Happy Valentines' Day! Today in Brazil is Dia dos Namorados, Day of Lovers to be exact. So what better to do than attend a special concert given by Marcello Barra, a musician here who is famous in Goias. The concert was complete with a dinner and desserts. I had such a great time with my friends, Marcello's family. He sang many American songs that I knew including "Hey Jude" and "The Old Fashioned Way," and no one here is shy about singing along. I thought it was so funny how many of the people even got up from their dinner table to dance while Marcello was singing. By the end of the night, a big group of people had congregated near the stage just to dance together.
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| Avo (Grandpa, he is Marcello's father) and I at the concert. |
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| The star of the show!! Marcello Barra |
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| Marcello Barra and his siblings: (l to r) Mara, Lila, and Rinaldo (Rinaldo is Marcello's producer) |
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| Social Services Class |
However, just because it was Valentines' Day does not mean I did not keep up the slew of activities I have been able to do to learn more about health care. First, I attended social services class once again with Professora Vera at PUC. This week was the last class and once again the class had a great breakfast as a final celebration. Each student was required to explain what they learned from the class or what sparked their curiosity during the class. Some talked about their readings and others talked about the out of classroom experiences the class had such as their assignments with social services workers throughout the city. I gathered that most of them would not have traded what they learned for anything. Then everyone in the room was told to write his or her name on a small piece of paper and put it in a box. Then we each drew a name and were asked to pray for the person. We went around the room and each said for whom we would be praying. Though I did not understand the connection of this to the class, it was very nice and I appreciated that it was so well accepted by the entire class. Everyone was so happy to do it. Although PUC is a Catholic college, I do not know if all the students are Catholic or not, but when one of the students began a discussion about how social services are necessary for the well being of the whole community, it was nice to hear one say how religion and creed should not be a question one asks before serving. (Shout out to all my Interfaith friends at Alma!!) Someone even compared it to the way a doctor should treat his patient, that is with care and discernment to aid recovery, not with discrimination and fear of that which is different than oneself.
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| To my left is Sister Joana and to my right is Professora Vera. Many thanks to Professora Vera for all of her time organizing my days for me. Sister Joana is with whom I will be living when I finish my time with my host family. |
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| The class after receiving a parting gift from Professora Vera |
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| My new friend Leila is who I will be praying for after the exercise we did in class. |
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| This is Leila's daughter Julia. She attends class every morning with her mother because it is too early for her to go to school. She makes a cake for the class for breakfast every week! What a sweetheart and a talented young girl! |
Then after lunch, I was able to attend brain surgery once again with Dr. Mauro. The same anesthesiologist was there as was last time so it was fun to see a familiar face in the operating room. This surgery, a partial left temporal lobectomy, was actually performed by a colleague of Dr. Mauro, Dr. Paulo, while Dr. Mauro assisted. He was excellent and the way the doctors communicated during the surgery that was necessarily so precise was fascinating. Dr. Paulo used a microscope to magnify the area of the brain on which he was operating so it was easier to make the correct incisions. The microscope which was very large and on a long arm had two places for viewing in case two doctors need to cutting at the same time. I was so excited when Dr. Mauro and Dr. Paulo allowed me to stand right next to them and use the second viewer! I got to see UP-CLOSE all the small incisions that Dr. Paulo was making. It was such a cool surgery and hopefully the patient, a three or four year old boy will no longer have seizures now.
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| In the operating room with the Anesthesiologist (He spoke English very well and was particularly interested in knowing how the skiing is in Michigan because he wants to learn how to ski some day.) |
