so the children can get used to us. This should be an interesting week indeed...

Foto da Semana 5

We went grocery shopping and found this interestingly shaped squash, it is indeed heavy.
Photo taken by Grant