Day 5 in Brazil!

Day 5 in Brazil!
Howdy Family and Friends! For the first time since we arrived in Brazil we got more than 4 hours of sleep! We slept in today until 10 a.m.! After waking up, as we were packing up our luggage, I caught my cmarea by accident and knocked it to the floor. Unfortunately this was enough to make it not work anymore so I am stuck with our backup camera and ipod for pictures. It's horrible because the megapixels and quality are very poor!

After we were out of our room, we went shopping around our hotel while waiting for Thiago to get out of class. At 1 p.m. we met up with him at the hotel and hailed a taxi and went shopping. Our first stop was at the mall. We ate at the Botafogo Praia Shopping Center in a restaurant called Spoleto. It’s a pasta restaurant where you choose your pasta, then your sauce, then eight different ingredients! It was delicious! We ate outside where the pigeons joined us! After one customer finished his plate, the pigeons enjoyed the leftover contents of his plate!

We shopped the mall for a while and then at 3 headed to the Botanical Gardens. We saw beautiful flowers of all kinds, monkeys and birds. It was relaxing to walk through there. The best part was watching Dave get a drink from the water fountain...a lady who was spitting out a stream of water. But, when you get a drink, it looks like you are kissing the fountain!

We then hailed another taxi and took a longer ride to the New York City Center where we shopped. It had a lot of American shops and restaurants, but was very expensive! We did find iced coffee though--at McCafe (aka McDonalds!) Not only did they have a lot of shops, they were fully decorated for Christmas! Beautifully decorated trees with lights were already on display! It is so hard to even think about that because outside its 80 degrees!!!
After about 2 hours of this, we went to a Pizza Restaurant called Frontera and had our fill of pizza, but not without lessons on how to eat it first! I thought eating pizza was just like in America, pick it up with your fingers and enjoy, but nooooo! You must use your fork and knife. The first thing you do is cut off the crust and place it on a small plate in the center of the table.

That is considered waste and you don’t eat it because it cuts down the amount of food you can consume! Anyway, this pizza restaurant is like a buffet, but once again they bring the pizza’s to you! They have all kinds of pizza that we don’t have in the USA. All the meats, cheese, garlic…you name it, they have it. But my favorites were the dessert pizzas. The first they brought around was chocolate pizza. It’s like chocolate fondue on pizza crust! So delicious! Then we had, chocolate pizza with m&m’s, chocolate pizza with strawberries,

a fruit pizza—guava with cheese (it sounds bad, but it was very yummy! Not a salty cheese, but a sweet cheese!) So many yummy choices! We left full as pigs but very happy!
After supper we caught the subway back to Thiago’s aunt’s home where we stayed up until the early hours of the morning catching up on facebook and blogging, chatting and enjoying each other’s company!
From my very yummy chocolate pizza Brazilian picture window to yours, have a great day!

Day 4 in Brazil!

Day 4 in Brazil
Howdy family and friends! After just a short nap consisting of about 3 ½ hours we stopped by the Assembly of God Church in Petropolis and took a picture.

We then arrived back in Rio at our hotel and changed clothes to board the tour bus to see the sites of Rio. We were able to meet Antonia—a girl from Brazil who is wanting to be a foreign exchange student. She was a great help throughout the day.
Our first stop was to the Christ statue.

To get up the mountain, we boarded a tram and about 15 minutes later we arrived. We were able to not only see the Christ statue but the city of Rio and the many beaches. While we were also there, several Children were getting baptized by the Catholic priest. In between baptisms, the priests came out and sprinkled holy water on people while blessing them. As I stood back and watched, I was amazed how quickly people flock to them for a sprinkle. I, on the other hand, got a picture with one of the priests!

On the way back down the mountain, we wanted to make sure we boarded the tram that held the Samba school so we could enjoy more music. They were right in front of Dave and I and then one of the drummers handed me the noise shaker! He wanted me to be a part of the band! It was so much fun!

Once down the mountain, we boarded our bus again, but not before getting a picture at the tiniest Hard Rock Café in Rio. The bus drove us around the Carnival site, the Chapel of Santissimo, and the Soccer stadium. We found some street sellers selling hats. Originally they wanted 25 Reals for each one but I love to barter and I talked them down to 10 Reals per hat! SCORE for me! I actually did this twice today! The other reps were jealous of my bartering skills and wanted me to go with them to barter!
Finally we arrived at Cocurtio (Sugarloaf). We ate a delicious lunch here before going all the way to the top of the Sugarloaf. Dave was not too sure of this ride as he doesn’t like heights, but I loved it. He would have been content to sit on the floor! You could see for miles the city of Rio and the ocean. As we were preparing to go back down Dave and I spotted a little trail and took off on it—only to be followed by my boss, Georgina. She yelled, “Wait up you two! Where are you going now?” (She claimed that she had to supervise us but in all actuality, she didn’t want to hear about another of our adventures, she wanted to participate in it!) The trail took us a quite a little way down the mountain. It was beautiful! On the way down though, Dave decided the window wasn’t such a bad place to be and was right there at the front of the car watching everything!

We boarded the bus one last time to make our way back to hotel and decided that we were going back to the ocean to go swimming. For almost two hours we played in the ocean waves before going to the street market to barter for more souvenirs. As we made our way back to our hotel, we stopped by Copacabana Palace to see what it was like inside there…priceless!
Supper tonight was on our own for the first time since we arrived in Rio and we found this quant little restaurant on the corner one block from our hotel. We didn’t understand one bit of the menu but ended up with some great food. I had a roast beef sandwich that had a pepperoni stick bored into the middle of it! Delicious! Dave had steak/ham/egg sandwich on one piece of bread. Very yummy! I couldn’t finish my sandwich because it was so big so I asked for a to go container—they brought out a Tupperware like container—and then charged 1.50 for it! Crazy! I washed the container and am bringing that puppy home! Overall a great day! From my Brazilian bartering picture window to yours, have a great day!

Day 3 in Brazil!

Day 3
What a day! It all started with an early morning—around 7:30 when me met with Thiago and his Aunt Amelia. We piled into the little car and headed off to Petropolis. We struggled to stay awake because there is so much to see and do here! The ride was only around an hour, but it was enough down time to put us to sleep. Petropolis is a beautiful city! There were more houses and ornate buildings than in Rio. It is a very old city that was settled by German immigrants. Brazil was once under Imperial rule. Our first stop was the Christ viewpoint. Our second stop was the hotel casino Quitandinha which is built in German style. It is the second most famous hotel in the country. It was built in 1944 and many famous people have stayed there.
The next stop was to the chocolate store! One word for the store--YUMMY!!!
From there we went down to the historical district and went to a very unique museum. The emperor built a summer house and now is a museum on the Emperors life. The interesting thing is that all the floors are hard wood, so you have to put on these special slippers over your shoes so that you don’t scratch the floor. Then they tell you to “glide” across the floor. I think it’s their way of getting free labor from tourists so they don’t have to clean the floors.

This pace is surrounded by beautiful botanical gardens. From here went walked down what the Brazilian’s call the “most expensive street in Petropolis.” This is street that has the house of the princess and the legislature on it. We also went to the summer home of the President and went on a small tour through the President’s summer house. Nothing like Camp David at all! First of all, they let you tour it and second of all, it only had two guards! Time was getting short so we headed to the car, but not before we saw a goat pulling little kids around and the house that belonged to Brazil’s version of the Wright Brothers.
We went to Thiagos’s uncles home and had a traditional Brazilian meal of beans and rice with BBQ sausage and breaded chicken and beef. It was incredible! Tastes nothing like what we have in the USA. The lunch ws enough to make our eyes very heavy (or it could be the fact that we are averaging 4 hours of sleep or less and we were exhausted. We laid down for 15 minutes and then it was time to get dressed for the wedding.

A Brazilian wedding...Words cannot describe what it was like but we are going to try. It was in a huge cathedral where the Emperor was buried. Usually weddings are dress up occasions, but this was over the top. All the guys were in suits or tuxes and the ladies were in formals. The problem is that the bride was 1 hr 15 minutes late. It is acceptable for the bride to be late, it is expected. But according to Sonia, this was too late. There are a lot of unique things different about a Brazilian ceremony. The bridesmaids all stand to the back instead of going down the stairs and the parents stand next to the children during the ceremony. The Mother of the bride also holds the Bride’s bouquet! After the couple is married, then they take pictures of the couple and family in front of the crowd. When she finally marches down the aisle, it is the Pomp and Circumstance Recessional! That was interesting too!
After the ceremony we had a 40 minute drive to where the reception was. On the way we passed an Assembly of God church that was having service. It would have been great to stop, but we didn’t have time. It looked like fun!
The reception was at Itaipava Castle with valet parking and a guest list to get inside and yes, our names were on it!!!! Once inside there was almost no way to describe what you saw. There were brigadeiro chocolate treats everywhere—of all flavors.

We were seated in a glass reception hall behind the castle with huge red rose arrangements on every table. They continually brought hors d'oeuvres and drinks around to us. There was no getting up to get your food. They would give you a little napkin and as you held the napkin they would place the food on the napkin. Everything from tiny baked potatoes with Cheese inside of them to breaded shrimp, crab cakes, little pasta rolls--it was an incredible combination of food. As we were eating, we heard the Samba school arriving—which also signified the start of the party!—around 11:30 p.m. This is like a drum line but with much more flair and energy. They were the winning Samba school from carnival 2011 and they went to the dance floor and performed a little concert. Everybody was packed in there to see them and then the 2 carnival dancers showed up. Wow is all I can say! During this time the mother of the bride called me out from the crowd and drug me out to the center to meet the bride and all the cameras and video people were there to capture this on tape. It was wild! Something I will NEVER forget!

After I finally got away from the cameras it was time for chocolate! I grabbed one of everything I could find. WOW!! IT was awesome! I love my chocolate and I got my fill!!!!!!! (I did have to take my extras and put them in a napkin to take with me though!)

About 1:30 we left the reception (it was still going strong!) and made our way back to Thiago’s home. When we got there it was 2:30ish and we finally crawled into bed about 3. After a short nap, we got up at 6:30 and headed back to Copacabana and to our hotel. What an amazing day!!!! From my Petropolis/Brazilian wedding/reception picture window to yours, have a great day!

Brazil Day 2!

Brazil Day 2!
Howdy Family and Friends! Greetings from Brazil! Today we woke up around eight in the morning (five our time) and had breakfast with the other area reps downstairs in the lobby of our hotel and then it was off to meetings to discuss STS information and changes that will be happening next year. We also met the General Manager from Sweden STS. It was a great time!
Following our meeting, we enjoyed a lunch of Filet Minion or Grilled chicken with a lemon juice sauce and rice and French fries. I had the chicken and Dave enjoyed the steak. It was almost 2:30 when we finally sat down to enjoy the lunch though!
When that was finished, we were allowed to go out on our own. Dave and I went shopping in the tourist areas of Copacabana and ended up at the beach of the Atlantic Ocean. The sand was so nice and warm on the feet and the water was so cold!!!! But after walking in it for about 5 minutes, the feet got used to it! Some of the waves splashed clear up to our waist and almost knocked us over!
Like youngsters in love, we drew in the sand with a stick our names and the date! (See picture below!) While we were there a pigeon also decided to follow me wherever I went. He must have thought I had something good to eat! Too bad for him!

On the way back to the hotel, we went into another grocery store just to look around and found the most interesting meat counter we have ever seen. The meat is laying on ice and you “paw” through it to decide what you want…and then around the corner, the fresh fish are laying on the ice staring at you just waiting for you to choose them! Quite a site to say the least!

About 4, we met up with Thiago again and headed to a much nicer mall where I scored a pair of Brazilian flip flops—very comfortable! We also enjoyed some Brazilian ice cream and then headed back to the hotel to meet up with the group to go out for supper and to a Bossa Nova!
We all piled into taxis around 8 p.m. and headed to the Veloso Bar where the famous song "The Girl from Ipanema" was composed. It was written by a man with the name Vinicius de Moraes. Tonight's performers included a very talented man play the guitar that I am holding below! What an honor! He came up to me and said, “Here, would you like to try it?” **I think my brother Jon would be jealous!** So of course we took pictures with it instead!

After finally getting our meal about 10 p.m., we enjoyed music late into the night! We left the Bossa Nova early and headed back to our hotel! We got very lucky and caught Grandma Busch online so we were able to chat with the kids and then my Brazilian and Swedish/German girls were online and so I skyped with them as well! Overall a fun day to be had! But, the clock reads 2 a.m. (only 11 p.m. back home) and we are leaving our hotel to go to Petropolis tomorrow with Thiago to take in the sites there and a Brazilian wedding! From my Brazilian Picture window to yours, have a great day!

Brazil Day 1!

Day 1 in Brazil!
Howdy Family and Friends! We have finally landed in Rio de Janerio, Brazil! After spending 26 hours in airports and airplanes, we were met by Eduardo with an STS sign welcoming us to Brazil!
Our journey started off in all reality on November 1 at around 7 a.m. It was a day full of activities and then finally packing around 11 p.m. that night. Why so late? Well, that’s just how the day went. After spending over 5 ½ hours in the dentist office for me due to complications and adverse reactions to some of the procedures, it was 7:10 when I finally got home. Such fun!
At 3:00 a.m. we left our home to head to Grand Island to catch the first of three planes. A quick stop to Wal-Mart to buy batteries and run through at McDonalds, we arrived at the airport—before the employees!
We checked in our bags and began our journey. Our very small flight took off at 7 a.m. and we landed in Dallas, Texas at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport! But instead of taking us to Brazil, we again boarded a little bigger jet and headed to New York, La Guardia Airport. After arriving there, we had to collect our luggage and then make our way over to John F. Kennedy International Airport 12 miles away! A nightmare you say, we agree. The Foundation booked our tickets without reviewing them too closely. Oh well, new territory to discover and in a limo none the less!

After a nap in the airport next to our concourse during the nine hour layover, we finally boarded the plane. We watched Mr. Poppers Penguins and ate a delicious chicken and pasta dinner . Of course our eyelids were quite heavy, but sleeping on a plane is not necessarily the easiest! Luckily, Dave and I had 3 seats for the two of us and I could stretch out across them. The next thing we know, we were waking up to breakfast being served and trying to fill out customs forms written in Portuguese!
After disembarking the plane ,we were met in the airport by security guards who said, “Brazilian’s here. You foreigners, over there.” What a greeting to say the least.

We made our way through the line,got our passports stamped and retrieved our luggage.
We then boarded a bus with 4 other people and drove through the slums of Brazil and heavy traffic to our airport. I would love to tell you where we are, but I haven’t got a clue how we got to where we are. But I will tell you about the traffic we encountered! The taxis and buses like we were on move through traffic as though they own the streets. They have 4 lanes of traffic clearly marked but in all actuality, there are six lines of cars! The motorcycles drive the lines between the cars and honk as they pass you by. On certain streets when you are stuck in traffic, people work the streets with pop, fruit, candy and all sorts of snacks to sell you. We were told when you saw these people working the streets, the traffic was really jammed and plan on being there for a while!

After arriving at our hotel, we found our room (803) and tried to figure out how to turn lights on! Go ahead and laugh, but as you walk in the door you must insert your key into another scanner and that turns on everything electrical in your room! That took us about 5 minutes to figure that out. When we did, everything from the TV to the A/C turned on as well as every light in the room and bathroom! The only thing that didn’t turn on was the water!

At noon we met up with Thiago (our foreign exchange student from 2006-07) and his Aunt Amelia and we hopped in a taxi and headed to the Brazilian BBQ restaurant Porqui which translates to ‘Big Pig’! While Thiago lived with us he continually talked about his beloved Picanah—which would be similar to Prime Rib only much, MUCH better! At this restaurant, when seated, they give you a circle that is red on one side and green on the other. After going through a monster salad bar that had everything from fish to sushi, to heart of palms, cheese blocks, breads, pastries, rice…I could go on, it was simply amazing and colorful! I didn’t know a carrot could look like a flower!!!

Then the magic happened! We turned our circles over to the green side and 5 waiters circled our table and began to offer meat after meat after meat! Chicken, chicken hearts, leg of lamb, a pig—yes a pig that was cooked and then you picked out your cut right at your table, picanah, our favorite thanks to Thiago, filet minon, you name it, you had it! Then after stuffing yourself like a pig (maybe that’s why they call the restaurant what they do!) they came back and offered dessert! Not just one or two choices, but 10 choices! Simply amazing!
Our next item on the agenda was to tour with Thiago’s family. While we had great fun doing that, Dave and I were exhausted. We came back to our hotel around 4, and fell into bed waking up just in time to meet the other reps that are here and have appetizers and drinks with them on the top of our hotel! What a night to say the least. After this was over, Dave and I went for a short walk on the town and found ourselves at McDonalds for ice cream and then a 24 hour grocery store because we were told not to drink the water here. What an interesting day. From my Brazilian picture window to yours, have a great day!

Foreign exchange spotlight on Henriette Pedersen Rogne!

Howdy Thedford Residents! Welcome to another view from a far off place known as Norway and the home to foreign exchange student Henriette Pedersen Rogne! Henriette is 17 years old and is a member of the senior class at Thedford High School. At home in Norway, Henriette's favorite subjects are English and Physical Education. Besides attending Upper Secondary School, Henriette spends her time working in a cafe called No. 3. She also enjoys working out at the gym where she participates in yoga/Pilates, goes spinning, or runs on the treadmill! When she was younger, Henriette also took Tae Kwon Do and graduated at age 11 with a Black Belt!
Travelling the world isn't something new for Henriette though. At age 11, she attended the Children's International Summer Village in Indonesia, Jakarta for 3 weeks where she met with other students and leaders at a school. But when comparing her education there are many differences! For her, the biggest difference between Thedford High School and her school at home, Gjovik High School, are the amount of people, the classes/subjects, the teachers, and almost everything. The school at home has approximately 1200 students, and 70 teachers. Every class last for 80 minutes, which means they only have four different classes a day. The first year (11th grade) students don’t get to choose their classes and the schedule is different every day. Henriette stated, " I feel that I have a better relationship with my teachers here in the U.S. than in Norway, because the school is smaller and it is therefore easier to talk to them. Right now I would have been in 12th grade, but when I go back I will still have one more year left before I graduate."

Not only was the educational system different for Henriette, but coming to Thedford was as well! "It is a lot smaller than the town I come from. I thought I came from a small town (population of about 28.000) before I got here, which proved me wrong! I didn’t like it at the beginning, but now I love it! I love that everyone knows each other, and everyone is friendly to one another. At home I usually hang out with my friends, boyfriend and family, and even though I don’t do any sport, I love to work out on my own. I also love living with my host family, the Haumann’s, they’re the best host family I could ever ask for!"

From a picture window in Norway all the way to the US of A, Ha en flott dag, Thedford!

Foreign exchange spotlight on Lorena Noé-Nordberg

Howdy Friends and Family...Travel with me in your mind to the country of Austria this week as we meet foreign exchange student Lorena Noé-Nordberg! Lorena is from Baden, Austria and is sixteen years old.She was bom on October 12th, 1994 in the capital of Vienna, Austria. She is living with host parents Ruth Quinn and Rocky Fliegel in Thedford, Nebraska!
Lorena chose to become an exchange student because she always wanted to go to the USA and as she says, "Then there was a great opportunity to stay here for ten months, so I took the chance!" Lorena said, "I really like to learn about another culture and I enjoy meeting new people, learning from them and experiencing a lot of new things. ln my free time I prefer to play the electric and acoustic guitar but unfortunately not like Jimi Hendrix. I also really like sitting on the bed trying to play new songs, to meet my friends and to listen to music- favored Pop and Rock.
I love travelling a lot!"

Lorena said that a big difference between Austria and her new home here in Thedford is definitely the school. In Thedford she is in the 12th grade, but in Vienna it would be like the tenth grade. "I attend school in Vienna where I go by train and subway and so it always keeps me on the go. My school is difficult to describe but I want to try: It lasts five years (l am in the second grade) and it is a business school which finishes with a diploma and from the third grade, the sector I've chosen is focused on social work. At this kind of school you
also get an education in cooking and serving in hotels, etc. But I don't want to catch such a job. I have some special subjects but also "normal" ones like German, French, History, Music and Physics, and of course Math- I hate it. My favorites are Geography, English and Physical Education."

Lorena has enjoyed her time here so far. She stated that one other difference from Austria to Nebraska was that "people here are not harried but helpful and nice--what I really appreciate!" From our second spotlight view on Lorena and a look through her picture window to yours, have a great week!