Only two weeks left now... Over the past week we have had our fair share of lectures NGO visits and general exploring of the city and its surroundings. A highlighted NGO was GAPA which works on legal aspects for people living with AIDS. They provide support for the community and help out with legal assistance when ever possible. Next week they have planned a nation wide protest to tell the governement that more ARVs must be made avaliable to those who are sick. Also on the 26th is their 25 year aniversary party which we are all invited to. They will be releasing a book on this date that deals with women and AIDS in Brazil.



Last weekend we went to the beach which is about an hour away. We had origianlly planned to take the bus but one of our host moms decided that she wanted to come so we got to drive there instead. The system that they have on the beaches here is that you can get beach chairs and umbrellas and if you buy drinks then you dont have to pay for the chairs (great system). Apart from the warm water the second best thing about the beaches here is the fresh coconuts that you can buy and drink the water inside, very refreshing.



Tomorrow we are leaveing Sao Paulo for 5 days and heading 5 hours inland to Ituveraba for our rural stay. During the week we are there we are official guests of the mayor and his wife. Also during this time the regional cowboy festival is going on which apparently is a big party that happens for 5 nights staright so this should be fun. Academically we have a very busy schedule during this time, visiting hospitals and meeting with public health workers in the area.

Sooo ahh yeah I will put more info up soon and hopefully it will be more entertaining/informative not really feeling to creative at the moment so live laugh love for now.

Joel

Some overdue pictures of my time in Brazil so far. I realized after looking at them that I have snapped very few pictures in Sao Paulo as of now. So I will get on that and get back to you with some great images of my current surroundings, along whit that i will give a further update on Joel From Afar the Brazil addition. until that time enjoy the pics, and know that I am doing well learning massive amounts and taking full advantage of all that Brazil has to offer.



The IHP guys

Panorama: untitled

Rio at night at the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain

Fisherman

The Beaches of Rio at dusk

Brazil the beggining of the end

I apologize for the lack of blogging in the recent past, with the whole country transition and a quick trip to Rio time has gotten away from me. We have been in Sao Paulo for a week now and it is, well it is huge. 12 million people and high rises everywhere you look. We arrived in Brazil during recorded rain falls that haven't been seen in 50 years. The situation in Rio was pretty bad as I am sure that many saw on the news. Naturally that was where I headed within the first couple days if being in Brazil. By the time I arrived most of the rain had ceased and people were in the process of repairing te damages. I went to Rio to see Nida in Rio which was great after being apart for 3 months, and once the rain stopped we were able to enjoy the beaches and explore the city.

we are now underway with classes and are studying at teh Santa Canza medical school in the center of the city. We are currently learning about the general health system in Brazil which is universal meaning that any procedure or treatment needed by a Brazilian citizen is guaranteed by the government. As a professor said to us *Hopefully one day you in America will have health care like this*... maybe someday. This week we are also looking at women's reproductive health. Visiting NGOs that deal with these issues and hearing first hand accounts of different birthing strategies in BR. I got to visit an NGO called Catholics for the Right to Choose, which as it sounds is a NGO that pushes for the acceptance of abortion as something that in some situations should be accepted by the Catholic church. Very interesting view that is meet with much resistance here . Tomorrow we are heading to hospitals within Sao Paulo to get a first hand account off access to health care.

All in all I am loving the city. it is easy to navigate with a subway system and bus system that are efficient. I am living on a street that apparently has the most expensive shops in the Americas trumped only by Sacs 5th Ave. My host family is very nice and the city is beautiful. It is a problem taking the subway home at night since it is rush hour, and trying to get off the train feels similar to the birthing experiences which we have been hearing about all week (yeah it is that crowded). Look for more in the following days as we now have
Internet at our home so I will put up pictures and more stories and info very soon. I hope everyone is doing well and look forward to talking in person to everyone in a month!

A view of our class room and the valley in Mau Chau

Houses on stilits.

We got back from our rural visit yesterday. It is amazing how quickly time passess. The week there as well as the month in Vietnam is over. Although I am really looking foward to Brazil it is tough to leave here. Today at 8pm we head to the airport where at 12 midnight we take off layover in paris and finally land in Sao Paulo. A grand total of 24 hours in the air... Everyone is pretty excited about Braizl. Last night we had a fairwell dinner with our host families at the largest buffet I have ever seen. Foods from all over the world, fresh fruits, Vietnamese food. You name it it was there. At this buffet I expanded my list of crazy things to have tried by eating a grilled baby sparrow. It tasted a lot like chicken and looked exatly like the baby birds that I caught last summer, so i find my self in a pickle do I catch the birds and collect data or catch them and eat them haha.

Today most of us are saying goodbye to our families as well as working on a paper that is due when we land in Brazil. Yes we could do it on the plane but thats one of the only times we get to catch up on TV and movies. Being college students, and having our priorities of course we are going to watch the movies. That leaves us with today to finish up the last of our assignments. Well I guess that is it for now. Look for updates from Brail!

Joel

HaLong Bay

View of the mountains from the boat
Out boat
Kayaking through the caves
Killer penguin
Amazing Views
HaLong bay fooolll


This weekend IHP went to HaLong bay. The only way to really describe the area is by saying that if you have seen Avatar, well imagine the floating mountains but in water, that is what it looked like. We had the privilege of sailing on a boat for a day and a half through channels between these mountains that were jutting out of the water. Our first stop on our trip was a gigantic cave that we got to explore. It was a pretty neat area but it was lite up by neon blue, and green, and red, which reminded me of Disney world more than a cave in Vietnam, also there were penguins in the cave (see picture) Mario Kart anyone? After leaving the cave we took the boat to the beach where we got to jump into the extremely salty water. That evening we were served (I am assuming) fresh sea crab, fish cakes, and squid. It all tasted really good, from dinner we moved on to the highlight of the evening... Karaoke. Barbie Girl, and Man I feel like a Women may or may not have been sung at this time, but I can assure you if they had it sounded good. The next morning we got to take out the kayaks and explore the caves around the area. on all the rock walls you could see where the water level used to be and now the water is a good 3 feet lower, becasue of that we were able to kayak through what used to be underwater caves, now just regular caves and much more practical to kayak through. The caves led to huge rock quarries with walls hundreds of feet high, it was a great way to start off the morning. Upon return to the boat we set sail back to the harbor andheaded back to Hanoi, where I am currently working on a paper due tomorrow. Tomorrow we head to inland Vietnam for a rural homestay for the week. Here we will look at what access rural Vietnamese have to health care and the different methods of treatments they use. Also on the schedule is a volleyball tournament, not really sure what that is about but I am pretty excited bout that.

Case Studies

Today we had our second round of case studies. Groups looked at issues ranging from the two child policy and how that affects womens reproductive health to the effects of street food play into the health of the Hanoi population. My groups over the past 3 days have been reseraching Health Seeking Behaviors of rural and urban populations. We interviewed doctors, and a scholar on urbanization. We also traveled to a rural area to interview the people. We returned to the National Traditional Hospital and talked with some patients seeking health care there as well. Our main goal was to assess how social networks affected the health seeking behaviors of these different groups. In short we found that people in urban areas felt like they had less social support than those in rural areas. In many cases rural people will accompany those who are sick to hospitals. The flip side of this though is that the urban population has much greater access to health care, on average it takes 5-10 minutes to seek care while rural people may have to travel anywhere from .5-2 days to get care. It is a very interesting topic and we only touched the surface of the issue.

Tomorrow our group travels to HaLang bay for the night. We will be sailing on a boat around the coastal islands of Vietnam. On monday we will leave Hanoi and go for a week to a rural home-stay where we will continue classes as well as gain perspective on the health and lives of rural Vietnamese.

Sapa

"Midnight train to Sapa"



This weekend four of us traveled to Sapa an area in central northern Vietnam. In the past this location was used as a mountainous retreat for the French. It was later mostly destroyed during war time and later rebuilt as a tourist destination in the 90's. We traveled by over night train which left at 8pm and arrived at 5 am. From the station we were meet by our guide Co Pra (sounds like Cobram bad ass I know) and made the final hour leg of the journey by bus. Needless to say the area was beautiful. In Sapa one can look upon the tallest mountain in Vietnam and although there was a lot of mist you it is possible to feel just how big it is. Sapa and the surrounding region is home to two of the many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. In Sapa they set up a market to sell hand made goods to tourists as well as to each other. From the second I stepped out of our car until the moment we left we were constantly accosted by these people to "buy from me." At first this was very hard to deal with but once we grew accustom to this we rather enjoyed interacting with the locals. After arriving we were feed a quick breakfast and then we lead up to Dragon Mouth Mountain. It was a small mountain that over looked the bigger ranges in the area. The hike up the mountain was easy and along the way there were orchard gardens you could stop and look at. At the top we were treated to a 360 view of Sapa and the surrounding area. Funny thing though, we were told that it would be about 40 F the whole time so we all packed for cold but instead it was warm, sunny and 70 so we were very hot by the top, I suppose that is what you get for not doing your own research.

That afternoon we were driven to Lau Chi Valley. This valley is home to the Mung people. Again the second we exited our van we were greated by people eager to sell us their goods. By now we were used to this and enjoyed their company through out our two hour walk through the village. As we descended down the path into the valley we passed by terrace after terrace cut into the mountain for rice farming. As a stark contrast from rural South Africa these people had running water and could grow much more of their own food. Still the conditions that these people are living in is less than ideal. It was also much more dificult to interact with the people since we can't speak Vietnamese. Within the village we observed a clinic and being good IHP students we inquired about the levels of care that were accessible to the Mung people. Basic care is available to these people but if anything serious should occur they must travel to Sapa which is about 10 K away (6 miles for those reading this from the West). We also found that like in BBR many people seek traditional methods of health care although as of 2009 ethnic minorities are covered under the health insurance policies of the government, making more treatments available then were previously affordable. As we continued to walk through the village we came across small shops that were selling very nice items for very cheap prices. Spoiler alert!! (I may or may not have acquired some very nice gifts from some people at home).




We learned a great deal about the lives of people from rural Vietnam on this journey to their village, the more I learn though the harder it becomes to accept the levels of poverty that these people live in when there are so many basic necessities that are presently unavailable for no other reason than it may not be cost effective... The more we learn the more I realize has to be done everywhere to bring better health care to people in need, but this is a conversation for another time.

Upon our return to Sapa we found that there was no running water in the entire city. This was fine for us, but as you can imagine some of the older tourists were quite unhappy that they could not shower. We were assured that the water would return but alas it never did so we had to go another day and a half with out a shower, so basically a day in the life of a college kid, especially and IHP college kid.

The next day we went to another village and observed more rural life, with beautiful scenery and water falls. That afternoon we were on our own to explore Eliza decided to get a massage and get cupped. I had never heard of this but as her back would later show it consists of creating suction on ones back with a cup leaving circular bruises from her shoulders to her back, basically one can now play twister on her back with all the bruises. As we were about to depart to the train station the company whom we were supposed to pay decided to inform us that the price we were originally told for the trip was actually less than we owed. After about an hour of argument through a translator we avoided this hidden fee. It was not the best way to end our stay in Sapa since we left feeling like we had almost been cheated. All in all the weekend was great and the experience valuable. As the saying of the weekend went it was "Sapa cool."







The view of the Mountains from our room...



Xander, a local seamstress and myself, he bought the shirt I didn't.


Eliza and Xander on the See Saw


Bridge shot, Stefan is this artsy enough for SCAD?



IHP


Did this one with the self timer haha



Seeing double??