We arrived in Teresina on Thursday after a short flight from Brasiia. We were met at the airport by our fabulous host teacher Josie, and her friend and former ILEP student, Alex. Arriving in Teresina, I coud immediately sense that this was a thoroughly lived in city.
Meeting our Host Teacher, Joselia
That evening, Alex picked us up at the hotel, and we went out to a local restaurant where we we had some of the best food we have yet to experience in Brazil, while enjoying some awesome live music.
After a long day of traveling and eating, we were ready to head to Joselia’s school on Friday morning.
A quick background. Joselia was an ILEP fellow, who studied English in the United States for 5 months at Kent State. Now, she hosts American teachers from the TGC program when they visit Brazil. Jennifer and I will be spending the week in Josie’s school, visiting with teachers and students, co-teaching and planning, sharing ideas, and learning more about one another. Josie teaches at the Center for Language in Teresina; a small school where students of all ages attend classes to learn English, French, Spanish, etc.
Center for Language, Teresina
Our Bios in the Faculty Room
We visited the first class in the morning; a level one English course where students were given the opportunity to practice their English by asking us questions and vice versa. Thank God for my partner teacher Jennifer, who can sense when the blank stares and awkwardness are about to kick in, and jumps up and starts some activity.
Meeting some wonderful teachers
After spending some time with the students, we were picked up again by our driver, Marcos, and taken on a cultural tour of Teresina. Our first stop was a row of ceramic stores, selling all sorts of things, from giant ceramic tigers for people’s front lawns, to tiny St. Francis statues, and all those you see below:
Ceramics Workshop
Teresina
From here, were were driven down to a little park by the Parnaiba river.
Creepy Statue by the River
Jennifer, Josie, and Me by the River
crab rum..gross!
After our tour, we headed to a nice restaurant with Marcos and Joselia, where we had another great meal.
Jennifer, Joselia, and Marcos
After lunch, we had a little time to quickly pack and head back to Josie’s school to have another session with a level 2 English class. I love having the opportunity to talk with these students; I feel like it is giving me a better understanding of the ELL kids in Copiague.
Meeting some wonderful students
After our second session at the school, we were picked up by a car sent by the secretary of education to drive us a few hours to spend the weekend at the coast. (To be discussed in my next post:)
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wanderingweller 
The school envirnment looks alot different than ours. When you say english 1 and english 2, is it like the english we take in school over here, 9th and 10th grade English? ~lesly decastro
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Great question Lesly! There English classes are for English language learners, because they speak Portuguese as their first language. So English level 1 would be more similar to an ELL course we would have in Copiague. Thanks for reading!
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Oh my gosh, the food looks mouth watering! Food is like something I specialize in; I’m just obsessed with it and while I’m eating, I’m not paying attention to anything but my meal. I’m not really sure what type of food is in the second picture you took (maybe some kind of meat), but the food in the third picture looks absolutely delicious. I see a lot of rice and potatoes, along with the mystery food again. How are the courses set up in Brazil? When I went to Italy and Spain, usually you ate a decent sized breakfast, a very large lunch, and a late dinner. Needless to say, I was never hungry after any of my meals in Europe. Were the meals in Brazil larger or smaller than American meals?
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Nothing compares to the food in Europe, especially Italy! The food in Brazil was not overwhelmingly huge, though some places we were taken to eat did give us a tremendous amount of food. I think that was more from our hosts ordering it though.
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When traveling to other countries, food is one of the things that varies the most. In America a lot of the food we eat is processed, in Brazil there seems to be a focus on fresh foods. Is this true? Also I’ve noticed there are a lot of catholic figures, Brazil is mainly Catholic are other religions as public? Or even tolerated as much as Catholocism?
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“Creepy statue by the River” haha, nice. The level 2 English students are similar to us when we take Spanish II in school but I feel like they do better because they are able to practice speaking more often and therefore are able to be more successful with it. The food looks great! That is one of the most important things to me when I travel, haha. You’re bio posted for the faculty slightly resembles a lost person notice because of the black and white. No worries, it’s a good picture.
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