Danielle Descarfino

Looking Back

Now that I have been back home in the states for a while, I am taking some time to look back at my experience volunteering with Cross Cultural Solutions in Salvador, Brazil.  Over the past month and a half, I cannot stop thinking about how happy I am to have had such an experience and to have met the amazing people that I met- CCS staff, Brazilians, and other volunteers.  Every day, I think of the kids at Lar da Crianca orphanage and wish that visiting them was less than a 12 hour flight away.  Either way, having the opportunity to get to know them and show them love makes me feel blessed and happy in a way that I never knew before.

I also have to say that I am confident that I made the right choice by traveling with Cross Cultural Solutions.  I could not imagine the staff to be more caring, organized, and helpful than they were.  Living in the CCS home for 8 weeks was comfortable and clean.  The staff was very warm and willing to answer any questions that we had.  When I started teaching English classes by myself, my program manager was willing to go above and beyond to ensure my comfort and confidence by sitting in on the class with me as well as helping me come up with ideas for lesson plans.  It was clear that the full experience of the volunteers was important to CCS as an organization.  I am happy that I chose to spend time in Brazil with CCS.  Not only did I get to visit and explore a new country, but I also got to learn about the language and culture, meet local people, and make a difference in the community through the volunteer aspect.  I highly recommend this kind of trip to anyone- I cannot imagine finding it less than enjoyable- for me, it was life changing and I hope to be able to do it again someday.

:-)

The best day at Lar da Crianca!

On Thursday, I went to Lar da Crianca to volunteer for the day.  Another group of people were there facilitating an activity with the kids.  They dressed them all up in costumes and makeup, then set up a red carpet where the kids took turns walking down like models, then each did group performances of dancing or capoeira.  They are such good dancers.  Enjoy the photos!

 

Ester, Vitoria, & Jaiane

 

Raina~ what a diva!  She is hilarious!

 

Ivana

My Last Weekend in Salvador

Last weekend, I went to the Salvador music festival on Friday and Saturday night.  It was held in the square by the Museo Ritmo, the Museum of Rhythm, which was a very cool location.  I saw a handful of artists, but my favorite was Carlinhos Brown.  He put on a great show.  During his set, it started pouring rain, and everyone still stayed outside and danced in the rain.  We had a great time!

 

The Salvador music festival at Museo Ritmo

Last day at Somando

Thursday was my last day teaching at Somando.  My students were taking the English course as part of a program for work.  First, they take the English class, and then they move on to interning at a hotel.  Next week, they begin at the hotel.  I hope that my class helped to prepare them!

For our last day, we had a party.  I told everyone to bring something in, and they all took turns presenting in English.  I asked what they brought, how they made it, and what ingredients were in it.  As it turns out, a lot of them can cook really well!  They brought empanadas, pastels, coxinhas, homemade candies, and chocolate cake!

I really liked my students at Somando and they were very sweet.  They took turns taking photos with me on their cellphones and all of them gave me hugs and told me that they liked me.

 

Our table of food!

 

Me & one of my students, Elisabete

Sao Jao~ Open Market

On Tuesday, I went on the tour to the open market.  This is a huge outdoor market where they sell all kinds of stuff- clothes, household items, vegetables, fruits, meat, and even live animals and birds.  It was totally different from anything that I've seen at home!

After the open market, we went to the mueseum of modern art- museo de arte moderno.  The exposition was about an artist who received a break-up letter.  She showed it to all different women and videotaped or photographed their reactions and interpretations of the letter.  Although the letter was translated in English, Portuguese, and so on (originally written in French), I didn't totally understand why it was such an emotional ordeal.  Do people not get broken up with here in Brazil? haha

 

SHRIMP!  I have never seen so much shrimp at one time.

 

Goats!!

 

Lots of roosters & chickens!

Olodum!

On Sunday night, I went to an Olodum concert in Pelourinho.  This is a world renowned drumming band from Salvador, and this year marks their 30th anniversary.  They were featured in Michael Jackson's song "They don't really care about us" as well as the music video which was filmed in Pelourinho, the old part of the city here in Salvador.

I've decided that seeing Olodum perform live is an absolute MUST for anyone visiting Salvador! Even if it doesn't seem like it would be you're genre of music, you can't help but dance to the beat.  They played for hours, I don't understand how they don't get tired!  Lots of fun, and a great night!

Check out Michael Jackson's music video, featuring Olodum on the streets of Pelourinho!  They played a silent video of this in the background during the show.

My lessons at Baixa d'Alegria

I decided to teach the class "past" and "future" tenses.  Instead of trying to explain it, I asked them on Friday, "What are you going to do this weekend?" to teach the future.  I wrote their answers on the board, such as "I am going to the beach" or "I will study English".  On Monday, I asked, "What did you do over the weekend?" and wrote their answers, like "I went to the beach."  It was a good lesson for the few bright students that I have in my class who actually grasped how to use the past and future tenses.

 I also taught them parts of the body.  This was easy, I just drew a stick figure on the board and labeled body parts.  I tested them later by pointing to various body parts and asking what they were.  I also taught them the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, & Toes" which they were already kind of familiar with.

Today, I brought lyrics to the songs "Help!" and "Hey Jude" by The Beatles.  I brought the lyrics in both English and Portuguese and handed them out to everyone. First, we did "Help!" and I wrote the lyrics on the board for the chorus.  I went through the song and eventually the class was able to sing along with the chorus.  It was cute.  After that, I gave them the lyrics for Hey Jude and they got really excited.  Apparently, that song is in the opening credits for a popular Brazilian soap opera and a couple of the ladies already knew the song in Portuguese.  All in all, it was a really fun activity that definitely kept everyone's interest.  Well- almost everyone.  Evony (the Evangelist) complained to Vini (my program director) that "these are not songs of the church."  Vini just laughed at him, and so did I.  I'm thinking of telling Evony whatever it takes to make him stop coming to my class and constantly interrupting my lesson to ask how to say vocab words like "faith" and "praise" when he can't even remember what basic words like "good" and "weekend" mean.

Tomorrow, I have a half day at Somando because the building is closed.  I am going to visit the kids for the first half of the day!  It will be nice to see them  :-)

Thursday at Somando

Thursday was much different!  The class doubled in size for some reason... its things like that that make it so difficult.  When people don't come to class, then show up after missing a lot, its hard to know if I should review older stuff or just move ahead for the people who actually do attend.  I try to do a mix of the two.

I did a couple of different dialogues with the students, then reviewed the hotel worksheet that I made for them.  I wanted to prepare them for their hotel internship, so I gave them a worksheet with visual aids, teaching them words like: pool, hotel, sauna, reception, restrooms, bed, towel, room service, and so on.  I also gave them a list of some relevant useful phrases.

After this, I reviewed the food test AGAIN that only half of the class took.  It was actually good because the people who took the test got to reinforce their learning and feel confident when they knew the answers.  At the end of class, by their request, we played Bingo for the last half hour.  I gave out chocolate cookies to the winners (well, eventually, I gave them to everyone, but the winners got them first.)

I think I only have two classes left with them before they move on to their hotel internship.  I haven't yet decided what to do with them on Tuesday, but I will probably prepare a review packet that breaks down a lot of useful phrases and stuff from the class.  I'm going to tell them that on Thursday, I'm going to tell them that we're going to have a party.  Everyone can bring something and "serve" it to the class using English.

First day teaching alone at Baixa d'Alegria

Today was my first day teaching alone at Baixa d’Alegria, the community center.  The students had a long weekend, and only three students came to class today.  I had planned on doing the family photo Show and Tell, which I spent Friday’s class preparing them for, but no one brought in their family photos, so I had to come up with a new lesson plan that would kill three hours.

First, I reviewed the verbs “to be” and “to have” and wrote sample sentences on the board, asking them to fill in the blank with the correct form (such as “She is lucky.  She has a new car.”)  They did well with that, so I moved on to weather, which is a new topic for them.  We talked about all types of weather as well as seasons of the year.  I asked them about the weather throughout the year in Salvador and explained how the weather changes each season in New York.

After that, I resorted to handing out my extra copies of the Food & Kitchen test that I gave to my class at Somando yesterday.  I asked them to try it on their own for a little while, then we would review it together.  I wrote everything on the board and checked for understanding and pronunciation.  Sometimes, I even asked them questions about the food items, like “What is your favorite kind of juice?”  I figure that even things like that can help them pick up English and figure out how to form questions and sentences correctly.  Evony (the Evangelical missionary) told me that he likes all types of juice, but later, he raised his hand and informed me that he does not like beer.

At the end of class, I asked them if they had any questions. Evony had a list of words that he wanted to know how to say- land, earth, sky, and so on.  I began to see a pattern and realized that he was looking to learn vocabulary words that were Biblically relative.  Ironically, Evony is probably the only student who I wouldn’t even bet would be able to count to ten.  And today, when we talked about weather, I asked them to fill in the blanks to make a sentence like, “During the [season], it is [weather].”  For example, “During the spring, it is rainy.”  Evony chose not to choose a word or phrase from my list and instead tried to get fancy and say, “During the spring, it is flowers.”  I told him no.

All in all, it went fairly well.  My Portuguese is actually improving a lot- my students even commented on that.  (I think I’ve learned a lot more Portuguese than any of my students have learned English- haha.) Hopefully next time more people will come and bring their family photos!

My first day teaching alone!

Today was my first day teaching English without any Portuguese speaking help- at Somando, the class specific to people who work at restaurants and hotels.  I'm sure you could imagine how difficult it must be for me to lead a Portuguese speaking class for 2 and a half hours.

I gave them a test today because I was concerned that they weren't actually learning the words, and rather, just attempting to repeat words that I say and maybe read out loud from their packet.  So, during the last class, I told them to prepare for a test on the topics "Food and Kitchen".. I made a word bank with 30 English words and then listed the words below in Portuguese.  They were instructed to choose the correct English word and write it in the space next to the Portuguese words.  I kept it fairly simple with words like "fish," "shrimp," "dinner," "spoon," and so on.  The test took them about 45 minutes and they kind of worked on it as a team (I guess they don't know what "cheating" means in Brazil.)  When they finished, I corrected the tests while they worked on a dialogue that I wrote on the board for them.  It only took me a few minutes to finish correcting the tests, so after they took turns presenting the dialogue, I reviewed the test with them.  Most students got 26 or 27 correct, out of 30.  Not bad at all (actually, better than I expected).. but one thing really disturbed me.  I wrote at the heading of the test, as well as on the white board "Test: Comida e Cozinha" then, under it, I translated it to "Food and Kitchen."  I figured that I would give them a freebie by translating it for them.  One of the words that they had to translate on the test was "comida" (food) which every single student got wrong.  Most people translated "comida" to mean "Plate."  I couldn't quite figure that one out, but other than that, it was a pretty good day.  I spent the rest of the class doing dialogues with them, and then when I ran out of ideas for the last 15 minutes, I asked them what they did over the weekend (the most common answer among them involved "drinking"), then I asked them what they wanted to do during the next class to which they all replied- "Bingo!"  I told them that I would bring Bingo, but under two conditions: (1) we cannot play Bingo for the entire 2.5 hour class time, (2) they have to bring chocolates.

Tomorrow- back to Baixa d'Alegria!  I assigned them homework during the last class to bring in family photos and describe their family members.  I hope that some of them actually do it...  in case they don't, I have a lesson plan on Weather ready as backup. Wish me luck!