It appears that we may all have come to then end of our blogpost relationship with Joel from Afar. Tonight is our last night in Sao Paulo and tomorrow we head out to a retreat for three days where we wil relax do evaluations and say our goodbyes to the group. I will contiune to Argintina to see Nida! and than head home to Saratoga to graduate, time flies. In any case check back a couple times more for some final pictures and videos that I want to post once i get back to the US and possibly some info from Argentina.

The last few days here have been busy with writing papers, finishing case studies and trying to do as much in teh city as possible. A couple nights ago I discovered that I am a line dance champion well at a Samba bar which specialized in line dancing I excelled like no other. It is a bummer that line danceing went out with the 1750s or was is the 1760s? Either way I really missed that boat on that one, but it can never hurt to know ones strenghts I suppose. Other than line dancing I have been running, ad realized that I missed te Sao Paulo marathon which was today if only I would have known I would have loved to run that o well.

Academically I am officially done with my college carer which feels good. IHP was an excellent way to finish my education allowing me to take what I have learned over the past three years and add in a whole new outlook on much of the information. I feel that it is imposible to sum up even small amounts of all the informaton I have aquired during this experience, but in time I am confident that I will be able to answer the dreaded question "so what was your favorite country." Other than that this trip has really helped to make me muh more aware of the health desparities across countries and withing classes in cities all around the world. Everywhere we went although there re completly different backgrounds the problems are all the same. The people with money get better health care than those who have no money. I guess that would be one of the major themes of this entire program, although we really did not address how to correct this problem but I suppose being aware of the issues is the first step.

So incase I dont get to put another post before I get back home thanks for following along, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed living it (if that is possible). Cant wait to talk to many of you soon!

joel

Ituveraba

My host family in Iteveraba w yoshi and francis

Rodeo

Church in the center square

Sunset (but really just a street light)

So the past five days have been some of the most action packed days of IHP. Last Thursday we all loaded onto the bus to travel six hours inland to Ituverava a small city (similar to Rome (NY)). As I mentioned before we came to this area during a five night festival which consisted of a rodeo and concert each night. I am going to go into detail on this as well as the academic portion which was really interesting as well. naturally I will talk about the festival first so if you really want to read about the academics first skip down some...

So the Cowboy festival each night it started at 9pm and went until 2 or 3. It consisted of a rodeo and followed by a concert each night. Every night there was a different group performing and they are all decently famous withing Brazil so everyone in the crowd was extremely excited to see each act. The best part about festival was that we were official guests of the Mayor in Ituveraba. Due to this we had all access passes to everything in the festival. It allowed us to ride rides for free, get in for free, and most importantly get into the mayors box as a VIP. In the mayors box was food and drinks! also on the house. The entire experience was crazy. We all were with host families as well and each host family also went to the festival each night as well. We would end up not leaving until 130-2 in the morning, which isnt all that late except that classes each morning started at 730...

Now you guess it academics. Once we all actually woke up from the nights passed we saw how much there was to see and learn about health and health care in this area. The first day we visited a sugar cane plant where they farm and harvest sugar cane as well as produce ethanol as a Biofuel. This is an extremely crucial industry here and provides many jobs in the community. The next day just to highlight another extremely interesting aspect of Brazil is when we visited the rural health workers station. Basically in each community (in many rural areas of Brazil) there are small medical stations staffed with a doctor and a few nurses as well as 10 or so health workers. It is the health workers job to visit all the people in the neighborhood once a month to check up on their health and make sure everyone in the family is doing well. Each station serves about 200-250 families. Any sickness that they come across is brought to the attention of the resident doctor. in many cases the problem can be fixed right there and there is no need for A) the person s stay sick B) go to the hospital and overburden the health care system. This system at least from our limited exposure seems to be extremely effective at addressing preventative medicine since all people in the community have their voice heard when a problem arises, and even if there isn't a problem there are still people within the community to talk to. Very efficient I was really impressed by this.

We are now in our last week of IHP which is crazy next week we go on a 4 day retreat and then I will be heading to Argentina. This week we are focusing on case studies and my group is looking into mental health and body image in Brazil in the transvestite population, there is a large transvestite population in Sao Paulo and we are all very excited to see what information we can collect.

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.