The Adventure Begins

After a good nights sleep, and an early Sunday morning run, our Rotarian GSE committee hosts Thompson, Helvio and Michelle, pick us up and head for lunch before our orientation meeting. They have worked very hard and prepared a very full schedule of vocational and cultural visits. We learn we will be giving 11 presentations during our time here, including the District Conference. We also learn the the GSE chair, Ana Cristina´s husband was in a terrible car accident 3 weeks ago was very badly injured, still in the hospital and she is with him. We ask you keep her and her family in your prayers.

Our meeting lasts 3 hours and we finish around 6 PM where we learn our schedule that will begin Monday with a city tour, and Tuesday our vocational visits begin with our first presentation at the Praia Canto Vitoria Rotary club at 8PM that night. Now we begin our journey to our host families. We are all in seperate homes, with everyone in Vitoria, excepting Paul who is in Vila Velha about 20 minutes away, depending on traffic. We are all anxious to meet our hosts and test our mastery of Portuguese!

Monday May 3, 2010

Our day begins with the arrival of our van, with the first pick up at 7:45 AM. As we all load in, we share our excitement with one another about our first night with our host families. We all agree that we need to get better with our Portuguese, but we have been able to get to know our families, and they us, in spite of our limited vocabulary. As we tour the city stoping at churches and vista points to see the city, we learn that Vitoria is the major port of entry of goods and supplies for the cities, supports off shore drilling rigs off the coast, and is the major exporter of granite. There are many cargo, conatiner and tankers anchored off shore awaiting to be loaded or off loaded. Goods and supplies are shipped to Vitoria, where they are transported by truck to the surrounding cities. We drive by many government buildings and parks, but today being Monday, they are closed as is the norm. We also visit a local supermarket to get an idea of the many different types of food they have here and buy a few items. We end our day with a visit to Convento da Penha, a convent built in 1558 that overlooks the city. We begin arriving at our host families at 6:00 PM. It has been another full and rewarding day that will begin again tomorrow with our vocational visits starting at 9:00 AM.