Monday, January 26, 2009

Nature Girl 2 - - Santos and Sao Paulo

This past week and weekend we spent 4 days in Santos and Sao Paulo-- both cities east (closer to the ocean!!) of Piracicaba. After traveling wednesday night, we started out on our second hiking journey first thing thursday morning. This time we were going to hike along the coast, visit some lowland estuaries, and eventually end up at a BEACH! Beginning with the end in mind-- I was easily able to get through the mud and mountains knowing that shortly we would be sunbathing on the beach. Upon our arrival, we all stripped down and spent an hour or so in the ocean. We then walked along the beach (we were the only people there!) and explored for a while before heading back to the bus.

Friday morning came early, as we set out for the Porto de Santos-- one of the largest ports in Brazil and South America. Here we visited with the port authority, and traveled down to one the bays to tour the ADM facility. We met with the ADM elevator operators and got to tour their storage and ship load out facilities. I found this especially interesting after spending my summer internship at a Cargill Barge load out facility. **left view from one of the terminals, right Gus and I-- past and future Cargill interns in our hard hats!

After grabbing a quick lunch, we went to the Santos aquarium and then on a 2 hour boat tour of the port and surrounding areas. It was really interesting to see all the products that are handled throughout the port, and it was great to relax on the boat with the group for a few hours. Friday night we spent at a local shopping mall and retired early to get ready for another busy day on Saturday.

Saturday was a pretty relaxing day as well, spending all morning at the Sao Paulo Zoo and the afternoon at the Sao Paulo Art Museum. It was cool to see all of the animals, compare with the Toledo and Columbus Zoos, and enjoy the sunshine. The art museum was very different, but they had a neat Chinese art exhibit with many pieces focused around the olympic games.

Saturday Night was a definite cultural experience-- as our whole group headed to a Samba club in Sao Paulo. We got there at 11-- which was very early for them-- and waited around til after midnight when the crowds starting rolling in. While we received many stares from Brazilians, we still danced the night away, regardless of how rediculous we probably looked. Sunday morning we shopped at the "Hippie Market" downtown and ate lunch at a traditional Brazilian BBQ. This restaurant served us over 32 different cuts of meat (bite size pieces) along with cheese, potatoes, and a salad bar, for over 3 hours!! Needless to say it was pretty quite as everyone easily fell asleep onthe ride back to Piracicaba last night!!

Overall a very good weekend!! Spending three days in class this week before heading off for an 11 day trip!! Have been able to get some souvenirs but hoping to find some more things in the next week or so!! Ohhh.. and one special person should be receiving a piece of mail in the next few days!! Watch your mailboxes to see if you are the lucky one!!

P.S. For those of you wondering... ** I have yet to find Juan Valdez or a Dick's Sporting Goods store!! hahaha : )

Monday, January 19, 2009

Weekend with Host Family

After returning from touring on Friday, we quickly showered, packed, and got ready to be picked up by our host family. The father, little brother and sister-- Marco, Joao Vitor, and Cintia, came to pick me up around 7:15. We headed to their house-- only about 10 minutes from the hotel. Upon arriving I met the rest of the family, took a tour of their home, and sat down for dinner with the whole family. Later in the evening went over to Marco's parents home on the other side of the city where I learned to make Fezuada (a native dish of Pork and Black Beans). Being that it was a long day, we headed home and went to bed early friday night.


Saturday morning -- for the first time in Brazil-- I got to sleep in! When I got up my host Mom-- Cleide-- had made a delicious breakfast. Cleide and I then walked about 5 blocks to visit Cintia (sister) at the clothing store she works at. When we got home we changed our clothes and packed our bags to head 30 minutes out of Piracicaba to a summer cottage. We spend all afternoon swimming, having Brazilian BBQ, dancing, and playing cards. It was a lot of fun-- and was definitely something very similar to many of our summer cookouts in Ohio!

Saturday night we headed back to the city-- got cleaned up and ate some more (Brazilians love to eat!!) Vinicius (brother), Cintia (sister), and Cleber (their cousin) and I headed out around 10 o'clock to visit some of their friends and go to a few bars around Campus. We had a great time and met a lot of people-- even some who spoke english!

Sunday was absolutely perfect-- as all we did was sleep, watch movies, and eat. It reminded me of being at home as well... especially when my host dad Marco turned on his favorite show TWO AND HALF MEN!! We talked about how that was my dad's favorite show too! (It is really amazing how much American music and television programs Brazilians follow). Everyone slept in, ate lunch, watched 27 dresses, and got cleaned up before I headed back to the hotel around 7. All-in-all it was a great weekend with a great family. I really enjoyed spending time with such wonderful people-- and could find some many similarities between my family and theirs.

Friday Touring.


Friday was spent touring around Piracicaba-- seeing the central market (much like the North Market in Columbus) and visiting the Cathedral in the town square. We were able to spend some time shopping, walking around, and took a lot of cool pictures. After lunch in the downtown area-- we headed down by the Piracicaba river and took more pictures at an old abandoned sugarcane mill.
We spend the afternoon touring Coplacana-- a local sugarcane cooperative. Coplacana has its headquarters in Piracicaba, but has several branch locations to serve all of its members. We were able to tour their office building, their seed and animal feed divisions, chemical warehouse and their supply store. They were truly a full service co-op-- complete with a automotive center to help their farmers out with anything they needed. After leaving Coplacana we headed outside Piracicaba to visit a new biodiesel plant. The new plant will be online in about 10 months-- and will be able to process several different grains to produce biodiesel. This was one of my favorite stops thus far, as I was able to ask a lot of questions to help compare and contrast the differences between biodiesel and ethanol production.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Flowers, and Palm Trees, and Oranges.. Oh My!!

We took a break from classes yesterday to travel out of Piracicaba to tour different farms, agribusinesses, and processing facilities. We started off on the wrong foot, as our bus driver got us lost and almost 2 hours late to our first tour. Our first stop was at Veiling Hollambre-- one of the largest flower markets in all of Brazil. Here, nearly 500 flower buyers gather each day to bid on a variety of different native and exotic species. We got to walk through the thousands of racks of flowers, watch as buyers bid on flowers, and talk with a worker from the market.



From there we visited a 25 acre greenhouse that produces many ornamental products to sell at the market. Gustavos--manager of the operation-- showed us several different species of palm trees, both native Brazil.. and others extremely rare brought back from other countries. Gustavos was a graduate of ESALQ-- the school we are studying at-- and in addition to a tour, he shared with us his career path, marketing and entreprenurial advice, and other information about trade and agriculture in Brazil.
** left some cactuses in colorful pots, and right.. MUMS!

After leaving the greenhouse we switched industries, now on to citrus. We toured a seed generation and seedling facility. Here, they produced seedling for lime, lemon, and orange trees. We toured the greenhouses and learned about the bud grafting process for selecting different traits. From there we stayed with the same group of guides and traveled on to a orange processing facility. Oranges are brought in by the producer, put in a special holding room to ripen, and are then cleaned , inspected, and package for delivery. Our last stop of the day was at a GIANT orange grove. We got to walk down into a valley, surrounded by orange trees, pick one off the tree, and ENJOY. The day in all was a definite VITAMIN C overload-- as at everystop we have oranges, orange juice and more- but definitely a very fun day!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Pictures....

No new news to report.. but uploaded more pictures and wanted to share them with you all. As requested, I will try to take some pictures with me in them!!

** As we drove uphill all day... we decided to stop and take some pictures!




** On the left, Friday night when we finally got our luggage we were extremely happy! Me smiling and embracing my missing suitcase!!

** On the right, Jena and I at the dairy co-op we visited. We wore white rubber boots to tour the milk and yogurt processing facility.





**To the right is most of our group after a night out to dinner with our Brazilian friends. Heitor, Eloisa, and Jackie-- all students at ESALQ-- are spending almost every day traveling, learning and teaching us more about Brazilian culture.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Weekend in the Mountains

While I had thought it was difficult sitting through 8 straight hours of class every day last week, little did I know what was in store for our weekend adventures. We checked out of our hotel at 7 am saturday morning to head out on a long bus ride to visit a large farmer near Sao Pedro. Carlos-- owner and manager of the farm-- showed us his 350 head dairy barns and parlor, explained the 3 cycle harvest he practices, and shared other interesting facts about sugarcane, corn, and soybean harvests in Brazil. It was very interesting to learn about the government participation in Brazilian agriculture. Carlos shared that there are no government subsidy programs for his crops, no insurance options, and no help in drought years, leaving many farmers bankrupt after a bad 2008 crop.

After leaving his farm, we headed a half hour to dairy co-op. This co-op is a venue for nearly 100 small dairy farmers to market their milk around the state. We toured the processing plant, taste tested their pinapple, strawberry, and coconut yogurt, and also visited one of the participating farmers in the area. We wrapped up saturday with dinner at Intervales state park and stayed in a cabin for the evening.

Sunday was quite the adventure. We got up early, put on old clothes and boots, and headed out for a nearly 10 mile hike through caves and rainforest. While this would be a difficult task in itself, it had rained the entire night and day before, making all trails (especially hills!!) extremely slippery and muddy. We hiked up and down the mountains for nearly 2 hours before reaching our first cave. Here we crawled inside, scaled across the rocks, and got to see a beautiful waterfall. While it was quite the process, with me falling down 3 times and getting a handful of thorns along the way, the scenery was breathtaking. One cave down, we hiked to a meadow area to eat lunch and rest up before Cave 2. The second cave was quite different, as we waded knee-waist deep in water the entire time over much easier terrain. About 3 hours later we walked back into camp, physically exhausted, and quickly showered and boarded the bus to head back to Piracicaba.




This week is full of class for 3 days, visiting Brazil's largest flower market, and spending the weekend with our Host Family somewhere around the state. Stay tuned for more pictures and an update later this week or over the weekend!!!

**This is supposedly a fountain of Healing Holy Water in a park we visited. When asked where the the water came from Jena, my AZP friend, responded, "I'm sure its piped straight from America"

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

First day in Brazil...

After a two hour flight to New York, an extended 6 hour layover at JFK, another 10 hour flight to Sao Paolo, and dealing with the airlines after losing almost 20 of our suitcases, we finally set off to Piracicaba. We were all extremely excited to meet our advisor from ESALQ- Shirota- outside the airport in a fabulous bus. (Definitely more spacious and comfortable than out flights!)


We made the two hour bus ride, with one pit stop for lunch, and unloaded what luggage we did have at Antonio’s Palace--our home sweet home for the next 6 weeks.

This afternoon we headed out for a walking tour of ESALQ. ESALQ is a branch of the University of Sao Paolo, which is one of the largest universities in the country with over 80,000 students. The official name of the university we will be studying at is—Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Quiroz. The “Luiz de Quiroz” part of the university’s name is for one of the original founders. We also got to visit the main academic building of ESALQ, home to the dean’s office.
We continued to walk around campus, seeing various academic buildings and touring the dairy farm. It was very interesting to learn about some of the graduate students’ research projects regarding the nitrogen content in dairy based feeding plans. We also got to see their milking parlor and nearby grove of rubber trees. To finish up our evening we ate at Monte Sul. Here we tried a variety of different foods, and filled our plates with different meats, salads, and my favorite—desserts.

Great day all-in-all.. as discovered we are 3 hours ahead of Ohio time.. so nearly 11 here already. Will update with more information soon! Pictures are taking forever to upload now.. but I will try to post some tomorrow!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Shipping out in 3 days!!

As I prepare to leave for Brazil on MONDAY, I am anxiously preparing for the exciting six weeks ahead. I spent most of this morning organizing all of my things and beginning the packing process. Surprisingly, I think I will be able to fit everything I want to take in the two suitcase (50 lbs each) limit!!

Throughout my 6 weeks in South America, I will try my best to update my blog once or twice a week, uploading news of our travels and some exciting photos. You all have been added on my email list, and will receive updates when I add a new post! Hopefully you all enjoy hearing about my travels and adventures south of the Equator.. and would love to hear from you all through commenting on here or by email at wenig.12@osu.edu!

Happy 2009!