April 19th

April 19th - I had the pleasure of visiting my host mothers clinic. She is a pediatrician but functions as a general practice doctor while working at this clinic. Brazil has socialized medicine so this clinic is open to the public. The waiting area was outside under a roof and a small area inside. There was a room for a dentist, a treatment room, an exam room and a gynecological room. All the staff was very friendly and I even was able to observe some interested diabetic wound care.

After visiting the clinic Ju and Adriano took me to walk through their ´club´. It was quite similar to a North American country club but no golf. Soccer, volleyball and basketball are the sports they play at this club. There was also a ´lake´ they swim in but much different then our lakes. Also a nice kids pool area and a huge wave pool. Very fun! There was nobody there because it is considered Autumn here and sometimes ´cold´ (like 70´s)!

We then came home and had some lunch. We had a day trip to a hydroelectirc plant but it was canceled due to heavy rain and unsafe dirt roads.
So instead we hit a local super market, coffee and converstations until it was time to take a trip to Julio de Castilhos for our first rotary meeting and presentation. Julio de Castilhos is about an hours drive from Santa Maria.

We arrived home at about midnight. I then visited with my host family about the day and they also showed me a slide show of their trip to Peru. Very nice!

To bed at about 12:30 am.

Hello to my Solway friends! Guess what? I almost stepped on a tarantula! It was the size of a small orange. Yuck, I now watch were I step. Also, there are fun little lizards that live in the house I am staying at. They don~t bother anyone so they just wander about on the walls. The biggest one I saw was about 5 inches long.