Day 3 - Monday 3/6

It was nice to sleep in a bit And Tracy and I took a walk through the neighborhood. The houses were just beautiful, such a different style than back home. Back in Arizona, we do not have gates all around the house. One thing that was really interesting is that the trash is out on shelf and someone runs around and picks up the trash, no truck. 

Breakfast at the hotel looked super fancy compared to American hotels. We mainly had fruit because we were hot from our morning walk. There was so much variety of breads and sweets. You could have eggs, meat, fruit, as much as you desired. 

Our trip to UniFSP was incredible. They are very much an applied program. We toured the new medical facility where students learn how to do X-rays, dental hygienist work, occupational therapy, biopsies, nursing, autopsy. And then people from the community can get free care while the students learn how to work on people. Many students are hired   into the clinics. The university is highly recommended to people in the community because even though the students are learning, they care is top notch.  We got to tour this area where students were working on people and it made me tear up knowing that those from low income families have the opportunity to receive care without worrying how much it is going to cost. I don't know of many schools in the United States that provide this type of outreach. 

We also got to go into a classroom with students attending class. The excitement from them about us was really amazing. They were intrigued and one student who does speak English got up and shook our hands. It was quite funny to see the girls going crazy over the boys in our group. Being a former teacher, there is such an electricity that you feel in classrooms where students are excited to be there and want to learn. I felt this within the entire university. 

Carla took us to this super gorgeous sweet shop, Bruna Gauss, with the most amazing food. And the decorations were so cute. It looks like a place that belongs in NYC or Disney. I wanted to try everything and the hospitality really was so different than back home. After the pandemic, it is a struggle to get people to come to work and they are always short staffed, and people are not happy to be at work. This was not the case at all in Brazil.